The broad-ranging bistro menu of Local Union 271 covers breakfast, lunch and dinner, but is perhaps most thorough in the lengths it goes to remind visitors of the restaurant’s local sourcing practices. A box listing each of the farms sourced for ingredients dominates the top half of the menu.
Local Union 271, which opened in the fall, breathes new life into the location long occupied by University Cafe, a downtown Palo Alto institution.
Though many of the sources listed on the menu may already prove familiar to locavores, such as Straus Family Creamery in Petaluma or Santa Cruz’s Dirty Girl Farms, I anticipate lesser known farms will make more frequent appearances as the restaurant grows into itself—the restaurant just opened a few months ago.
Dinner began with me fumbling in utter confusion with the drink, special and regular dining menus, but my guests and I were able to track down a host of appetizing dishes from among the eclectic offerings: grilled tacos, Asian-style stir frys, dinner salads, pasta dishes, burgers and sandwiches.
We started with the Hobb’s bacon chips ($6.95) and skillet-baked mac n’ cheese ($13.95). A heap of bacon chips, from Hobb’s Applewood Meats in Richmond, were tossed in a runny agave glaze and plated on butter leaf lettuce cups with cherry tomato halves and a side of Kewpie sriracha. Perhaps these are intended to be enjoyed as lettuce wraps but the drenching of agave glaze on the delicate butter lettuce limits that option. Simply snacking just on the sweet, salty pieces of bacon was thoroughly enjoyable, and the skillet mac n’ cheese was incredibly rich and creamy.
Our main courses included a linguini carbonara ($14.95), a prawn salad ($16.95) and the house burger ($12.95). The carbonara paired a velvety sauce with beautiful yellow linguini from Saporito Pasta in Redwood City. The prawn salad came with sweet and juicy grilled prawns atop mixed greens in a citrus vinaigrette with asparagus spears. And the burger was a half-pound beef patty from Mindful Meats, which uses non-GMO pasture-raised cows from Marin and Sonoma county. I had to take a second bite to ensure it was not a placebo effect, but there was a noticeably pronounced beef flavor. Complimenting the burger was the spongiest, sweetest tasting bun I’ve enjoyed in a while.
On a previous visit for brunch, the fresh squeezed orange juice and chicken chilaquiles were both delightful.
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