Beyond Bread: Rye Goods prepares to roll out dinner service in Costa Mesa
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At Rye Goods in Costa Mesa, the pastry case is filled with baked goods made from rye sourdough culture that its fans and followers have grown to love: morning buns dusted in sparkling sugar, hearty cake donuts iced with seasonal fruit flavors, naturally nutty bagels and, of course, loaves of fresh sourdough.
“Our country sourdough loaf is our most-selling item of any of our items,” said Rye Goods pastry chef and owner Sara Lezama.
Bread baking is at the heart of the Rye Goods brand and the bread and butter if you will, of the business. But at bakery’s newest location at the 17th Street shopping corridor known as Paseo 17, which had a soft opening earlier this month, Lezama and her team are rolling out more than bread. While rye sourdough is still prominently featured, the new 2,600-square-foot space that seats about 45 guests is making room for more.
“Each time I have opened a shop, I grow a little bit more in the idea of what I want to do,” Lezama said. “I think this [location offers] a bit of all our shops in one.”
Lezama started Rye Goods from her garage in Tustin in 2017, mostly selling wholesale to local coffee shops and restaurants. When her cottage industry outgrew the garage, Lezama moved the business into a commercial kitchen space at Hood Kitchen in Costa Mesa.
Then the pandemic hit, drying up wholesale orders, so the bakery pivoted to selling retail. The popularity of the bread and the relationship Lezama built with her customers led to a storefront on Lido Island, followed by locations in Tustin and Laguna Beach.
“Lido was just bread and pastry, we didn’t even have espresso. Then at Tustin we were doing espresso and throwing in a deli menu, then at Laguna we decided to do breakfast and lunch,” said Lezama. “In this space, we are planning to do a tea bar, a wine bar and eventually we are also going to be open evenings.”
The Lido location closed in order for the team to focus on the new space, which has a bakery in front with coffee and pastry case and plenty of patio seating, not unlike the Tustin location. The deli case offers prepared foods like pasta salads, carrot miso soup and hummus alongside frozen prepared foods that can cooked at home, such as bean and cheese burritos, lasagna and egg muffin sandwiches.
There is also a wine bar room Lezama plans to separate with curtains, keeping the bakery side open by day, and the wine and tea bar open by night.
“At night, instead of walking into a sleepy bakery that is already closed, you will be able to sit at the patio or enjoy at the bar and it will be a totally other experience,” said Lezama.
Dinner service is a new territory for Rye Goods, and Lezama is working with the company’s deli chefs Johnathan Rojas and Lindsay Jones to put together a menu that reflects the wholesome food they have offered in the past, along with some ambitious new offerings too, which Rojas said has not been difficult.
“Our menu is less limited by regionality and specific cuisines and more so focused on ethical sourcing and the overall quality of the product,” said Rojas, who is also kitchen director for all the Rye Goods locations. “It very much feels more like a labor of California inventiveness versus trying to lean into any one particular thing.”
Rojas said they will also be developing a pasta program for fresh pasta made in house and plan to let seasonality and what their farmer partners have available dictate what ends up on the menu.
“The world is our oyster; we can pretty much go in any direction we want,” Rojas said.
The current soft opening menu includes dishes like eggs Provence, with a sunny side up egg surrounded with roasted cauliflower, cherry tomatoes and house made labneh with fresh herbs, chili oil and a rye sourdough baguette for dunking. There is also a hearty chili that still feels light with soft carrots, cauliflower and a medley of black, white and red kidney beans topped with fried shallots and sour cream. The curry hand pie is filled with warmly spiced potato and chickpeas; it provides an eating experience similar to that of a samosa, with a crust flaky enough for apple pie.
Lezama said the dinner menu will debut for the grand opening planned for mid-July and she is excited to share what the team has been developing.
“Johnny [Rojas] loves fermenting and he loves dinner service and I have always wanted to do dinner service, so he and I are coming up with menu and it grows like that, naturally,” said Lezama.
The concept has evolved in other ways, too. While Rye Goods has always been what Lezama calls “quietly vegetarian,” she has been wrestling with the idea of adding chicken to the menu.
“I have been vegetarian since I was a little kid, so cooking and making the recipes here I just naturally didn’t include [meat]. I don’t want to contribute to this mass meat-eating cultural thing, but I also think if I can source really great meat from the farmers I already know, then maybe it is a little bit more sustainable.” said Lezama. “If you came here instead of going somewhere else for a cheap piece of meat; in that way I kind of see it as we are doing a good thing.”
Rye Goods has pulled seed oils from their recipes for the most part, using avocado oil in their place where applicable.
“Ultimately, we want to make our guests happy,” said Rojas. “We are a community oriented business and we are actively trying to embed ourselves in our local communities and adapt to whatever that demands and needs of that community is.”
All the changes at Rye Goods are a reflection of that community building, but Lezama assures guests that bread will always be the star.
“We bake bread every day and people buy it,” said Lezama. “Bread is still king.”
Rye Goods is located at 234 E 17th St. in Costa Mesa and open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily with dinner hours set to launch in mid-July.
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