Chef Pink’s Bacon & Brine Gets Bigger

“We’re changing the way people eat and the way people cook.” That may seem an immodest quote, but it comes off matter-of-factly when uttered by Crystal “Chef Pink” DeLongpré of Bacon & Brine in Solvang. Chef Pink and her wife and business partner, Courtney Rae DeLongpré (she’s the briner), are now cranking at their new full-kitchen restaurant on Copenhagen Drive, where they’ve been making what they call hyper-local food for two months now.

“Our menu is dictated by what we have available instead of making a menu and then substituting ingredients,” explained Chef Pink. “It takes a certain kind of temperament in the kitchen to deal with this every day. It’s a completely different prep list each day.”

When first opening Bacon & Brine as a simple sandwich shop in June 2014, Chef Pink turned to pigs because they are a particularly sustainable protein. Today, relying on one farm where “all the animals are raised for us,” they work through one animal at a time so each day can feature a different cut. “People are a lot more receptive to terms like organic, local, sustainable — these words weren’t associated with meat a few years back,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be just quinoa and kale that’s organic and local.”