The Middle Child only opened a month ago, but chef/co-owner Taylor Melonuk already faces some tough menu decisions. The restaurant’s peach-burrata salad was a best-seller from day one, but peaches don’t stay in season forever. So as we walk the Tuesday’s farmers’ market on State Street that’s just a half block from his door, he purchases 10 pounds of Cameo apples from Fair Hills Farm in Paso Robles, figuring that’s where the salad heads next.
“We can’t run peaches from Guatemala in December,” he insisted. “People ask, ‘Why pull off the menu something that’s going to make money?’ And I reply, ‘It’s not the product we want to put out.’ If you’re going to be shopping at the farmers’ market, you have to be much more committed to the program.”
Melonuk — who opened the restaurant with his wife, Brittany Melonuk, and partner Ivo Peshev (best known for his cocktail business the Flair Project) — previously worked at The Lark for years, but the team wanted to open more of a “hangout spot.” The name The Middle Child came from being located between the two downtown farmers’ markets — the Saturday one at Garden and Cota is only a whopping full block away. “We’re not trying to be the next James Beard–winning restaurant; we just want to be good,” said Melonuk, and there’s more to the name as well. “The middle child has to be tougher, has to work at it,” he said. “Even Santa Barbara is sort of in the middle — some say it’s Southern California, some say it’s Northern.”