For several years, Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens has hosted their seasonal FRESH! Dinner, bringing local, organic ingredients to the faceholes of their patrons. The consistently sold out event features food the way it was meant to hit our bellies: free of artificial B.S., sourced from a local community, sliced, diced and served in the same day. We followed Executive Chef Alex Carballo all day for the latest dinner and got a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making a FRESH! Dinner possible.

It takes a cool and collected ringleader to run a circus involving the nation’s 14th largest craft brewery, a kitchen staff of 54 people, a nearly 30 year-old mushroom and compost farm, a pastry chef that could pass for a bouncer, a Yugoslavian farmer who used to work for the City of Los Angeles, a Chef de Cuisine from the Playboy Mansion kitchen, a Vietnamese poultry shop that speaks better Vietnamese than Spanish and better Spanish than English, a produce wrangler who finds fruit that might really be from outer-space and a gardner named “Chili” with the largest possible rasta beanie a white man could ever sport.

From Big Bands to Pots and Pans

That ringleader is Executive Chef Alex Carballo. At age 33 he’s already lived approximately 3.5 lifetimes while most of us are still trying to handle just one. He grew up going back and forth between Mexico and Spain, where fresh, local produce was always around. He learned quickly that real food changes season to season, region to region. He constantly helped Mom and Grandma in the kitchen, developing mad skills that he would later come to realize didn’t come so easily to everyone else.

By the time he was a teen, Alex was going by a different name than Chef. Sometimes it was DJ Drop, sometimes DJ 1Rec but whatever the name, he was pursuing music very seriously. By the age of 15 he had discovered his talents as a musician and DJ, working professionally with bands and clubs, even deejaying in Tijuana with his uncle in tow as a chaperone. Music opened up the opportunity to travel with bigger and bigger acts, ultimately including bands like No Doubt and B.B. King. While on the road, he shined as a chef-on-the-go, cooking for fellow bandmates just for fun.

His colleagues and friends encouraged him to go to culinary school, so you can guess where he went from there. Chef Alex’s humble beginnings still radiate from his kitchen at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens. You can get a taste of Mom and Grandma’s influence in Chef Alex’s ceviche, because he makes it from their recipe.

The Long and Delicious Day

Any given day in a kitchen can be filled with madness, but four times a year Alex pulls even longer hours for the FRESH! Dinner. We spent the day harassing following him as he buzzed around San Diego county collecting a bounty of fruits, veggies, peppers, plums — even a couple bags of ducks — to be used at the ever-so-fresh-so-clean dinner. Here’s how he spent the long and delicious day.

chef alex carballo checking on fresh dinner menu

7 AM: Review the menu, check in with the farms
Because the dinner relies on smaller, local farms, sometimes last-minute changes have to be made if a certain ingredient is running short the day of his dinner. Once he’s reviewed the menu, which is broken down into charts of ingredients and their source, he checks in on his farm and produce contacts then takes off for destinations scattered about the county.

foggy morning at stone bistro and gardens with chef alex

7:30 AM Take a gander at the produce at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens
You may have been to the brewery and bistro before to stroll about the beautiful grounds (usually with fresh beer in hand), but did you look closely and notice there’s a bounty of fresh produce growing onsite? Chef Alex pointed out figs, mint, peppers, avocados and even tiny bananas that grow right there at 1999 Citracado Parkway. The dinner uses the garden’s cherry tomatoes and shiso leaves harvested directly from the property.

chef alex and jessica look greens

8:30 AM Visit Mil and team at Stone Farms
Chef Alex arrives at Stone Farms and meets up with Jessica Sanchez and David Solomon, who have worked on the farm before it became a Stone Brewing Co. entity. The farm’s bounty is used by the Stone Kitchen and can be found for sale at the Stone Farms Farmer’s Market that takes place on Fridays. Today Alex drops by to talk to Mil Krecu about a new corn crop, three kinds of colorful carrots, baby watermelons, and pumpkins that are growing for use in their upcoming collaboration beer with Elysian Brewing and The Bruery. The dinner’s herbs, sweet onion, apples and cucumbers will be from Stone Farms.

chef alex at wing lee live poultry and meat

9:30 AM Ducky collection at Wing Lee Live Poultry & Meat
For the appetizer, Alex is preparing crépinettes. He stops to collect four whole ducks, which will be deboned, ground and turned into zesty little sausage parcels then rolled in shiso leaves. The Vietnamese shop has everything from whole ducks to chicken feet to baggies filled with, well, we’re not sure what but it looks like one heck of a party involving yolks, feet and meaty things.

stone brewing chef alex selecting okra at chino farms

10:30 AM Produce collection at Chino Farms with Robert Farmer, the Produce Wrangler
Chino Farms is known for producing top-notch goodies used in restaurants all over California, and they’re in such high demand they don’t even offer to deliver. Chef Alex picks up ingredients for his salads and entrée’s succotash, including okra, peppers, lima beans and bags full of their notorious sweet corn. It’s here we meet up with Robert Farmer from Moceri Produce, who helps Alex wrangle produce from a handful of locations. He arrives bearing raspberries, peaches and plums from Connelly Gardens to be used in the dessert.

chef alex bringing fresh ingredients to commissary

12 PM Drop off goodies at the commissary kitchen
We might have sampled plums on the ride to the commissary, where Chef Alex drops off the ducks and fruit so Kitchen Manager Andy Halvorsen and Pastry Chef Andrew Higgins can get a head start on things inside the kitchen that smelled like heavenly baked treats.

mountain meadow mushrooms escondido

12:30 A trek to Mountain Meadow Mushrooms
Chef Alex didn’t know why we were so excited to see the farm, since mushrooms grow in poo. Mushroom Man Gary Crouch walked us through his many storage units filled from floor to ceiling with an abundance of puffy, fresh mushrooms. We had a chance to help harvest some, but we didn’t get to wear the awesome miner hats like the workers. Gary grows White Button, Crimini, Portobello, and Blazei mushrooms, which Robert Farmer explained is a very special type found in Brazil, known for its cancer-fighting superpowers. According to Gary, Mountain Meadow Mushrooms is the only Blazei producer in the nation. Check out Gary in this Dirty Jobs episode to learn more.

tasha-and-chef-alex-checking-out-mushrooms

1:30 PM Get thee to the kitchen!
Chef Alex circles back to Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens after over five hours of gathering the goods. Chef de Cuisine Tausha Lopez and Sous Chef Arturo Franco have already been working with the corn succotash and sweet onion soup by the time we arrive. The day is far from over for Alex, but we get to relax and wait for finished project.

Wash It Down Right

The dinner won’t just be about fresh dishes to eat, it’s also about having something fresh to drink. For this dinner, Stone Brewing Co. has tapped freshly brewed batches of Stone Pale Ale, Stone IPA, Stone Smoked Porter, and readied the Stone 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA for serving straight from the fermenter. When the anniversary beer is complete, it will be 10.8% ABV, but right now it’s around 9% ABV and 100% delicious. The anniversary ale will be available August 15 and at the Stone 15th Anniversary Celebration & Invitational Beer Festival August 19 and 20.

greg-koch-sampling-stone-15th-anniversry-escondidian-black-ipa-ale-from-fermenter

Be sure to stay up to date with Stone Brewing Co. to catch the next FRESH! Dinner in the fall, before it sells out. Again. Check back next week for the full story on the dinner Chef Alex whipped up.

Additional information:
http://www.stoneworldbistro.com/fresh/
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