EDIBLE: Chophouse ready to fill Lokal void in Carmel Valley.

It’s that classic experience every chef knows well. You wake up ready to get over to the restaurant and MPC Farmers Market to collect the week’s baby beets and Bing cherries and Schoch cheese and… your entire kitchen is stacked in your driveway – refrigerators, dry goods, utensils, all of it.

OK, it’s not such a typical experience. But – breaking news – Mike Jones of Cachagua General Store/A Moveable Feast fame/infamy is not a typical chef.

So went the start of his month. His stayover at his son Brendan’s Lokal restaurant on Center Street in Carmel Valley ended faster than it started seven months ago (after Mike Jones got the boot from the CGS for falling behind on rent).

“We got a text,” he says. “‘Gotta be out by tomorrow.’”

It was easy to imagine an explosive episode between their strong personalities led to eviction. Reality was more mellow, which may be a first with these two: Brendan finally found a way out of restaurants and new tenants were moving in, fast. Mike Jones’ running Facebook commentary, which has supplanted his blog as some of the best free drama since Lost went off the air, had a livelier account.

I would apologize for short notice… but we only found out when we found our culinary world piled in our driveway.

“Oh, well! Unlucky!” as we say in soccer. (Irony is big in soccer.)

The ideal that has been and still is The Cachagua Store still lives in all of our minds and memories. Fun, friendship, food, drink, community, decadence, derision… excess and scraping by in the same moment.

All that still hovers in the air.

If my entire world were not piled in my driveway I would invite y’all for Sunday Brunch and Monday Dinner to our house.

So no more Cachagua General, but that’s likely temporary. The bigger bummer for eaters is that Lokal, one of my two favorite new Carmel Valley restaurants in a dozen years, is finished.

The good news for Brendan is that he’s been over restaurants for months and months, at least. His plan now is to work construction, rather than, say, return to mixed martial arts fighting.

That means, for the first time since the Iraq War began – after 14 years of Cachagua chaos and banjos and chickens running around the yard and dogs running around the kitchen – Jones and his wife, Amanda Girard Jones, had a Sunday and Monday free.

“Amanda said, ‘I feel weird,’” Mike says. “I asked, ‘What is it?’ And she says, ‘I’m happy!’”

“It’s nice not having the responsibility of a place,” Amanda says. “You can think up new things. We were just going going going. It was the first time we stopped and thought about life.”

Cachagua General die-hards will be consoled to know the Joneses – while living what Amanda calls the “wandering minstrels” life – already have designs on a new restaurant space in Carmel Valley, to the alarm of conservative village-goers.

He adds this on Facebook: “We will be back. In fact, we never left.”

~ ~ ~

Secrecy cloaks the second Carmel Valley storyline on my plate. Roux (659-5020) – which just so happens to be my other favorite new valley restaurant in the past 12 years – has been working on a second restaurant since Fabrice and Jennifer Roux settled into the rhythm of their French-Spanish-California fusion spot on Pilot Road, which debuted in December 2015.

That had local eaters amped at the prospect, given the habit-forming flavors and textures of Roux’s foie gras parfait, sautéed scallops, yucca fries, Spanish paella, and cantimpalitos chorizo corn dogs, all dished in a welcoming indoor-outdoor setting that echoes the food.

As Raúl Nava reports in the Monterey Herald, they’ve got a concept called Carmel Valley Chophouse ready to go live this summer in a place they’ve already arranged, in Carmel Valley Village itself.

“Meat will be the star here,” Nava writes. “Fresh from a research trip to Chicago’s famed steakhouses, chef Fabrice Roux has been experimenting with dry – and wet-aged meats.” Nava quotes Jennifer envisioning “a 1955 dinner with a martini, meatloaf and mashed potatoes as a special.” Yes, please.

He adds they remain “mum” on the chophouse’s exact coordinates, though not without some hints: There’s a chef’s garden, a modest patio, a wood-fired oven.

Hmmm – sounds familiar.

I emailed Jennifer seeking to confirm my theory on Chophouse’s spot-to-be. She replied by saying she was locked in a confidentiality agreement. Then neither she nor Fabrice replied to multiple follow-up emails or phone calls seeking more info.

So my research took a different direction. I came across the intended bulk transfer notice that appears on p. 49-50 of this issue. It alerts the public that Lokal will likely be taken over by Variety Cuisine, Inc.

Variety doesn’t leave much of a footprint online, but it does surface in one place: TheKnot.com, a personal wedding planning site.

Only there’s no info or pictures, or even a single client review. The address listed, though, is Carmel Valley, and there’s a tab that says “WEBSITE.”

Click there and it takes you to RouxCarmel.com.

Further digging reveals Variety Cuisine Inc.’s articles of incorporation were filed with the California Secretary of State in Sacramento on July 23, 2015, by an individual named Fabrice Roux.

~QUICKBITES~

• Chef Dory Ford and Aqua Terra Culinary (657-9790), fresh off a decision to discontinue their Denver restaurant, scored a monster win by securing the exclusive catering contract for the new Monterey Conference Center. “We don’t have a corporate-driven purchasing program that keeps smaller local businesses and providers from access to a venue of this type,” Ford says. “I want to present a fresh approach. We have the opportunity and the forum to truly demonstrate the best Monterey has to offer.”
• Seventh & Dolores’ creative new steakhouse concept in Carmel, from the team at Folktale Winery (including culinary pointman Todd Fisher) and new Chef de Cuisine Jeremiah Tydeman (formerly of Alvarado Street Brewery and Grill), opens Thursday, June 29.
• Tacos El Jalisciense recently got a mobile food vendor permit from the city of Monterey to set up on private property, and it has, plopping a simple portable kitchen trailer on a lot between Window on the Bay and Roto Rooter in Monterey. They do tacos ($2), huaraches ($6), sopes ($3), quesadillas ($8) and burritos ($8), including breakfast versions with ham, bacon or chorizo.
• “The Vintners Minute” airs 4:20pm Thursdays on KRML 102.1 FM.
• Real Good Fish just pulled in a $95,320 USDA grant for its project “Expanding the Bay2Tray Initiative to Connect Local Fishermen to the Classroom and Cafeteria.”
• Fieldwork Brewing Company is now slated to open July 15 next to Peet’s Coffee in downtown Monterey.
• Breakfast Club in Seaside (394-3238) has pitchers of 805 for $12.75.
• Taco Tuesday at Mulligan Public House in Carmel (250-5910) means $1.25 tacos from 4pm.
• Cal Stamenov is still doing arguably the best grilled cheeses on the continent Wednesdays at Lucia (658-3400).
• Joe Cingari has a line on Bulgarian black truffles. If you’re in the market for some, email cingari@comcast.net.
• Bagel bites are so BACK at Bagel Corner (771-8670) in Salinas.
• BaconFest happens Saturday, June 24, at the Monterey Fairgrounds ($12, montereybaconfestival.com).
• I misquoted Honest Abe last week. He didn’t say “It’s the number of years in your life, it’s the life in your years.” He said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”