Blue Cow Kitchen 5.1

Mario Del Pero and Ellen Chen, owners of the popular Mendocino Farms sandwich shops, are proud to announce the opening of their New American restaurant, Blue Cow kitchen and bar, in early February. Blue Cow is an upscale, full-service New-American restaurant serving innovative comfort food, seasonal cocktails, craft beers, small plates and entrees that showcase local farming and artisan products, inspired by taking the approachable and giving it a modern interpretation.

The Blue Cow is led by Shane Pritchett formerly of Messhall Kitchen in Los Angeles, Emerils Delmonico, Emerils Restaurant in New Orleans as Executive Chef. In the Mendocino Farms culture, Chef Shane will be executing serious food, without taking himself too seriously. Examples of Chef Shane's dishes that represent this philosophy include Pink Eggs & Ham – beet marinated deviled eggs with Mendocino mustard, double smoked bacon & candied jalapenos, The Broccoli Falafel – house ground Broccoli, tzatziki,

In addition to functioning as a traditional restaurant, Blue Cow will also serve as a workshop for the Mendocino Farms team. This veritable sandwich “think tank” will often invite guest chefs,to push the boundaries of creativity as sandwiches are given a fine-dining makeover. With Mendocino Farms, Mario and Ellen aim to elevate sandwiches from lunchtime standbys into thoughtful, modern, sustainable meals. With Blue Cow, they are creating a place to test the most progressive sandwich ideas, while also forging a New American restaurant that supports local farming without being just another ‘farm-to-table’ place.

Comfort food will be at the heart of the Blue Cow menu, so Mario asked his friend Jason Travi to collaborate with him to invent the Blue Cow version of the most popular sandwich in the country: the burger. Chef Shane signature burger for the restaurant after grinding and tasting over 30 different combinations with Mario and his father, a third-generation butcher. The result is a grass-fed, sustainable burger developed in conjunction with Rocker Brothers Meats, sourced from cattle in Sonoma County.

Steve Livigni of Los Angeles’s La Descarga and Harvard & Stone—a friend of Del Pero has joined the team to develop a cocktail menu that represents Mendocino Farms’s ethos—moderns spins on classics with a seasonal influence. Guests can expect to see some of the most common, standby drinks, like “Jack & Coke,” reimagined. Livigni is also developing a selection of in-house sodas for his “soda jerk meets retro-bartender” menu.