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Inverse Relationships

2011-11-15T18:15:00.001-08:00

Time and again over the last few weeks, I’ve been continually met with the theme of “diametrically opposed” ideas or inverse relationships. These ideas really came from a series of different random thoughts I’ve been having more and more after doing some selective reading about food community and societies. What amazes me is that for some reason, food discussion and intellectual culinary relationships seem to only take place between very selective and high minded culinary set of peers. The internet has closed a gap in the public’s understanding of responsible sourcing, ethics, technique and restaurant life, but I’m not always sure it has been a source for pragmatism in pushing the craft of cuisine. For some reason, I seem to always have this lingering romantic vision that the communities of chefs in Europe are so much more interwoven with each other’s work and culinary progression. For some reason, I just can’t help but think that even with the world’s biggest forum: the internet – chefs here rarely develop “shop talk” relationships. And, I’m not talking about the Food Network. In all likeliness, its probably just misplaced romanticism and babble.

Here are some of the things that have come to bother me more and more over time:

1. Artistic Representation of Food vs. Profit

Money and making a living is diametrically opposed to a chef’s desire to push the envelope. Yes, there are a lot of people who have no desire to do that – which is perfectly fine. But, if you want to be adventurous or experimental, making money cannot be your objective. Money cannot dictate the creative effort and approach taken to food or ingredients or else it is compromised, but in the world of restaurants, this is more of an anomaly than the standard.

2. Eating Sustainably vs. The Cost of Eating Sustainably

You’d love to do the right thing, but the right thing is either never convenient enough or never affordable enough. It is a system that is sadly manipulated by too many awful industries and politics to be fixed in the right way.

3. Artistic Output vs. Dietary Limited Cuisine

Yes, its nice to have vegetarian and vegan restaurants because we all need options and have dietary restrictions. I am sensitive to all those things… most of the time. However, it makes no sense to side-skirt the truth of the matter. If you regard yourself as a cook, limiting the education of your craft to a restrictive set of ingredients basically goes against being a professional or (if you want to call yourself one) an artist. (I don’t consider most cooks as artists even though I think cooking can be artistic – maybe because it sounds pretentious.) It would almost be like a contractor who decided to build a house without nails because he never learned to use a hammer. Sure, it can be done, but I’m not sure why that’s not lesson one. Cooking with dietary restrictions can net beautiful and creative results (evident in many SF vegetarian restaurants), but the restriction isn’t what makes it special and it certainly doesn’t contribute to what makes it creative.

A Wonderful Message for The Fight for Sustainable Meat… by Chipotle?

2011-10-18T18:07:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, I posted the following video via twitter after seeing it before the previews in a theater.

I have to admit, it was all about the pill shaped piggies when I was watching through the first few seconds, but then as the video unfolded, I was very drawn and then very moved… up until the Chipotle sign showed up on the truck.

Seeing the Chipotle truck almost ruined the video for me, but since that time, I’ve started reading into and studying Chipotle’s new marketing plans to be responsible with sourcing local meat. I am still skeptical, but I am also a tiny bit impressed. Whether this is just a ploy with marketing or not, I think its very important that a national fast food chain is capable of taking a stance like this.

But let’s ignore the actual food end of this discussion – what Chipotle ends up doing or promises to do is almost irrelevant. Putting out a video with this message could quite possibly have more of a positive impact in terms of influencing people than anything Chipotle could do on the plate. And in some ways, something so well thought out and childlike in design is probably going to affect more people than trotting Michael Pollan out for NPR interview after NPR interview.

Idealism is great, but if people don’t have a medium to understand the idea, then it is only called futility. I don’t doubt people have the intelligence to understand complex issues in front of them, but I do not necessarily have faith in their patience or attention span to absorb it.

I have to credit Chipotle for spending the money and embarking on this project. Often times we’ve bitched and whined about how irresponsible fast food companies seem to be – making no strides at being responsible with sourcing. It would be wrong at this point to lay the gauntlet on the first sign of someone trying something different. If Chipotle responsibly sources meat locally, then they might even end up being one of the few burrito places to do so, because I’m pretty sure that that is not the norm for most of the taquerias in SF.

Here is a video for the production by Johnny Kelly at Nexus:

Back to Basics

2011-09-08T18:42:00.001-07:00

Le Pigeon’s famous t-shirt logo

Just got back from my Montreal/Boston trip after the longest 6 weeks of my life. But, having had a chance to relax and center myself over the last week, I feel rested and ready to get back to basics.

To get a head start on recharging this blog, I’m going to first let you know how I feel about the upcoming foie ban of 2012 in California.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-07/foie-gras-lovers-in-california-fall-victim-to-rights-of-ducks.html

It is a crock of bullshit. Essentially a cosmetic issue for posturing lawmakers and peacocking animal rights activist who want to mask their inability to actually factor into more important legislation changes. Nothing but wasted money, wasted time and wasted energy on something that doesn’t affect 99% of people in this state. On the scale of food politics, foie gras legislation is probably the least globally important food issue out there.

All that wasted money and campaigning for a fight to piss off seemingly nobody but guys like me.

So for all the bullshit artists that want to discuss this issue and cry over the injustice of making ducks fat and tasty, then why don’t you first try to tackle anyone of the millions of more important issues that relate to mass meat production, meat standards, oversight for FDA, legislation restrictions on imported produce, organic farming emphasis/subsidy, and process food oversight/education/transparency.

By the way, I ate a lot of foie in Montreal – where they don’t deal with such stupidity when it comes to food.

Cooks

2011-07-25T14:05:00.001-07:00

There was a recent comment made by David Chang (via twitter) a week or more ago concerning the quality of cooks becoming successively worse from generation to generation. To those words, I disagreed with him on many aspects – one of which is in reference to the advent of food exposure/information, general knowledge and increased availability of science and technique out there today. The question or topic happened to end up on Eater National (found here). In the Eater article, they had multiple chefs weigh in on the discussion and describe the current state of affairs with cooks in their kitchen.

I found this topic interesting because recently there has been a good deal of shuffling with cooks in my own little makeshift kitchen for the café. I have never regarded my café kitchen as a particularly classic or serious one, but rather I have always told my cooks that what we may lack in terms of equipment or manpower, we will make up for in terms of approach and autonomy. I think when I first hired my cooks, there was a different sense of enthusiasm and I cemented a few very basic rules in the kitchen: 1. there is no shit talking in the kitchen, 2. leave your personal issues at home and 3. do your job.

So in the last 10 days, I have had one cook move on to better things (which I knew was coming and am very proud and happy about), another injure himself outside of the kitchen (now unable to work for an undefined term) and another canned because he was a no show (essentially quitting in an irresponsible manner). This is the tale of two cooks really – one motivated by a desire to learn, improve and continue to cook; the other unmotivated in his career by slowly decaying over personal issues, work ethic and maturity.

At this point, after interviewing 10-15 candidates (35-40 resumes), I had to make a decision as to how I would approach my new hiring process. I had seen a few cooks who had a good amount of experience and were interested in simply coming in to do their job and do it competently. I had also seen a fair amount of cooks who were a good deal less experienced, but looking for a chance to grow. So the question that ultimately came up and isn’t normally asked was: what is the preference for how you find or hire a cook?

To this, it seems that hiring a cook is actually more of an introspective experience than a logical one. There does not seem to be a shortage of resumes or people with experience that range from none to 20 years. I think I chose to hire based on what I thought my kitchen was capable of providing for the cooks that I bring to the staff. While we can point fingers at the cooks that come in and out of our kitchens/lives, I think sometimes chefs can overlook motivation over the more ever present necessities of experience and talent. With that I sometimes wonder, how can you expect someone to be successful at doing things your way or a certain way immediately when you hire someone who has been doing things someone else’s way for years?

I’m not particularly certain how we can avoid hiring poor cooks or how cooks turn from good to bad, but in my own mind, I feel that the failure of an unsuccessful cook is in part a failure to put him in a position of success. And oddly in the case of the fired cook, I should have fired him earlier when I had begun to see him unravel. What I will not say is that his failure is my lack of motivation because at the end of the day, nobody should be trying to push initiative on you. Initiative is something people get for themselves. If opportunities are not present, then I think it is the job of the cook to decide to either move on or make the most of a situation responsibly. And if they hang around too long without any motivation whatsoever, it would be smarter for everyone if chefs either encouraged to push them out or fire them.

In many instances, I think there are chefs that need to look in the mirror in terms of who they are and how they choose to run their kitchens. Maybe sometimes an abusive environment isn’t the best way to get the most out of cooks – and, in my case, maybe a tolerant one isn’t either. There is a good deal of misguided thinking in the ranks of cooking – maybe its wrong to continue the general thought that someone who moves through the ranks of becoming a chef are going to be good at managing, motivating and most importantly of all, teaching. There are so many trains of thoughts about good cooks and chefs versus bad ones that it would be an endless chicken and egg conversation, but I would say that relegating the issue to the question of “why cooks suck more today than the days of yester year” is a somewhat ridiculous premise. And if you answer it in a certain way, wouldn’t you end up pointing the finger in your own direction as the culprit? Every generation always feels the degeneration of the previous.

I’ve always been in the belief that the things that makes a good cook, sacrifice and hard work are things that people do when they want to succeed for themselves and are not a generation conundrum. Good cooks are the ones who are always accountable for their own success.

The Inconvenience of Fine Dining

2011-05-10T18:10:00.001-07:00

The title for this blog is misleading. There is no intention to say that fine dining is an inconvenience, because it isn’t. It is, when properly executed, a marvel and a privilege. Also, this is not a blog to complain about the required jackets and etiquette required for such affairs because I, for one, truly believe that we are approaching at a time where etiquette, dress and formality (and chivalry for that matter) are sorely lacking. Rather, with my recent introduction of Dux (www.duxsf.com), I’ve started to wrestle with questions on what should and should not be considered as a fine dining experience.

The primary catalyst for this discussion was the Thursday night conversation that I had with a good chef friend of mine while enjoying the 17 course tasting menu at Benu. We had started a blow by blow analysis of each course – analyzing technique, chemical and composition for everything we ate. At some point at the end of the night, he asked me whether or not I ultimately dreamt of something close to the grandeur that we had just experienced.

With only sophomoric experience (and an independent attitude) in crafting tasting menus and, more importantly, serving them, I felt uneasy about the question. Frankly, I’m not sure. The answer was not a reflection or digression on my confidence or ability, but rather, a direct result of what I think are philosophical contradictions to what it means to offer the finest of fine dining menus. What exactly does it mean to be a L20, Daniel, French Laundry, Benu, Jean Georges, Eleven Madison, Michael Mina, etc.?

The first issue discussed was the lack of focus on head-to-tail philosophy, something that I have always embraced because it has always been a matter of importance stemming from cultural inheritance and schooling from chef mentors. Fine dining tasting menus always focus on emerging trends and the necessity to showcase top-tier ingredients. Most of the time this means that you will likely be served the best cut of the best breed of animal available. Tenderloins, frenched ribs, rare breeds, distant seafood are not just the norm – they are the expectation. None of this is an issue –especially to me when I dine, but I also don’t expect to find braised tripe and offal as the third course on many of these menus.

The second part of the discussion was the waste that commonly occurs in fine dining establishments. To get to the perfect circles, squares and shapes of your fine meal, it normally must mean that certain quantities of the prepped item were cut away and discarded. Sometimes the yield required to make food pretty is disgustingly low. Again, this somewhat ties me into my first point presented. When the focus of the meal is to serve best of the best, the rest of what may be attached is likely unused or discarded. Don’t get me wrong – fine dining is a necessity like high concept or avante garde art is a necessity. There is way too much brainless trash available to us on a daily basis that we NEED equalizers in the form of high standard and art to maintain our balances. For the purposes of this blog, the discussion is strictly a matter of what it means when you choose to cook this way.

Finally, we got to the question of the heart and the soul. Inevitably, there is always heart to these beautiful menus. At some point, a chef poured his intelligence and creativity over dish by dish, normally no bigger than 6 square inches, and worried endlessly about whether his critical diners would understand, appreciate and enjoy it. And in most cases, his heart, intelligence and creativity is leaps and bounds above most. But, has the chase for the stars (figurative and literal) masked the soul of the food? The service: always far more professional than warm; the food: always more technical than rustic. I’m not sure, but at some point does it seem that the fragility and preciousness of certain food take away from what we perceive as soul in cooking? Is there more or less soul in a dish with 4 tweezers and 3 different cooks working on it? I honestly don’t really know.

Over the last decade, it seems increasingly more common that some restaurants featuring head-to-tail and rustic menus are becoming ranked in the stratosphere of fine dining. While that is nice, redefining fine dining and what it necessarily entails is a far cry from a progressive movement. Just look at the list for Best Restaurants in the World – or even Michelin star rankings in different cities. Will these lists, stars and rules always determine how we choose to value a fine dining experience or how special does something have to be to provoke a change? There are clearly examples of both, ranging from Daniel Boulud’s documented chase for a final star to a Michelin starred Hong Kong dim sum joint. Are we looking at the rule and an exception to that rule – or are we looking at a rule and an exception that proves the rule?

Dux – At Last

2011-04-25T22:07:00.001-07:00

A long time ago, I think I mentioned that I had been playing with the idea of developing a series of dinners served and composed at the bar area at The Summit. Some might call it a little restaurant within a restaurant – technically similar to the concept of Minibar in Jose Andres’ Cafe Atlantico in Washington DC.

Launching within the next two weeks I hope to unveil a weekly Sunday night series that will feature an inaugural menu from my new dinner concept named Dux. With Dux, I want to create a slightly alternative and modern dining experience that offers an element of education and inspiration with every thematically generated series menu.

While full-on details are still completely being worked out, those will be available within the next week. For a glimpse of the menu, you can visit the Dux homepage at:

www.duxsf.com

Each menu will range from a series of 5-7 courses and the situation permitting (soon enough), it will be paired accordingly per course. It is, of course, absolutely no surprise to anyone that the first focus of Dux is a fitting tribute to the duck. With that said, more details to come. Thank you all for their support in making this happen.

Masks

2011-03-17T18:55:00.001-07:00

There is a significant difference between the effort it requires for getting up versus waking up. And if I were to rank the difficulty of those occurrences with the act of staying up, I’d place them 1, 2 and 3 respectively. The truth is that when I get home, there’s a blankness about the life there. My time spent at home now is sometimes a little bit of a charade and often just a necessary means of recuperating the energy loss to the battles that occur on a daily basis at the cafe.

When I’m not assuming my role and wearing my mask for work, a lot of my other time is filled with different pieces that help maintain a certain sense of sanity; which is to say that this is spent as far away from work as possible. Recently I’ve toggled my limited time and space between a tight knit group of close friends, visiting family and mind-numbing hobbies/activities. And to them, I sometimes need to apologize for being half of a person. Despite the undeniable desire to take solace in my cave of a room, these things provide me the comfort I sorely look for. I’m very thankful some days for their ability to overcompensate for my lack of energy, engagement and excitement.

As much as work absorbs a part of my life out of it, it doesn’t mean that I am not myself at work. At this juncture of my life (though it may sound a bit sad), I have more passion and love for work than anything outside of it. It is an ambiguous sense of self and personal identity; a duality that is both supportive and symbiotic. And if you can’t understand or relate to that kind of lifestyle that exists, than you need to look no further than the case of Bruce Wayne and Batman. The real man exists in both personas, but they are an almost bipolar representation of one and another.

Sometimes I want to be both, one, or just not the other. Some of the staff and myself are close and, over time, we develop strong friendships, but there are times when they’ll talk or react to me as the mask and not the man. It is simply human nature that we approach people and situations in the roles that we see them most commonly in. I’ve done the same with almost all of my bosses and supervisors and, at times, its undeserved but certainly understandable. If anything, I think its this tangible air of being generically cordial that I’m not in love with.

Again, its all very understandable and if you think about it, that boundary kind of creates an inadvertent cause-and-effect. The problem is that one part of my life seems to completely dominate the other – resulting in almost no semblance of balance. I’ve taken the last couple of Wednesdays’ off, but I seemed to have found a way to volunteer them to doing all the errands for work either at home or at the Planning Department. And when I finish with those, I’m normally not quite sure what the rest of my day should be used for (aside from laundry).

I guess I’ve been in a better disposition considering that I am beginning to see the Bruce Wayne end of things – whether that signifies that I’m doomed to kicking it with my butler all day or to unsavory relationships – I’m not sure. I’m also a little cautious sometimes about how much I choose to isolate from one part of my life to the other – its an odd struggle. Keeping things too business-like takes away from enjoying your work and getting too close feels like you’re taking a piece out of your own privacy/identity. The great thing about my line of work is that the personal satisfaction is there, but I’m sure there are many that worry about whether the fulfillment part of it will be there waiting at home.

Days of Thunder

2011-02-25T17:59:00.001-08:00

The days are passing and just flying by recently. I had naively imagined that my hours would settle a little and things would begin to even out, but its really been very busy in a good way as of recently.

If I remember properly I think we had 6 different events over the span of 2.5 weeks leading from the end of January to Valentine’s week. Included in the mix was a community shop/swap event, a Forage SF dinner, an Eventbrite fashion show and a collaborative SF Beer Week dinner with Beer & Nosh, now Almanac founder, Jesse. The beer dinner was probably the most work-intensive amongst all the others and the most fruitful professionally. I enjoy our cafe menu, but personally, I get a lot more joy out of being able to stretch my legs creatively in a tasting menu. Then again, who doesn’t I guess. Every bit of the experience was worth the planning and extensive work required.

Here is a finalized menu with the beer pairings:

The Summit and Beer & Nosh Tasting Menu

February 14, 2011

Scallop and Citrus Ceviche

-sweet lime and coconut vin, ale carbonated orange, tangerine agrumato,

turnip, jasmine citrus syrup

Almanac Beer Co. Summer 2010 Blackberry Ale

Uni with Soup Dumpling

-house soy broth, elderflower mint gelee, sweet tea cornichon

Drake’s Brett Butler Barrel Aged Triple

Espresso Mole Pancetta in Edible Garden

-espresso mole “soil”, baby radish, minutina

Dogfish Head Bitches Brew

Vadouvan Braised Shortrib

-vadouvan curry, lentils de puy, hedgehog mushrooms, baby carrots

SF Beer Week Collaborative Bourbon Barrel Common

Taleggio Mousse in Choux

-madras curried pineapple compote, Retribution ale reduction sauce

Highwater Brewing Retribution Double IPA

Foie Torchon with Candied Mandarinquat

-brioche, lavender vanilla duck egg sabayon

Firehouse Brewing Pete Support Belgian IPA

Humphry Slocombe Espresso Balsamic Beer Float

Speakeasy Payback Porter infused with TCHO Cocoa Nibs

David Jensen of Beer 47 blog did a recap of the event as well and it can be seen on his blog here.

At the end of beer week, I got a little bit of time off, but I was invited to participate in this month’s Meatpaper SFMOMA event – which for the longest time, I’ve really wanted to partake in. It was always one of the more thought provoking events that highlighted the confluence between food and art. When I got the invitation, I was very flattered and I was very excited to say yes. It was also an honor in itself to be grouped with Jake of Local Mission and Evan Rich of Coi. Here is some linkage to Meatpaper and the details for the event. Visavis, I got a “hot of the presses” copy of Meatpaper yesterday and just blew through it because inside the new issue, I found a piece on Mark Ryden and an interview with personal hero Martin Picard of Au Pied De Cochon. Pretty awesome stuff when you can’t quite put it down.

In more of the world of Summit news, we were recently featured in Businessweek magazine and also The Atlantic. Sometimes I’m not sure what to make of the great PR, but it certainly puts a nice end to the work week.

This really has been more of an update blog, I promise there will be more interesting topics including a 2011 primer for next week. Until then, I think this has been the positive blog I’ve had in months. Hopefully more good times to come.

2011 – Start Up, Step Up or Shut Up

2011-01-05T19:12:00.001-08:00

I think it might have been two years ago that I started this blog. To be honest, there was never a vision, reason or intention to do anything beyond musings about shit that only seemed to interest or annoy me. Two years later and firmly footed in a new business that has yet to get itself properly anchored – I feel my enthusiasm has definitely changed. The blog has no longer become a smorgasbord of pointless and joyfully innocuous food topics, but rather one that heavy handedly details the inner workings of my experiences in The Summit. And for that, I sincerely hope that part of myself can resurface with a little more levity, comedy or absurdity.

We’re now three plus months in – and with that, the anxiety, bliss and surrealism of opening has steadily passed as the weeks started to float by. Frustration, weariness, exhaustion and creative voids begin to creep in as the most obvious emotional replacements. So, with my life both in and out of my blog, I am seeking levity. I can see employees starting to fade in energy levels whether they are attributed to personal conflicts, seasonal stress or holiday complacency. It’s not a rut, but I guess the group has collectively taken a cooler attitude. And with that, I feel that I – more so than anyone else, should not be projecting that type of energy.

Our issues with beer and wine has become a sordid and sad affair – now requiring the assistance of legislative aides, entertainment lawyers, possibly expediters and every one in between. In a neighborhood that is 80+% small business, it seems that the city policies as they are written, support anything but. Throw in a bunch of loony anti-gentrification-fueled “ethnic/social inequality” crybaby assholes parading around the Mission like a bunch of blind chimps and you have the makings of a double team assreaming between the immovable object and the unstoppable force. It’s especially funny considering that I am an ethnic minority, have no associations with corporate partners, happen to be first generation immigrant and serve as a primary operator in this business. I’m sorry, but considering that I employ Mission residents, pay city taxes, try to support my neighbors and respectfully serve customers basically means that I’m responsible to the neighborhood. It also means that I’m not some covert hide-in-the-weeds politico operation that gets itself off by denigrating blue collared entrepreneurs – all while seemingly offering nothing to a neighborhood but the sound of their self righteous and disillusioned voice.

Now that I’m through with telling certain peoples to go kick rocks, another thing that seems to happen in most chef positions is this constant struggle to try to listen to people explain their ideas for undermining you creatively. It’s essentially the same warning with any position of power – if you want to hold the reins of creative control and direction, you need to ensure that you are not in a position where that can be pulled from under you. I’d say most of the time when you hear about a chef leaving a position – it is directly the result of one variance of the issue or another. Yes, some chefs are assholes and there are many that are irresponsible and clueless (like any profession), but its a common story in the industry to hear that someone responsible and talented has been forced out because of the constant frustrations/battles/struggles with direction coming from those who might not have worked a day in the life. For those that are trying to get to this point in your career, there are a couple things you need to understand, 1. thicken your skin and soften your ego because every suggestion needs to be heard regardless on how wildly ridiculous it may be, 2. there will ALWAYS be opposition 3. learn to coherently, effectively and professionally address issues (yes, reading and writing are important), 4. open your mind, but don’t compromise your integrity, and finally 5. make sure you’re holding cards and not just dealt a hand. It costs you to have skin in the game, but it’ll cost you more eventually without it.

With the New Year, I finally get to change our menu format and system into something that makes more sense. Instead of a lunch and dinner service with a small amount of items on each, we are swapping it for an all day service with more items – including some sandwich options and entree options as well. Without beer and wine, it logistically makes no sense to deal with splitting services. We will also be utilizing a more bistro style menu that will be something like a chalkboard menu – this allows us to change items in a more freeform fashion and offer a better capture of the best that the farms can offer weekly. With our limitations and kitchen size, it is easier to manage in terms of inventory and it is more efficient (ultimately, responsible) in terms of sourcing. All that essentially means we get to do more fun stuff.

That’s all for now, hopefully my next update won’t take as long or sound as militant. So all I can say for now is let’s all try to smile a little more even though it might hurt your face.

It’s In The Books

2010-11-15T16:49:00.001-08:00

We are officially a month and a half in the books and things have somewhat stabilized – not necessarily my hours but everything else seems to be going swimmingly to a certain extent. I seem to have a million things swimming in my mind, but almost nothing simultaneously. So I decided to write this blog in segments which is the only way I could strategically tackle everything.

“Really, dude, really!?!”

Our battle with ABC and the bevy of organizational issues that they seem to pass of to the restaurant owners and merchants alike are still ongoing – 5 months now and counting (now two months past their expected completion date of 90 days). With that said, the most recent issue – requiring clarification from the Planning Department for zoning in this space – was not even brought up or vetted until the very end of this process. This is of course the type of basic thing that should happen at the beginning of an application process, but that would make too much sense, wouldn’t it?

Not sure if you’ve heard recently during the election season, but the spin on the political season was basically the promise of untangling the government knots that effectively put strangleholds on small business entrepreneurship and kill our local economy. As with many things, the promise of things to happen are normally far from the reality of those situations. We represent a small business with thin margins and sometimes support ourselves with customers that may or may not sit here for 8 hours on a $2 ice tea. We have a staff of 15-20 and try our best to be responsible, fair and positive with our staff – but, for those who have been sleeping in a time capsule, it gets hard to pay them towards the pay scale that we wish we could and the amount that many of them really deserve. This basic wine and beer licensing issue is pinching every single nerve with each additional barrier – whether that stems from ABC’s disorganization, poor staffing and or pointless array of technicalities – its not going to help businesses hire and thrive in an environment where payroll and fees are the killer.

Be Your Own Food Hero

Well, aside from the sobering reality of basic job economics, I have had more time recently to start playing with new menu specials and random ideas in my head. The fun part of having creative control is that when I like something out of my test kitchen, I just put up a sign and sell it. I recently had a chance to talk to a writer and we started to get into some of the ideas and inspiration behind the food concepts at the Summit. I didn’t quite know how to place the terminology at first and then I started to reference the approaches that appeal to me the most, the metaphor of guitar hero riffs began to swim in my head. And thus, I started to coin the phrase “food/cooking hero” to describe the type of restaurant that I was most smitten with. The items or types of menu where certain things borderline the realm of ridiculous, wonderful, abstract and even excessive. Sometimes that means putting foie in profiteroles and selling it as dessert and sometimes that means stuffing a pig trotter with more massive quantities of pig and duck sausage – or it can be fluffing a pillow with smoke and serving it as a tray for a course. And sometimes considering how long, hard or lucky you need to be able to invoke your inner food hero – you might as well take that opportunity by the balls and have fun with it. There isn’t a written rule sometimes to whether failure or success is a given in this industry – its always just a matter of how much time you have with either. I’m sure the rock and roll greats don’t get on the stage to find their guitar hero, you get on stage to become the guitar hero. All I’m saying is I dream of the day when people can all cook to be their own food hero.

The Golden Rule

Moving on to a new topic, I fired my first cook a few weeks ago. It was a poor fit with a bevy of issues and going into the details wouldn’t be the right thing to do– but I think I decided a long time ago that team cohesion and basic respect between kitchen staff would be the first and most important rule of my kitchen. It is rule #1.

Time to ramp up again – The Summit’s Inaugural Art Show on Thursday, 11/18

We are finally ready to get the art show on the road. Our first exhibition gallery is a collection of album covers from a list of local merchant record owners, DJ's, writers and friends that agreed to put on display their interpretations of what a “third space” concept meant to them and how it reflects in their LP cover collection. Some featured include Mark Farina, Cool Chris, Dick Vivian, and others. It should be pretty nice to finally fill these wood walls with our vision of contemporary art. Check it out here.

Bringing The Debate For Milk To Food

As with my other blogs since we’ve opened, I’ve been tracking our use of Straus milk , which has been consistent and pretty nice. And with the changes of the fall menu, I started making my butternut squash soup strictly with Straus milk. People dig it because it’s richness – almost a meal in a bowl. With that, we’ve started to see a nice steady increase in requests and we’ve started ordering more of it progressively with both the soup and coffee featuring it. I think there is still a lack of basic education and its hard sometimes to really get people to understand that milk has a fundamental flavor difference that is qualitatively tangible. In the end, I have the feeling that people need to start experiencing milk in their own homes and refrigerators to start asking for a better product throughout. It is a luxury though, that’s not lost on me. But if you haven’t thought to try it, you should. We’re thinking of ways to spread the word a little more.

And finally some pictures of specials, butchers blocks and such… you know, food porn.

“You’ve Met Me At A Very Strange Time In My Life.”

2010-10-13T18:56:00.001-07:00

It has been 14 days since our doors opened and it has been overwhelming madness. It took a total of 9 days to happen, but I admitted to my cook that afternoon that I was “exhausted” – a word I had avoided considering that it (to me, at least) connotates Kryptonian in its implied usage during The Summit’s opening stretch. So I took off early during a calm Friday night service after a mere 13 hours on the job and finally had my first real sit down meal in weeks.

To be honest, dinner service has still been steady and even paced considering that we still don’t have our beer and wine license. But things could be better because the dinner/bar/dessert tail end of our daily program is simply waiting for our anchor: the beer/wine program. At this point, it seems businesses are just at the mercy of the departments that control such things. To be candid, we’re a little bit like lab rats waiting to be fed – there is no information structure, hard deadlines, date settings or anything that might help a business prepare and ready for a major shift in their setup. It might be the internet/information age, but sometimes I feel like we’re dealing in the wild wild west. From a friend and restaurant owner, apparently “it just comes in the mail.” Any friggin’ day now.

Since dealing with delays on our opening, we’ve had to operate with a menu that is coming to its seasonal end – which means that in less than 2 weeks, we get our first menu overhaul. Ah, the joy of trying to stabilize operations and re-doing my sourcing is doubly as fun. It’s even harder on a creative level nowadays when there are a million issues to confront, remedy and fix. In the world of blog, reaction, hype and overreaction, the difficulties of meeting expectations are present – especially when it comes to being high profile in one of the most outspoken neighborhoods in one of the most opinionated cities. It’s an element that we welcome because honest and proper criticism is important part of growth – perfection or stability is only a false vanity of the “thin mirror” variety. It doesn’t exist.

One of the more offsetting but poignant digressions that I’ve come back to many times is a line from Stanley Tucci in the movie Sidewalks of New York:

“"Show me a good-looking woman... I'll show you a guy who's tired of fucking her.""

It’s my little metaphor for avoiding complacency. I think the one of the most important things in work, life or personal goals is to avoid being complacent.

That being said, there is nothing complacent about our opening two weeks. On one of my rougher days, approximately 3-4 days ago (feels like months), we had pastrami issues with the temperature in which the pastrami came out. Having run around to pickup items for both services and prep out for dinner, I had not seen the new piece of pastrami my cook cut into. Due to the oven being set 5 degrees lower than normal, the pastrami was cut at that temperature to serve. The base temperature for the red meat was perfectly fine for serving, but when you account to the fat ratio and texture difference between those pivotal 5 degrees – you are looking at a product that is not coming out the way it is supposed to (or at least not the way I wanted it). It just so happens, I met Carolyn of SF Eater and she ordered a pastrami – it really is just shit that you can’t make up sometimes. Sorry Carolyn, just one of those demoralizing days when you are trying to run circles to figure things out.

On top of all the joy happening at the Summit, you can add a case of anxiety driven nausea in the morning and a 5:45AM mental alarm clock that has no sleep button. That is how the first 14 days of a 18 hour-shift cafe/restaurant feels like. It’s a constant reminder of what you did not do and not so much what you have done. Thankfully, I slept relatively well the last couple of nights. I didn’t get more hours, but was able to have a couple of nice and weird dreams as opposed to nightmares about remembering to soak beans and whatnot.

Ultimately, there is a vision for utilizing and sharing this space which includes our rotating art exhibit, the Minibar-inspired fine dining concept, the beer/wine program, community driven classes/events, etc.. But as of right now, after 14 days of madness, I’m just running to stand still.

And we’re very thankful for everyone’s patience and understanding in the meantime.

Getting Dialed In.

2010-10-04T11:35:00.001-07:00

It’s Monday morning and my stomach is gut-wrenchingly abusing me for ignoring it for 16 hour stretches. Meanwhile, I tried to sleep 7 hours last night, but my brain cut me short at 5:45AM in the morning today which means that I subconsciously robbed myself of 75 minutes. And so, this is how I welcome week 2 of our opening.

By the way, I found the key to curbing obesity in America: force every overweight person in this world to open a restaurant. We’ll have better malnutrition numbers here than a small third world country after that.

I dreamed of eating ramen and enjoying a sexy cocktail with a pork chop on Thursday and Friday, but by Sunday those dreams seem to be lost. Things are stabilizing here and we are figuring out the timing and shifts needed for everything. The kitchen seems like it has found a groove, but with the shifting weeks and busy periods – you just never really know. All in all, I am content and happy – which despite the marathon hours, is as much as anyone can ever ask for.

Once the dust settles, hopefully soon, we can start working on expanding menus and resolving issues. In the meantime, I won’t say that I’m thrilled that Friday and Saturday dinner services were a little more on the quiet end, but with fingerprints on everything stretching from beverage, lunch, dinner and operations – personal pride aside, I’m not going to stress about it. Right now, it’s all about dialing in the product and quality – that is the only thing that matters.

While I do enjoy summer produce, we’re going to have to shift to fall and winter pretty soon. It really sucks to be open at this point and then have to rotate items so fast, but I’m excited to start introducing a new season. It is definitely the best part of the job.

One of the hardest things for me to understand is how people psychologically view mental wait times in spaces. I’m not sure if there is a difference (other than customer perception) if you are waiting for a coffee after you are rung up in line or if you are just waiting in line for 15 minutes and then getting your coffee 5 minutes later. People seem to be happier to wait in line longer standing than wait sitting down. This slightly confuses me.

On the coffee end, as part of our Straus Barista milk project, we’ve been getting a few orders everyday for the lattes and cappuccinos with Straus added ($.25 extra). It hasn’t been a ton of orders, but those who have done so, really appreciate and love the product. One lady even did an add-on for her drip coffee. It was never a doubt in my mind, the end result is superior and I don’t think keeping it in stock has been much of an issue. Storage on the other hand is the kryptonite to all restaurants.

I’m proud of all the staff here because they were thrust in the fire and they’ve responded unbelievably and positively. We were also very sad to see one of our initial front of staffers, Grace, go. You don’t meet many people who work this job with a better attitude, but she had to move temporarily for urgent matters. So this is my little way of appreciating her work ethic and positivity. You can be as smart or as talented as you want, but will, work ethic and attitude wins out almost all the time.

I think I’ve jumped into the Barista line 4-5 times the last few days which while fun – is madness. Foaming soy milk infuriates me and good latte art still slightly eludes me. I can pull some pretty nice even shots, but I am crowning myself the prince of drip here only because I’ve been psycho about it for the last 2 years – maybe not jimseven.com crazy, but pretty much close to there. So consider yourself blessed if you see me on drip, you’re in good hands.

Alright, enough writing, back to work.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-09-27T10:18:00.001-07:00

It’s about m#$@f$%$ing time. We passed our final inspection. Time to get it on.

The Backbone of the Latte – A Study and Experiment into Exploring the Foundation of Milk with Espresso

2010-09-26T23:40:00.001-07:00

For the last month or so, I’ve been speaking a lot with Straus milk and their Barista milk product. Without being prompted in any way, I can honestly say that I’ve always been aware that Straus makes a superior dairy product when compared to most of what’s available in the market. Sadly, some decisions as chef partner are more about value, sustainable costs and customer willingness to pay more for what is already perceived to be a high end/cost latte. For a while, I went on accepting that this was just a matter of fate.

After sitting down with Straus and meeting Anna Kharbas (great twitter name: @MilkMistress), we started to try to develop a trial program of sorts to highlight what seems to be overlooked in milk based espresso drinks: the milk. There are essentially two determining factors for realizing the full capacity and potential for milk in these drinks (commonly the cappuccino and the latte). They are:

1. Temperature

For many believers in raw milk and kitchen science – heating and pasteurization process are argued to be the destroyer of the truer flavors of milk. Much mass produced milk is blindly flash-heated to a temperature level where subtle flavors and richness have disintegrated. People who normally desire burning hot lattes and cappuccinos do not understand that they are robbing themselves of valuable flavor. The steamed milk temperature for these drinks should not hover above 140F degrees (significantly lower in the case of a cappuccino). Don’t be a fool, a piping hot latte is wrong.

2. Milk Quality

It’s simple – better cow, better practices/process, better milk solid/fat all equates to a more flavorful milk. If you put different milks side by side, you can tell the difference. It’s not rocket science and its definitively easier than the Pepsi Challenge.

For those that do not realize this, milk makes up 85% of your latte and about 66% of your cappuccino. If you were to rationalize this into a cooking thought – try to imagine a soup that is 85% meat stock. I’m sure the quality, intensity and depth of that meat stock directly and drastically influences the final quality of that soup. Now apply that relationship to milk and you have a good argument for milk as being the backbone of a latte.

Having identified the necessity for high quality milk, we still weren’t sure how we could offer a better product without loading our ideals onto a customer’s wallet. After working out the logistics (fridge capacity, ordering, pricing), we felt that the best way was to enable customers to decipher the difference in quality themselves. We will offer Straus milk as a .25 cent optional add-on for our cappuccino and latte menu for a 2-3 month trial period. This way, we could give the customers the ability to make up their own minds and judgments about the differences in milks in their drink. And while customers are deciding, we will watch and evaluate carefully as to how much they react to their latte experience with Straus Barista milk. During this time, Straus has decided to also work with us and offer us a modest rebate as we try to intelligently log our coffee issues/experiences that we will encounter with Straus Barista milk. I will be feeding readers with an update from time to time on our little Barista milk experiment.

Here is a link and release from Straus on the program.

Oh yeah, if you didn’t catch it, our little project was featured a few days ago on Chow.com. Read it here.

For the real masters of talking coffee shop, I’d read: www.jimseven.com, blog.terroircoffee.com, http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/blog, http://www.coffeegeek.com/.

Officially Announcing… The Waiting Game.

2010-09-16T19:06:00.001-07:00

A mini dessert preview from Maison Mitchell.

Over last weekend, we ran soft openings for friends and family to introduce ourselves to those who have supported us over time. During this time, we got a chance to really run tests on staff, equipment and basic logistics for our space. And from there, we received different sets of feedback and important pieces of criticism to really help us improve for our opening. For the most part, things ran relatively smoothly if you discount the fact that all food disappeared in less than 3 hours on Sunday night’s service. On that end, it was pure madness.

Here are some of the more notable opinions, observations and highlights this weekend in regards to our soft opening:

- The most important thing that I will always heed is food service issues with seasoning and temperature. Both were slightly off in some of the dishes that went out due to lack of focus from the kitchen. Not particularly excusable – especially when you considered that certain scores hovering 7.5 could have easily been 8-8.5 with a simple adjustment. A simple Sleight (or Salt) of Hand is all that is needed sometimes. Nice to know, my super cheesy jokes are still alive even though I’ve disappeared for 3 weeks…

- I am putting salt containers on tables. Ugh. I’ve conceded that we are cafe/restaurant and fine dining controls are not in place for me to say “how I season this is how you should eat it.” I don’t think I have the technical tools for that kind of arrogance/confidence – yet.

- The worst comments are the ones that project and grade on personal preferences for how and what menus should look like. It’s okay to tell restaurants that you wish there were more options. I appreciate those comments and take them to heart. But to score actual food based on the lack of a specific preference and option is fairly self-righteous. I’m not sure I’ll barrel into a restaurant ever and complain that there wasn’t a wild boar option. It would be a better and a fairer world for people to judge food, art, and people on just their own merits and not our perceived standards for them.

- On a separate note, is it a double standard to go to a regular restaurant and expect a vegetarian or vegan option, but not the same in a vegetarian restaurant? I’m just curious.

- What’s even more egregious – having superficial issues with the direction of plating (completely unrelated to the flavor or food). It’s basically saying, “hey I like how you drew that picture, but could you paint it in the colors that I want?” Or how about, “hey I like you, but can you wear different clothing the next time I see you.”

- The oddest comment was “use organic produce” as a way to improve our food. It was probably a lack of a sign to point out how we source our food, but we are 100% organic local sustainable farm to table with every facet of produce we buy. Meat-wise we source from certified humane California farms such as Llano Seco, Petaluma Poultry and Pacific Pastures. There will be a sign, but we didn’t feel a need to write it all over the menu. If I started naming every farm for each item, the menu might read like Moby Dick and I might as well be cooking in San Francisco circa late 1990’s. Feel free to ask me or staff where everything comes from though, I’d be happy to tell you. Or you can just watch me run around like an idiot at the farmer’s markets in San Rafael or San Francisco as satisfying proof.

- I totally fucked up one of the dinner plates due to improper temperatures for the protein coming out of my CVAP oven. It was all my fault – me, myself and I. I immediately cancelled all table orders and pulled it for refund. It was my call and I did not want to serve the item half assed. I apologize to those that did not get it after ordering. Fail on my part. Cooking can be unbelievably humbling sometimes.

- The San Francisco Building Department is not on your side. We’re ready to go here, but we’re officially playing the waiting game for our final inspections to get done. Part of the issue lies with horrendous contractors that worked on the building project prior to us (and our own contractors) stepping into the space. It’s cost us a ton of money, time and problems as a result. We’re not happy, but sometimes this is the hand that you get dealt. Crying about it won’t get shit done faster.

- Dessert tasting is happening right now as evident in the picture above. If you don’t know Gabriel Mitchell (his brand, Maison Mitchell) is our inaugural Summit Dessert Program Chef. Gabriel boasts a ridiculous resume spanning city to city and was most recently, was the pastry chef at Zinnia.

- The menu we have for the opening is not the final size that we’d like it to be but I felt it more important that lock down a good opening menu and then add on items as we move forward and push to do more. Having pastries, lunch, dinner and a dessert program designed or coordinated has natural limitations and I never imagine the assortment of different things I’d have to do and be involved with when I started. It feels like a intricate balancing act or bee dance of some sort. First special on menu might be a roasted chicken sandwich with a black garlic aioli – that and I’m working out some fresh fruit pickles.

- Alongside with the food, I’ve been working through to plan out a good beer program here with my bar manager Rosie and consultant Alex Fox. We’re excited for what we are planning, but I’m at crack-addict desperate with trying to get some Russian River or Moonlight up in here. Help.

- The best thing about cooking and prepping on the line again are the little cuts, burns and citrus/salt that sting them. It sounds painful, but I’m not sure there’s anything out there that makes you feel more alive. Pain is a funny memory sensation in a kitchen.

“Many happy returns, Mr. Wayne.”

- Hopefully, my next blog will introduce a new program that we are trying to experiment with Straus’ Barista milk. We really want to offer latte/cappuccino lovers a higher end alternative for to highlight all the great flavor profiles affected by milk quality in those drinks. There is really a science and a positive end result from the quality of milk utilized.

-I’m crossing my fingers and getting my rest right now. Let’s hope this waiting game ends soon.

Anger, anxiety and hope

2010-08-23T19:58:00.001-07:00

We are very close now to our official opening date and things are starting to round to form. Thankfully the most recent delays have been a matter of days and not months – to that extent, I feel relatively blessed. It doesn’t make it any easier considering that we are balancing a hired staff which have been scheduled for intensive training. With all our dates and deadlines in mind, here is some of the more interesting tidbits over the last few weeks to tide you over until I have concrete news.

The Front of House Interview Process:

I think one of the hardest things to do is to gauge the capability or personality of a person and correlate that with work ethic during a package of two 30 minutes interviews. With that said, we weeded out 40 or so resumes from a pool of 200+ for front of house and conducted initial interviews. We then conducted second interviews after cutting that number by more than half.

During the round of second interviews (which I was one of two people asking questions), I wanted to create questions that would measure a few basic things: quickness when processing information, poise, intelligence, decision-making, creativity and personality. I felt that out of all the questions we posed, the one question that seemed to catch people off guard the most was this:

“In Japan, there is a coffee cafe where you order for the person waiting in line behind directly behind and subsequently the person in front orders for you. Given this were true, what would you order for the person behind you and what would you expect from the person in front?”

Here are some statistics:

-The most basic response for ordering for the person behind: Americano and Drip.

-The most basic response for a person ordering for you: Latte and Drip.

-# of responses that were considered “great”: 2 – one of which was Americano, but contained a perfectly laid out argument as to why an Americano would technically be the right drink for most people. The other was practical and straightforward, “ I would just ask them.” Only 1 person thought to say that.

Here are some other statistics on the rest of the FOH interview process:

-There are at least 4 employees from Top 20 Universities/Ivy Leagues in our hiring group.

-We have artists, a successful product designer, a former MIT Toy Lab manager, a coffee production major, fashion designers, a hyphy hip-hop DJ and much more.

-There is a dead-ringer for Carey Mulligan in An Education and there is another employee that looks like a hybrid of Charlie Sheen’s brunette gf in Major League II fused with Lizzy Caplan from True Blood/Hot Tub Time Machine. Seriously.

Inspectors, Vendors and the SF Metermaids

Not friends of mine.

Don’t be afraid to hurt a vendor’s feelings, hurting your business model and or budget is worse.

One of the inspectors tells us that we can paint a surface with color like black or brown, then after the surface is painted granite (lighter than a dark gray definitely) he tells us that it might be too dark, but apparently there isn’t a definitive rule or anything.

A meter maid blatantly makes up an arbitrary ticket about me parking for more than two hours from 10:30AM to 1:11PM. Too bad the spot was still street cleaning before 11AM (which, even if I was there, would more likely prompt a street cleaning ticket) and many witnesses put me as arriving here well past 11:15. Seriously, if you’re going to make stuff up and ticket me, at least pick something more plausible.

Anything But Cooking

At this point, I’ve been doing everything but cooking to get ready for our opening. Oddly enough, there has been a lot of different aspects/skills/information that I acquired in my life that have all of a sudden become relevant again. Some of those include utilizing my many years of experience in painting (summers spent working for dad’s contracting company), drawing mechanical diagrams in CAD for different items that we want to build and engineer (former mechanical engineering major), and knowledge acquired from studying geeky books and blogs on technical exploration of coffee/food. It’s very Slumdog Millionaire.

For some reason, I recently recalled a brief conversation I had with Melissa Perello a few weeks prior to her opening Frances. When we were talking, I asked her if she had her menu and such all planned out and ready to go, to which, she said something to the effect, “I’m not sure, I haven’t even had time to think about it yet.” It struck me as a little odd and I thought Melissa was just being modest because I always envisioned that the menu would be the first thing to happen, but fast forward 10+ months and I think I get it. Melissa may have only been partially joking, but its really not that off base. Cooking is the last thing that happens.

The truth is at this point, there are three basic mantras that as a chef-owner, I’ve come to grips with and understood:

1. If you don’t get it done, then nobody else will. You are the planner, the executer and the backup plan.

2. Beg, borrow and steal – it takes a “I’ll do anything and everything” mentality to get through the madness.

3. Don’t let anyone outwork you.

Hope

We hope great things out of our new dessert chef. It’s official, our dessert concept is pretty much set for round 1. We’re excited. Announcement coming soon.

We’re also excited to be featuring Jared Nash as our inhouse pastry vendor. His line of goodies will fall under the name NashBaker Pastries. We really feel confident that we can provide a legitimately delicious match for your Red Blossom tea and Blue Bottle coffee.

Here’s hoping my next blog is an official open date announcement and a welcome message. Oh yeah, final inspections are this week.

The Summit Dessert Program – Roll Call

2010-08-13T12:30:00.001-07:00

For the last couple of months, I have been playing around with the idea of trying something unique for our dessert program at The Summit. I had considered all of the following options: 1) taking on that piece of the menu myself in a limited state, 2) hiring a pastry chef and 3) outsourcing the items made. I liked the control aspect for all three of the items, but I hated the time commitment for 1) and I worried about the payroll/motivation aspect of 2) and questioned the quality/creativity issues with 3). Since then, I started to develop an idea that I am now trying to install into our new space.

One of the primary philosophies and themes of The Summit revolves around the general premise that we want to be an incubator space and meeting point for the creation of ideas – a concept that is depicted with one of our signature campaign posters with our “MM” (four even pointed mountain tops) logo and a light bulb. And, in this spirit of incubation and creation, I started playing with the possibility of having an incubated dessert program.

At first I thought the idea was fairly interesting, but I wasn’t sure how we’d exactly fit the bill in terms of logistics. Sometimes ideas are sexier in a raw and primal state, but there is always the potential of a pitfall when we need to bring them to fruition. I set out to logically create a structure for how we would work out this system and began to find ways to make the concept an appealing one to serious pastry/dessert chefs. Ideally, a rotating/incubator dessert chef program offers the ability to 1) showcase otherwise unknown talents of pastry chefs who may or may not be interested in starting/drawing attention to their own new/existing ventures, 2) generate a buzz and devoted interest into a commonly overlooked part of the meal experience and 3) enable The Summit to be a catalyst for a unique and evolving dessert program.

Here are a few of the rough and unfinished details for how I envision our dessert program:

1. Pastry/dessert chefs will commit to create their signature desserts and serve them in our space for 3-4 months at a time.

2. During this time, they will have creative control for what they serve and how much they would charge.

3. The Summit would exclusively feature and serve their desserts after dinner service for all night shifts that go past 12 AM. Desserts can and likely will also be served throughout dinner service.

4. One of the guidelines is that The Summit expects that the production of all desserts adheres to the California Code of local/sustainable whenever possible.

5. The dessert chef will have space, storage, use of facility and access to accomplish all aspects of making/prepping their desserts.

6. To properly launch each dessert program, The Summit will likely hold a initial introductory launch party for the new "tenant."

Of course there will be more details and specified conditions to be worked out for each new chef, but I'd like to present the basic idea and spread the word to all interested pastry chefs (currently working in a restaurant space or not) who might want to branch out or feature their work in a different arena or neighborhood. While this model may seem a bit more unusual (and hopefully intriguing) than hiring a dessert chef, I am also cautious about its sustainability in the long run. If successful, I believe this could be exciting and rewarding to the right dessert chef and to the dining public.

So, now that you’ve heard my thoughts on the matter, I guess I’d have to say that this is the official roll call. All interested parties can contact me at eddie@thesummit-sf.com. I would be happy to provide answers, timelines and more specifics.

On and on and on and on…

2010-07-21T11:10:00.001-07:00

Today, I am in a much better disposition than yesterday.

It’s funny how monumental some of the battles seem when you try to figure out how pieces will fit and how things will work out, but how tiny, simple and elegant the solution normally ends up being. And so went the case of resolving out the majority of our equipment issues.

To those with the restaurant entrepreneurial spirit, here is a warning. Don’t bother trying to get a loan from a bank. It’s relatively pointless especially considering the 18% interest you may have to swallow. From what I understand of financial institutions right now in association with restaurant loans – a majority of them require that you have been in business for 5 years or more. In the world of the restaurant, if you have been in business 5 years or more, I would imagine that you might not want to borrow the cash (enjoyed success) or you shouldn’t borrow the cash (struggling restaurant in debt).

Yes, restaurants are a bad case for loans, (if the 80% failure within 2 years still stands), but I’m not sure the loans are approached at the proper vetting or even the basic consideration. I’m not sure why there isn’t a short term approachable equipment loan (considering equipment has tangible value even over time) for restaurants. There are risks, but I’m not sure those risks are necessarily more than the risks of renting out a car necessarily.

Now that my major headache is resolved, here are some tidbits:

- We’re trying to finish inspections this week and next, so if everything goes according to plan, we’re moving fast out of the gate.

- The interview process can be a bitch… the complexion can change from good to bad in a matter of hours. You can be cruising in the morning from good interview to good interview and then hit a bump and trickle down a shitty slope.

- “I don’t care” is not a word that should ever be used in an interview. You should always care.

- Someone came into an interview telling me they were already starting at a new restaurant for Bruce Hill’s (well respected chef in this city) Zero Zero this week. I asked him why he was here and he simply said he was “looking for the best money available.” My response: “money commensurates with the quality of the cook.” I should have told him that his hourly rate just dropped $4 an hour when he opened his mouth.

- Interviewed a girl for a front-of-house position that’s kind of a dead ringer for Carey Mulligan in An Education. Honestly, one of the smartest, charming and well spoken interviews I’ve ever been a part of. What was even more impressive was that her first interview was very good, but her second was even better. Now that, my friends, is called bringing an A game.

- One of the most annoying but important things in getting this business going is really nickel and diming each decision we make. Costs compound and what may seem like a bunch of harmless bar rags here or there, end up becoming the difference of a few thousand dollars in a year. So yes, nickel and dime everything and everyone. It absolutely matters.

- We just got our tabletop in and it’s in theme of the bar as well except it’s got a very intricate cross pattern design. In the scheme of naming different areas and sections of our space – for some reason, the guys wanted to name our table “Tron.”

- I’m doing some test runs for our food receive and delivery since I happen to be cooking an event this weekend. Today, I got my first delivery from one of the farms we plan to source a lot from: Full Belly. Check out the amazing Sun Golds… so sweet.

- In terms of schedule management and hiring, we’ve been really scraping our minds around what is really necessary. When you open, you need a lot of hands on deck, which means you will likely have to over-hire to start, but after 2-3 months people become comfortable with their roles and expected workload, so your staff doesn’t need as much help. It’s a very sensitive point because payroll is the ultimate cost when it comes to San Francisco restaurants.

- More stuff coming later in the week, including some juicy reveals. Oh yeah, we got lucky and ended up having a smart and devoted intern, named Laura, help us with steering this crazy ship a little bit. She’s blogging about her adventures and or our misadventures on the Summit wordpress blog, seen here. You can also follow her at twitter account: FoodiesBooty.

Another Week Closer…

2010-07-13T11:11:00.001-07:00

It was a hectic but unbelievable week for The Summit project. After a few weeks of tough breaks with construction and planning delays, we seemed to have finally gotten in the right direction and flow with getting everything ready to go. I haven’t been specific with updates recently, but here’s a piece by piece review of all the shit that’s been going down.

-Thank you ABC for being attentive, responsive and amazingly cooperative for getting our license seemingly in line with our expected dates. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about a government licensing agency and I was overwhelmingly surprised to feel so positive about this one.

-We are narrowing down our equipment and we finally got all the final drawing edits completed and ready to go a week and a half ago. Despite a 2 week delay, things got back on track.

-I will tell you that I have not had a good experience with equipment vendors, I do not understand how people can possibly be so irresponsible with responding and getting back to perspective clients in good time. Is it me or does it feel like I have to spend most of the work in order for me to give people money? It makes saying “no” to some of the bids very easy.

-The woodwork for our bar construction is nearing completion and it is looking quite snazzy, here is a Hot Food Porn exclusive sneak peek at part of our end section:

-The Summit logos has been unveiled and we were all very smitten with how everything is looking. I’m glad they are done because its beginning to get annoying to live without a business card. I never once thought that was ever important until people kept asking me for one. Here is another sneak peek of one of posters from our first series of designs. As you can see, we are focused on the dual “MM” as the primary design for our logo series. As our designer put it, it exemplifies a mutual meeting point and joining of ideas, which happens to be one of the main objectives/end-results of a summit.

-Figuring out the right plates and flatware is exhausting. Between my partner and myself, I think we must have spent an hour contemplating the merits of creative visual output versus efficiency on the floor. We are leaning on contemporary modern, but fairly aggressive. The plate you see is one of conceptual menu dishes: wild mushroom in vadouvan: butter bolete and chanterelle mushrooms, baby potato medley and chioggia beets. Sneak peeks galore:

-Dear industry, a job resume is important. Please learn to write one. Please. We are looking for line cooks. Got some resumes in, but looking for more. Email: jobs@thesummit-sf.com for more info!

-I have seen some of the most horrendous resumes during from our job posting. Some of which have contained more intimate information than the Personals section on Craig’s List. Please, sunset walks on the beach won’t help you at your job.

-We are currently working out some unique plans for our dessert service, hopefully we can approach it in a very fresh way and offer an interesting approach to it. Will have more on that as we get into talks with other interested parties.

-Some of the themes and ideas we’ve lived by and considered at every juncture of this project is: craftsmanship, curatorship, local sourcing, and the creation of a sustainable high concept – low cost model as supposed to the saturated “high (cost) low (concept)” market in San Francisco. I’m sorry to disappoint, but burgers, fried chicken and pizza (as much as I honestly love them) do not currently exist in our menu.

-We’ve begun to have meetings on setting up the art component to our space. A lot of that will go through a series of think-tank sessions and an approach not unlike that of an actual gallery. It’s fairly intense.

-Oh yeah, in some weird world of ours, we ended up with a fantastic intern that has been following and observing our opening process. Her name is Laura and part of her duties include blogging on her experiences. Her update will probably end up on Desi’s Summit blog – coming soon.

-We’ve started identifying farms and vendors that we want to work with and I am currently in the process of picking and choosing them. It really feels like Christmas during this process and it is one of the most creatively energizing and rewarding tasks throughout our project. Once we get started, we will definitely be detailing our sourcing for our produce.

More stuff to report later this week…

Smoked Salmon Flavored Vodka, um… yeah

2010-06-30T16:11:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, I happened to listen in on a conversation at the market about someone’s fairly ridiculous suggestion for creating some sort of weird meat/bourbon/breakfast infused cocktail. I’m also skeptical that other than pure alcoholics, who would want to start their day with a sausage and egg cocktail? And then yesterday, I saw this article on boston.com detailing how there is a smoked salmon vodka coming from Alaska.

Honestly, I’m torn. Part of me says the exploration of flavor is exciting in the right doses and for the proper purposes. I am very principled when it comes to being open and trying new things, so I am extremely open to progressive combinations. I really like savory, refreshing and adventurous cocktails (which by the way, will be featured at CUESA’s July 7th Savory Cocktail event. Free plug for a cool sounding event, tickets here. You’re welcome.) But frankly, a lot of the weird protein shit going on with spirits sounds disgusting. I’ve had bacon infused whisky and other forms of savory cocktails, but I’ve never ventured past a small sip. And, I’m not sure there are many patrons in this world who walk into the bar looking for a bacon or salmon drink.

The idea of a protein based cocktail (as noted in the article) is most prevalent in different variations of the Bloody Mary (clam juice being the common ingredient), but I’d argue the clam juice is only a minor supporting character in the makeup of the drink. I’m not even sure if some recipes call for it.

If we were to apply some sort of cross/reverse engineering to the idea of a meat-based spirit, we should look at how spirits/alcohol are traditionally approached in cooking. I’d say that for 98% of the time, the process in which spirits/wine are used in cooking requires that most of alcohol component be cooked off – accenting the primary flavors of the spirit. I’m pretty confident veal stock in whiskey or slices of smoked salmon sitting in cold vodka aren’t particularly pleasing.

Looking beyond the gimmick, is there a measurable quality to the spirit? Much like any other flavored vodka, there is no sense in discerning any type of quality/craftsmanship to the spirit when there is no standard to its creation. Spirits seem to often be judged on being nuanced and accentuated by their creation process, subtle ingredients, complex (and elegant) flavor, skill or patience used to craft them. But, when you produce an item that doesn’t necessarily need to identify with any of those elements, is there really any value to the cocktail it produces? Is there a point to drink a meaty bourbon cocktail when the primary qualities of bourbon are robbed by the overwhelming flavor of bacon? Please don’t let this be the Zoobas-pant trend of 2010.

I think the exploration for interesting and balanced flavors makes a lot of sense whether they are savory or sweet, but I’d caution on the pretentious overindulgence and culinary masturbation associated with trying to force fit flavors like they were triangular pieces into a square hole.

Identifying Dinner Plate Intangibles

2010-06-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

One of the books on my list of too many books to read is The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. For those people who have read the book and those who can infer simple ideas from simpler book titles; the book is essentially about a pinpoint moment where an event tips you over to one reaction of another. I’m sure there is also a good deal of subsequent reaction and consequential hypothetical discovery in the book, but I wanted to write today about how there are basic tipping points that go unnoticed on dinner plates.

On Sunday night, I had a wonderful Chinese family style dinner (with only one dining companion and 4 dishes ordered) at a relatively new restaurant in my neighborhood. The meal was comforting, satisfying and unbelievably filling – at the end of which, I decided that I needed to walk the 15 block distance home to burn of part of the meal.

The restaurant was packed that night as it seems to be during almost every other night that I’ve driven by. After dinner, my roommates were curious to gather some of the details on the quality of the dinner and what I ordered specifically. After running through the names of the dishes, I started telling them about why they were good and the amount of polish that was present in each dish – a sign of a very detailed and well-trained chef.

It happened that a lot of what I was analytically describing normally seems to go unnoticed by the patron. For those who have a good understanding of dinner plates and technical elements (e.g. presentation, techniques employed, textures), they have a slightly better appreciation for what’s in front of them – and they are also able to qualify their appreciation/joy/satisfaction with the proper words. The most articulate group are normally referred to as restaurant critics… sometimes. But, for the casual and common diner, an analysis in the proper words or descriptions do not come so easily – despite the fact that they consciously know that their meal was of a superior “it-was-great” quality.

I’m not implying that people should start to psychoanalyze their meal, but I’m actually trying to put light on some of the more overlooked components of a dinner plate that seem to render a favorable verdict. Let’s call these things, dinner intangibles.

And yes, by naming them out, I guess I am making them “tangible” – I understand the contradiction. Let’s move on.

Dinner plates: Everything about the type, size, color and style of the dinner plate matters. Appropriately sized and thematically coordinated dinnerware is integral in the type of message that the food is saying. Using modern white plates to convey Southern comfort is as confusing as using Chinese blue fish plates for fine dining. Need an example of the perfect combination of restaurant theme and dinnerware? The quickest that come to mind are the Heath ceramics at Frances and the custom designs at Chicago’s L20. It’s not like those restaurants are wildly acclaimed or something…

Garnish: For many people, garnish happens to be the stupid parsley leaf sitting pointlessly in the middle of the plate. I assure you that garnish, when properly executed, should be an integral element of the meal. For many detailed chefs, it always seems to be a final element that either accentuate or add complexity to the plate. Sometimes it’s the most apparent thing on the plate and sometimes I’d argue that some garnishes are not even visible, but the primary intent for the garnish should be used in support of the actual food (with texture or flavor). Some of the more popular/trendy garnishes over the years include edible flowers, flavored oils, different salts, shaved vegetables and fried shallots/garlic. Dyed daikon roses really don’t do much for me.

Plate temperature: Plate temperature is more about function than anything else. It’s really simple: hot food in cool plates get cold fast and cold food in hot plates get warm fast. Unless you ordered a warm salad or cool steak, I’m not sure either of those things help your dining experience.

Uniform shapes and clean cuts: Nobody cares when they get a steak that sits naturally on a plate, but if you were to look at a plate of vegetables where some were cut into squares and some where cut into diagonal slices, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be dissatisfied with either the ugliness or the different textures due to uneven cooking. I’m not sure people want to see manhandled and jagged slices of meat or bread either.

Portion control: Portion control should be a part of the message or theme of the restaurant. If you put a share plate that has too much food, then it will likely not get finished – partially running cold and endlessly sitting in front of the guilty diners. If the portion appears to small compared to other plates, then you’ve let the diner psychologically demote the value of your plate and or part of your menu. A mentality that let’s them think, “only some things are worth ordering.” I think most people crave generous portions and appreciate large portions, but from the standpoint of the diner and the restaurant alike – a balance or appropriate portion (with respect to the restaurant style) is much more important. For some restaurants, I understand and appreciate that excess is the point.

Nic Cage Wants Cake.

2010-06-17T01:21:00.001-07:00

I haven’t posted anything remotely funny or retarded in a while, so I thought I’d throw this out there considering that it combines two very enjoyable things: a song related about food and Nicholas Cage being crazy:

Contractors, Concept, Contacts and Contingencies

2010-06-15T23:13:00.001-07:00

Having a newly designed space and the ability to mold your concept into said space is a blessing and a curse. For those who are not familiar with how the basic restaurant/cafe real estate model – you have two choices: a newly created space or an existing restaurant space. The advantages and disadvantages to either are pretty clear cut.

In an existing space, you have the ability to simply setup, make minor aesthetic changes and start cooking with the available set equipment. You do not need to worry about new building permits, overarching technicalities or any element of structural/building design. The negative side of that equation is the inability to create or design a space that ideal for your concept. And sometimes, you may have to end up ponying up for the actual restaurant business and also an overvalued (existing) lease linked to the space. This amount can be exorbitant at times.

If you happen to conjure the lunacy of deciding to renovate a space for restaurant use – you are looking for a world of hurt and hassle. All changes are major. There is no equipment until you buy it. You need permits to okay everything from hanging ceiling fixtures to wiping your asshole (it seems). Everything aspect of the space requires thought, design, criticism, consideration, and execution. In other words, the pain and process are burdening, but if you see it through (as we seem to get closer to doing daily), it should be very self-fulfilling process and rewarding result.

Since the Summit is of the latter method of hell, we have recently been going through our changes to existing plans and updating proper equipment and bar design components. This requires a redrawn and resubmitted plan – which after completion, will require approval. After approval, there will be new contractor work on design changes, more approval, more new changes, more approval, purchase, installation, more approval and hopefully completion. And all these steps and items require money and more money. It seems that everyday there are a set of new challenges and changes with how or what we can technically do or not do – a constantly fluctuating current.

I can see that for many people, it may seem that with a newly designed space, it might appear fairly straightforward to design something from scratch and execute the plans, but I assure you that that’s not the case. Let it be known that new spaces must go through the permitting process and approval according to new regulation – a problem that does not surface for restaurants grandfathered in existing restaurant spaces.

The changes and revolving cast of characters (contractors, vendors, designers) required to set the proper events in motion (and on schedule) are sometimes a challenge enough to keep straight with calls and emails. On top of all that, you must have contingency plans and flexibility to alter designs and make quick decisions or sacrifices as you navigate the waters of multiple permitting government agencies.

Time obviously equates to money and your timing essentially becomes your debt collector. If you are not careful with your scheduling and you happen to mismanage your timing, you end up creating your own domino effect of compounded loss and penalty. For example, if you hit stalls in revision planning, then you can’t finalize the work details with your contractor, who in turn can’t start their work on the proposed date, which in turn delays each department of the permitting process, which in turn delays your final site approval and thus delaying your opening and resulting in possible accrual of losses in your initial operating budget. Even worse, pushing other steps past their schedule seems to promise an exponential possibility for more delay for each following step.

I wish I could say that there is some form of control over issues and timing, but I can only say that most of the time there is only the perception of control. Trusting the process and luck, especially with your choice of contractors/designers, is really as important as any steps you may ultimately take in trying to put the gas to the pedal. If you can shop for the right people, please do so – but keep in mind that it may end up costing you more in the time wasted gathering estimates than allowing the appropriate and most responsible group (a lot of times, the group most attached or in-tune with this project or similar projects) to do the work. Coming from a family of contractors, the lowest estimate for a project might only give you the temporary illusion of saving money.

Along with some of the basic warnings I outlined, here are a few things I think may serve those thinking to venture to a new space or any type of construction/contractor work they may want to pursue:

- Make good decisions quickly. Do not make good decisions slowly. Do not make quick decisions.

- For everything that you plan to be on budget for in terms of time and money, add a buffer of 20% in addition of that. Or scale everything 20% down and move forward that way.

- For everyone you need to contact, contact them first by phone and if necessary by voicemail. Whether or not you’ve spoken to them on the phone, always followup with reminders by contacting them by email. Never assume detailed information is properly transmitted over phone or conversation.

- Most scenarios and decisions should be made to get ready for an opening/finish date, but make sure they will have positive ramifications for direction, success, growth or expansion in the next 2-5 years.

- Don’t rely on things to get done on time because you can only hope that they do.

- Don’t rely on any piece of information or feedback based on something you can figure out yourself. In other words, don’t trust someone to do something well that you can probably do better by yourself.

- And finally, sometimes success is not necessarily about perfect execution, but rather it can be defined by how good you are at damage control.

A Way With Words…

2010-06-09T17:57:00.001-07:00

More than ever during our build-out process, there’s been the need to articulate food and presentation in a cohesive manner in (what seems like) two lines or less. The task of compressing expression is incredibly difficult and beckons me to ask this question: can you define the make of a man in two lines or less?

The introspective answer is clearly a resounding “no”. Without selling themselves short, I’m not sure anyone could genuinely be able to express themselves in two simple sentences. Unfortunately, people (myself included) have a constant need to compartmentalize every aspect of our lives – a byproduct of a social requisite for productivity, effort and efficiency.

Defining things into neat, tiny and easily understandable packages seem to be important for many because it’s the most linear way of simplifying what is perceived as a busy or complex lifestyle; evident by the thousands of careers based on this principle alone. They even made a show about it: it’s called Mad Men.

With that said, I’ve spent a lot of time the last month concentrating on verbalizing my food and concept. It is incredibly difficult – which is why I often need outside perspective and assistance in doing so. And as much as I don’t always agree with the process, I absolutely understand its necessity. Marketing, wording, formatting, menu description and design is paramount because people desire information in the proper measurements.

There have been instances where menus have been an undeniable factor in restaurant success and failure. Wording in a menu can be the difference in customer expectations including: how much people order, what people order and how people ultimately judge their meal. A menu that reads like a book can be intimidating, tiring and confusing for diners – which can lead to a situation where the words may ultimately overwhelm the food. A menu that reads too minimalist can be too vague and uninformative – leading to improper interpretations/expectations of what is actually written versus what is actually served. The dream menu should have the perfect balance of food seduction and honest expectations, which is honestly impossible.

Keeping in line with this theme of compartmentalizing our lives with simple things and words, (apart from the discussion of menu construction) I think there is a lot of danger in the desire to approach our food with this mentality. Inherently, cooking in a basic form is simple – the French can tell you that they only require three components to make anything taste great: heat, butter and salt. However, the perception of cooking for many is often a cumbersome and complex task, whereas the simplest road to nourishment is processed and fast foods. And, if you can’t infer the relationship already, these processed items are amongst the most complicated, deliberate and chemically contrived.

While I’m no master of painting food into language (clearly not a food critic), I am an admirer of the art of written/sensory interpretation and reaction of food. It may sound odd to label something so vague and subliminal as an art form, but I think the ability to manipulate reaction and expectation should be considered as a creative process. There have also been studies in effect of food and perception of flavor via the sound of words, known as synesthesia. It intrigues me that specific wording can be met with an associated sensory perception whether that is a component of our nervous system or merely a Pavlovian reaction. In other words, is “bacon”, “butter” and “sausage” really as sexy as it sounds? Is it even better if I call it “sexy bacon”?

Hopefully, down the line at the Summit, we will find ways down the line to explore and develop some of these ideas experimentally in an interactive format lining food, words and sounds together in an provoking way.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning & “Cookbook Mixtapes”

2010-06-01T14:07:00.001-07:00

It has been a few weeks since I’ve had a chance to write much of anything, but I promise that it has not been due to lack of effort. Since the start of the new project, The Summit, I’ve been inundated with meetings and logistics that go with our preparations for opening within the expected timelines. And, because I was still completing my final few weeks at my day job, the workload for both positions soaked up any free time I normally have to write.

Today, however, reads June 1st on the calendar, which happens to coincide with the first official day that I can dedicate my primary and undivided focus to my new position – which of course, involves detailing it on this blog. As things currently stand, we are in the middle of tuning the build-out, reviewing vendors and taking all steps involved with the permitting process.

I’d say logistics takes up most of the work hours because truthfully, planning and execution is paramount. Of course, I’m not necessarily speaking from a position of experience with the process of building a new space, but thankfully I have had an career’s worth of experience with nothing but project management, planning and implementation. Throw in a degree in engineering and a contractor for a dad – and I’d say I’m not feeling too lost or overwhelmed… yet.

Despite the tangible workload and tasks required to get things running, one of the aspects of this project – which I have been desperately trying to squeezing in time for – is the creative process. With each weekly turn of the calendar and shift in the thermometer, produce steadily creeps into its most robust season; with it, creative inspiration and instinct should make the same gradual and continuously changes – a philosophy that harkens back to the most basic of cooking principles.

As almost every good chef has preached, cooking seasonally is necessary and relatively commonplace in San Francisco. Adhering to these principles is a must, but the word “principle” only denotes itself as a guideline and guarantees no sense of style or tone. To this, many chefs turn to inspiration or experience that speaks to a more personal sense of passion or desire. For me, these inspirations or experiences are the loudest when I am discovering something amazing for the first time: a resonating moment. To that effect, I feel the conglomeration of these unique experiences eventually become the foundation for what we may deem as our individual style.

Oddly enough, over the last couple of years, the best way I’ve felt to tap into this inner sanctum was through what I like calling a “cookbook mixtape.” It is literally what it sounds like. I look at my collection or I pace around a bookstore and I visualize an image of how I want to creatively express or approach something. Don’t lie to me, I know most of you did this in high school with a tape deck or a bunch of CD’s. Once I had an idea, I would pull out those specific set of books and skim through the recipes, techniques, and interpretations that each one provided. Most importantly, the primary point is to understand the basic governing philosophy behind the food and NOT to follow the recipes. I’ve found that despite how ridiculously different some books/cuisines may be, there is an internally linear relationship that you will see between them – kind of like putting D’Angelo and Feist on back to back tracks. My current mixtape can be seen in the above picture.

It might sound weird, but it’s okay if no one else gets it. Just as long as you do.

Moving Forward

2010-05-14T14:57:00.001-07:00

First of all, I would like to thank sf.eater.com for the attention and quirky hoopla that took place last week – a big part of it, is also attributed to Desi on the Summit blog. I feel blessed to have garnered the attention.

To be perfectly honest, I have no issue with making it known that I will be heading the food program at the Summit and I have been making all the steps to transition from my current job to my new responsibilities. Between all the handoff work of one job and the responsibilities and meetings of a new one – I have frankly been inundated with tasks which have left me with little time to blog, confirm and properly craft the right messages in response. Considering I had no intention of stretching out what seems to be painfully obvious, (blown cover within seconds of the eater posting I think) I made it a priority this week to work out all the mission statements, meetings and contracts that needed attention prior to making it officially known. There was no hidden agenda to be coy so I apologize if that took place.

Thankfully I live in an industry where publicity and hoopla are only false idols that can bring people to the gate, but never promises keep them in. Your food is ultimately your salvation.

In the coming months, I really hope to sincerely make the focus of this project about the food, the ingredients, the farms, the vendors, the successes and even the mistakes. I plan on using my voice, my blog and twitter to make this an open, transparent and organic process. In that mindset, I think it makes this something similar to a grassroots affair (with the aid of the internet, of course).

On a personal note, keeping the picture of me (or any for that matter) that looks like I’m on the toilet in the bathroom (actually it’s a former hospital room) is motivation enough to move the discussion to food.

Thank you all for reading and supporting me. I hope you can join me during this exciting time.

My Japan Adventure Slideshow – Part 3: Tokyo!

2010-04-30T08:57:00.001-07:00

Lost In Translation

2010-04-28T21:05:00.001-07:00

I think this is the second time I’ve tried to write this post but I may have fallen asleep due to jetlag the first time. Since Japan, a lot of friends have asked me about what I thought about the food and how different it was compared to Japanese cuisine in the US. The first thing I’d clearly like to say is that since my ramen tour, the idea of a eating my first bowl back in the US has been met with tepid enthusiasm at best. It is honestly a matter of Paradise Lost, but it is inevitable and I do believe honestly that I can still enjoy it because the spirit and comfort of ramen exists whether it’s Tomita (#1 in the world) of Japan or a stove top bag of instant Nissin.

Aside from waxing poetic about ramen, I’ve also told friends that I’ve finally clarity on the disjointed representation of Japanese cuisine in the US. Simply put, I’m not so sure that there are too many popular and established cuisines that are quite so misrepresented as Japanese cuisine is. The gap between here and there is astonishingly distant.

It’s not an issue of technique and it’s not an issue of divergent styles. The intention and structure of the restaurants and menus are not that different. First and foremost, it is a matter of resources. So much of the food in Japan is in sync with the resources and options made (easily) available that, to me, it seems that they work here without the same abundance of those conveniences (or necessities). While you can cook with the same menu and recipes, things drastically get lost in translation when the quality of your ingredients are not met with the same access or governing cultural philosophies.

The other big component lacking in the cooking here is enthusiasm and expectation. Yes, there is enthusiasm for sushi and noodles here, but without a native identity, the interest is relegated to being niche at best. Again, take ramen as an example: the Japanese approach their ramen and noodles with about 100 times more fervor than we approach pizza or burgers. They consider and treat great ramen as an elevated art form and a passion – critiquing every element with a detailed perspective. There is no food here that we have ever held in that regard and I’m sure (nothing beyond a warm adoration for pizza) has ever generated that excitement. And in that vein, such excitement constantly generates an atmosphere of growth, ambition, experimentation and achievement. What incentive does an Ippudo have to rank above mediocre in Japanese standards (cumulative ramendb score of 52) when they are constantly crowned as one of the best in the US?

I understand that we might be too big of a country with too many identities to ever reach the momentum of establishing such a culture, but if anything, I have seen how a tool with similarities to yelp (GULP) can become such a powerful asset for improving food. Of course, our yelp is still an education degree or two behind coherent and appropriate criticism.

Another Year, Another List

2010-04-27T10:35:00.001-07:00

I’m not the biggest fan of “Best” or “Top” lists. While I understand the excitement and public interest that these lists generate, I simply can’t rationalize the generalized yearning for constant gratification based on a judging system for a subject that cannot be tangibly judged. It’s not lost on me that competition, awards and recognition are all good things to have, but I’m not so sure they are core measures for the art or spirit of cooking.

First, let me put a disclaimer out there: basic human vanity and ambition is not lost on me. I will never say no to being awarded for my work and I will never work without a goal in sight. And, while I often argue the legitimacy and bias of these lists, I’m not immune to their impact or their value in the restaurant industry. They are important and they are necessary.

If you haven’t seen or heard it over the last 24 hours, Danish restaurant Noma has been crowned the #1 restaurant in San Pellegrino’s 2010 Top 50 Restaurants in the World – a hefty honor that Spanish restaurant El Bulli had seemingly handcuffed the last 4-5 years. To be honest, I’ve always been dazzled by the promise and meaning of being on that list. It is not only a dream, it is a definitive pinnacle of culinary success and for many, it is enough reason to die happy.

While I can certainly defend the importance and existence of such a list, I’m not sure I can defend its credentials, unintentional bias or ripple effect on a evolving industry. The list is unbelievably biased to Western fine dining in a time when fine dining is becoming less approachable and more difficult to maintain. I’m sure the 50 (or 100) or so restaurants on that list have no trouble drumming up business, but doesn’t it seem misleading to put out a giant list that sends such the message: “non-tasting menu need not apply.”

I know the techniques and skills grandfathered by some of these great restaurants have inspired so many in the world, but at the same time, doesn’t that subjugate creativity on some level? The El Bulli, Fat Duck and Alinea books may be the open peek to their ascension to the top of the world, but it seems that some cooks have spent more time reproducing someone else’s inspiration than redefining their own. And in that vein, a desire to be top-listed has likely lead to influxes of copycat restaurants hell-bent on attaining what they think is a clear-cut and linear fine-dining climb to the top.

While most of my example here is geared towards the Top 50 list, I tend to think that the example holds true for any list/trend. When lists and awards come with a promise of dollars and publicity, it’s hard to look away from what sometimes may just be a rat race. It’s even easier to try to get mixed up in the fray, but it seems on closer examination, isn’t it always an original that sits at the top?

My Japan Adventure Slideshow Part 2 – Kyoto!

2010-04-26T20:51:00.001-07:00

My Japan Trip Photo Album – Part 1, Sapporo!

2010-04-21T16:34:00.001-07:00

As I promised, I have got most of my photos set. All the ramen ones are being worked on separately for another purpose, but there is plenty of other good food porn photos. This is the first part of my trip, Sapporo. That way, you’ll know what the hell you are looking at. I’ll slideshow and put the rest up the next couple of days.

HFP Videos from Japan

2010-04-08T12:50:00.001-07:00

This is a video of an awesome machine in Kyoto that turns out tons of little shortcakes that have a pancake like texture with a little crisp. There are sometimes filled with vanilla custard or red bean.

These gals made fluffy Japanese pancakes and then filled them with sweet goodies of your choice. I love the costumes and the funny faces branded on the cakes. The fact that they have a special tool to make the faces is even better.

This video is from the Nishiki Market in Kyoto where the guy was grilling oysters for less than a buck a piece. These Japanese oysters don’t have much brine, but have a very nice creamy texture.

This is charcoal grilled tofu on a stick with a house made miso paste. They sold the miso paste separately as well.

This is from a street food vendor in Osaka, where we sampled a nice egg and greens (spinach and green onion, I think) Okonomiyaki.

I’m calling it ebiyaki, shrimp version of takoyaki (octopus). These little creamy balls of shrimp and veggies are also from Osaka’s street food offerings.

This is a video of the bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo. Watch as buildings disappear in seconds. I think you can also spot a Nissin ramen factory along the way.

This was taken from the middle of Kyoto station where a million people move in a million directions constantly. This was pretty busy, but I’d say it doesn’t compare to the madness of Tokyo station. I do not have a video of that, I was afraid of being trampled.

The Final Hours of Tokyo

2010-04-06T11:57:00.001-07:00

I am now wrapping up the final hours I have in Tokyo. Tonight, my friends and I will be saluting the city of cities in true fashion with some sushi and karaoke. Today was nearly a perfect final day here as I accomplished almost every one of my final objectives in the city.

We started the morning in Tsukiji and saw everything from 4 men breaking down albacore cross sections to shellfish that I did not know existed. It certainly stretched the limits of my seafood species’ knowledge and humbled my thoughts on what I or anyone might consider as “fresh”. I bought a box of small sea urchin which had been cleaned and packaged during the morning – spending all of $15 on what would normally run a tab of $40 outside of the market.

In Tsukiji, you’re either getting in someone’s way or you already are in someone’s way. It’s nuts. I wish I had that access to the seafood options on display. In a way, it struck me that if I had been given such choice, quality and access to this seafood, I think I would represent it in its simplest form: raw or lightly prepared – which from the sense of the Japanese approach to cuisine, is exactly what they do best.

From there, we went to a little coffee shop and roast company named Cafe Maple – a notable shop that has garnered features (including a reference on a NYTimes article) and acclaim for their roast and single source offerings. Their preference of delivery was french press. The barista took her time and expertly prepared a divine cup at the table almost without any sludgy sediment, normally more present with an uneven grind. In terms of quality vs. price, Maple was a bargain: a 500g bag (1.1 lbs) of award winning beans cost about 1800 yen. The Brazilian roast, which tasted of a smoky roasted almond and dark chocolate, was only 1500 yen per 500g. Score.

After that we went ramen hunting in Kiba for one of the world’s best bowls at a place called Menya Kissou. Menya Kissou is the quintessential mom and pop ramen joint. It is well known and widely established as being Tokyo’s #1 ramen place and currently sits at #2 on ramendb.com’s 2009 ratings. The line was clearly indicative of that.

From there, we visited the less popular Union Commerce district/store where kitchenware is king. The official Union Commerce store is actually a knife store that sells the most amazing collection of fine Japanese and even some high end Western knives. I myself decided to go in on a beautiful Damascus slicer that was every bit as sharp as it was beautiful. The clerk told me it was actually on sale, so I got a pretty sweet ass deal. I got exactly what I came for.

Later in the day, my friends and I split ways; they went for Temple viewing and shopping and I went back on my ramen hunt for what was currently known as the #1 ramen shop in the world. Sadly, this ridiculous shop sits near the Matsudo station in Chiba, 30-45 mins outside of Tokyo. For those that follow me on twitter, I suffered a body blow Wednesday morning when I ventured to Matsudo and found out that the ramen shop, known as Tomita, was closed on Wednesdays. I felt such an yearning to finish my trip properly that I had to go back on this Thursday. To my surprise, there was no line on a late Thursday afternoon, thus proving that even the best of the best sometimes cannot withstand the confines of a shitty location. If they were in central Tokyo, they might be 30 deep at this time. Such is restaurant life.

**UPDATED since I got home:

The night finished with some good sushi, a 10+ dollar glass of some sort of daiginjo sake (cost more than my food meal) and Tokyo karaoke – simply because you can’t go to Japan and not do karaoke. It would be against almost everything I stand for. Great trip, great last day and great times. A more official Hot Food Porn Japan photo album to follow with all the food and travel pics including my all too ridiculous ramen journey. And, I have random video of street food coming!

Greetings from the Shinkansen Bullet Train

2010-03-30T07:50:00.001-07:00

This morning, I took off from Kyoto to Tokyo courtesy of Japan’s Shinkansen aka Bullet Train. The train moves at a ridiculous velocity, makes minimal noise and rides unbelievably steady. The last 2 plus days I have been running around Kyoto in an effort to 1). see my fill of the 8,000 or so temples located there and 2). eat my fill of the region’s best offerings for ramen.

In Kyoto, I located my second ramen station on this trip, which unlike the ramen floor detailed in Sapporo, actually offers a sampling of ramen places from different Japanese regions. Located on the 10th floor of Kyoto Station building, ramen central here offers representatives from Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Tokyo. The big draw at the Kyoto alley happens to be perennial ramen critic favorite TESTSU ramen. TESTSU currently holds a place on the coveted ramendb.com’s (which is like a ramen Yelp but with intelligence, real analysis and sound credibility) Top Ten, sitting loftily at #3 with a score of 92.55. The last 90+ score awarded on a site that is frugal with anything above 80.

Also in Kyoto, I got a chance to visit some of the more popular local ramen shops. Kyoto’s regional ramen is seemingly synonymous with their identity; which is a style of ramen that is more rooted in a traditionally simpler – almost classically Chinese flavored broth and thinner straight noodles. There is a more prominent chicken stock based influence with a lot of the flavors normally utilized in Chinese based soup. At some point I’ll outline all of this ramen stuff in some way or form, but that’s a little taste of things to come for now.

Some highlights during this leg of the trip:

-Temple of the Golden Pavilion

-The start of Kyoto’s Cherry Blossom season, Cherry Blossoms in the Imperial Palace Kyoto Garden

-Nishiki Food Market

-Arashiyama Neighborhood

-Late night Takoyaki from a dude in a van

-Discovering the #2 rated ramen restaurant in Kyoto is less than 2 minutes from our Ryokan hotel

Here is a sampling of pics I will have to setup an upload at some point and put everything online for viewing, but here is some stuff:

Greetings from Osaka

2010-03-25T23:55:00.001-07:00

I’m hanging out at a Doutor cafe with a ice coffee, while stealing someone’s internet signal from somewhere. Since my friends are late arriving from Tokyo, I thought I’d do a little due diligence and offer everyone an update.

I finished my leg of Sapporo this morning and took a 8:30AM plane to Osaka. While stumbling in the city, I quickly found my way to the Shinbaishi shopping district where there is literally no end to the stores and malls that surround this crazy street. It is made up of store after store after store – stretching miles. Personally, I’m rather sick of shopping for nothing, though I did stumble into the textile district and found a lacquer/wood worker store. I scooped up a few gorgeous red and black lacquered tasting/cooking spoons –not very exciting.

In Sapporo, I had 4 mind numbing bowls of ramen in less than 24 hours, but since getting here to Osaka, I decided to give a little place called Iga Bungadou Ramen a try, but it was disappointing. I’m glad I didn’t actually bring the nice camera to the place considering the ramen wasn’t particularly special – still good, but considering how the game has been raised in Sapporo – my expectations are well beyond that (at least in Japan). I’m really hoping the ramen part of the trip didn’t peak at night one.

Speaking of peaking, the hotel I stayed at in the Susukino district of Sapporo happened to be located right at the part where the Soapland shops were prominent – namely the red light district. Lucky for me, I judge international Asian trips by three very basic factors, 1). how good the food was 2). did I get food poisoned and 3). did I contract a STD. Two out of three makes for a successful trip on a basic level, but I aim for the perfect score most of the time.

I also ate a breaded shrimp burger and some chicken nuggets from Lotteria. They seriously know how to fry their shit in Japan. Those nuggets were mighty tasty – fast food or not. Nobody thinks for a second that I am not Japanese until I start busting out the “say it slower” or “no Japanese.” But the magic words are still basically, “hai”, “domo”, “arigatou” and “mushi mushi”. Gets it done almost every time.

I have a habit of burrowing into random izakayas and shops in alleyways. As long as it smells like charcoal and has barstool customers, I’m there. I found some badass charred mutton last night. It was so good with some charred savoy cabbage on the side. The chef cooked it over a towering 6 ft. blaze of fire on top of his net grill. Medium in the middle, lightly smoky on the outside. Perfect.

I’ll have some amazing food pics soon, but here is a itty bitty recap of Osaka in Palm Pre pictures and my video of the live Fugu I found in Osaka while wandering:

Hot Food Porn Meets Godzilla – A Precursor

2010-03-22T16:47:00.001-07:00

As I promised on twitter, I will write often when I have downtime. It just so happens that I ended up in San Jose Airport 4 hours too early for my flight which means I get to sit in a desolate corner – roughly 100 yards from any visible human being. My $4.10 Illy ice latte helps, but barely. I could play hide and seek here – with myself.

For those that do not know, I chose vacationing in Japan over France. This marks the first trip I’ve had without any singular purpose other than exploration and vacation. There is no family reunion, no wedding, no event, no work and more importantly no timed schedule. The last time I had a trip like this, it was about 4-5 years ago when I went to San Francisco – a trip that sealed one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself.

For my trip in Japan, I will be visiting Sapporo, Osaka, Kyoto, a Bed Breakfast farm outside of northern Tokyo and finally Tokyo. I plan on discovering and documenting lots great ramen, inhaling all types of meat on a stick, and simply soaking in Japan’s culinary philosophy. Really, the best part about seeing a different country is learning the cultural and culinary rhythm of its people. The process and method in which a society approaches food is really a keystone to their lifestyle.

If you understand how, when and why people eat the way they do, you now have a window into all of their patterns and routines. And, by doing so, it will only help us reexamine and redefine our own approaches; it’s a good way to learn about streamlining your own lifestyle via options you never knew could exist (e.g. like the discovery of the dining schedule of the French).

One of the most interesting and symbiotic aspects of Japanese cuisine is the ability to fuse meticulous and efficiently processed/packaged food culture alongside a fundamentally spiritual approach for ingredients. I’m always curious about how conflicting it is to have such an accepting and open approach to processed items when there is an overarching philosophy to treat ingredients/animals with complete respect and intention of achieving peak flavor.

Is there a clear cut separation between those cognizant of a “buyer beware” regarding processed foods and those that do not? Or is this a matter of rural tradition preservation versus the “necessary” conveniences of modern metropolis?

Anyhoot, enough with the in-depth discussion, in a day or so, I will be happily snapping pictures and enjoying street food on the other side of the world. Oh, and for some reason, the ladies love Green Tea KitKats. They tell me that they like me a bunch, but they’d like me a whole lot more with Green Tea KitKats. There’s a lesson to the men of San Francisco, beer goggles not necessary when you’re rocking green tea and chocolate crispiness.

Catch you on the flip side.

Musings and Amusings

2010-03-12T09:38:00.001-08:00

-I turned 28 this week.

-Friend, chef and 4505 Meats man, Ryan Farr paid me one of the best complements I’ve received in a while: “you’re pretty well put together for 28.”

-I don’t review restaurants ever, but I do want you to know that my dinner at Wexler’s for my birthday was fantastic. That and working your balls off in a kitchen is better than Jenny Craig; see chef Charlie and sous chef Joe for a clear visual explanation.

-28 / 2 + 7 = 21, damn, I broke the drinking age limit.

-Celebrating 3 years in San Francisco soon and to this day, I have not gone to a strip club in this city. Sometimes I amaze myself.

-March 14 is closing in, dammit. It’s suddenly become the loneliest day of the year. I want to see Hallmark try to market this date with a card or a Lifetime network special.

-My day job, side/pet projects, and everything else has been pure craziness. I’m trying Ringo, I’m trying.

-In case, I haven’t said it like a million times, I am going to Japan. I will be going with a couple of friends, one of whom is a professional photographer. That means I get to post sweet ass pictures instead of the amateur shit I throw on week to week. I know, I am weaksauce with that kind of stuff.

-Japan is the first vacation that is not veiled by some sort of occasion (family/friends gathering, wedding, other) that I have had in 2 years. And before that vacation, it was 4 years ago – when I decided to visit San Francisco on whim. The rest is history.

-I think I’m seriously making a run at trying to make as many fun and esoteric sandwiches as I possibly can.

-Beef on Weck, baby. There is something beautiful about a sandwich that can offer equal appreciation for both the meat and the bun. The bread/bun is normally like the Paul Rudd of good sandwiches.

-Current coffee on drip: Blue Bottle Cauca Tierradentro.

-I enjoyed reading the NYTimes article on the emergence of new coffee powerhouses 2 years after it happened.

-I don’t get why people who drive in California do not know the importance of putting up a thank you wave for the people that let them into their lane. Just stick your damn right hand up.

-I love other people’s interest in food or even their interest in “my” food, but seriously I can’t answer the question, “what’s your signature dish?” Signatures are designed by customer and critical perception – not most chefs. Basically, if you asked Barry Sanders, “What’s your favorite touchdown?” His response might be exactly the same as mine: “The next one.”

-I was at Philz coffee twice this week because of circumstance and not choice. I’m personally a Coffeebar rat – though I abide by the unspoken under 2 hour rule (in case Luigi is reading). I had the Silken Splendor… twice.

-Visavis, here is a man’s (or just my own) natural and honest digression process: Silken Splendor…sounds like Silk Spectre… visual image of Malin Ackerman … visual image of latex suits … reminds me of debate of Malin Ackerman vs. Carla Gugino … Carla Gugino hands down … Carla Gugino’s perfection in Sin City … brain = mush.

-I laugh and talk to myself way too much for someone that doesn’t wander the Tenderloin on something…

-It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had the Thai action at Lers Ros. I’m really starting to feel the need and desire for it. Let me share my sentiments with a video depiction:

-I once thought I had a chance to meet Jennifer Beals while working at Orson, I’m not sure if she was there at some point, but I definitely didn’t meet her. The chefs thought it was randomly funny that 1). knew who she was and 2). thought she was still pretty hot. I know she’s in her 40’s, but I don’t see much wrong here:

Do you?

-The words “new American” make me feel dirty and cliche. I hate using it sometimes, but people don’t get it when I try to tell them what modern Western interpretation and progressive seasonal means. This is an example of how a conversation has gone:

Q: So what do you cook?

A: Besides cats, dogs and furry hamsters?

Q: No, I mean what kind of cuisine? What’s your style?

A: Well it’s not specific to region really, its a modern seasonal approach and progressive technical interpretations of mainly Western based cuisine in a sense. I’m not a big chemicals guy though…

Q: …

A: Umm, yea, like…ummm…. “new American”

Q: Oh so, like its like new burgers and fancy mac-and-cheese?

A: No.

Q: Oh, so what’s your signature or favorite dish?

A: <sigh>…

-My friend Cole and I were talking the other day about intentions, ambitions and pet projects and such. Along those lines, he put out a simple caveat that we both very much agree on:

(paraphrased)

Limitations are more likely to be self-imposed and unhappy byproducts of jaded experiences or skepticism. Sometimes being oblivious or ignorant to those limitations can be a great asset for success… or complete failure due to inexperience.

(paraphrased to you)

Take a look around, there’s always some dumb asshole that you can’t believe is your boss/superior. That dumb asshole could be you.

-Every time I see gratuitous nudity in a serious movie, I try to pay attention to the actress’ face. It’s what I like to call “the Eva Mendes, Training Day effect.”

-Jason Bourne, I mean, Matt Damon is a badass. Wicked haaaahhhddd.

-The Boston accent is quite possibly the least sexiest thing on the face of this planet. It can turn a really gorgeous woman into a gorgeous woman with a possible hint of brain damage. On the other end, total sucker for British, French and Dutch accents.

-It’s really weird to see Callum Blue from Secret Diary of a Call Girl as General Zod on Smallville. It’s really fucking up my world when I catch a rerun with him in Secret Diary. Weird.

-Why do I watch Secret Diary of a Call Girl? Bambi, that’s why.

-Why do I watch Smallville? ~~I’m closet former comic dork, that’s why.~~ I mean, Lois Lane, that’s why.

-It’s been a few weeks since I last had dim sum – an unprecedented streak.

-Have you had an experience where you went back to a place and immediately realized you perfectly ordered almost all the wrong items the first time, but everything else on the menu was fantastic the next 3 times? It just happened to me the other day. One-time review critics, take note.

-Why did I go back the second time? Because they had one signature item worth going back for – as deemed by me, myself and I.

Landscapes Shifting in SF Online Food Industry Media?

2010-03-02T15:37:00.001-08:00

On Sunday, I had a chance to dine with a good friend and a well informed SF food industry member. To whom, I posed the question: would you ever be interested in the Eater SF position? The answer was no, but it was a response that was more based on circumstance and current disposition rather than an issue of desirability. So, the conversation continued and we started to debate the presence and influence of the newly minted Chronicle insider versus the chief position over at Eater SF (and National). Basically, all things being equal – leaving job satisfaction, environment and money out of any speculation (real reasons for leaving any position; I am certainly not speculating or commenting on Paolo Lucchesi’s choice), which position holds more gravity for the current and future media presence in the SF food industry?

While many prominent print papers have been forced into near bankruptcy, online media and journalism has blossomed and made its way into mainstream relevance. Mockery and dismissal of online journalism is antiquated and asinine at this point. For many print publications, it has essentially become a situation where the choice has been conformity or extinction.

While the Chronicle has enjoyed its ownership of being the Bay Area gateway for professional restaurant opinion, it has not been a relevant tunnel for industry information, commentary or controversy. If anything, Eater SF has been the primary focus of restaurant fodder and holds a much stronger position in day-to-day industry presence. Understandably, this move (Paolo’s hire) by the Chronicle makes a lot of sense, but one would question whether the Chronicle’s position as San Francisco’s print press stalwart limits their ability to provide some of the more sensational, non-sequitor and free form reporting without an editorial leash – something that the chief editor might happen to enjoy at Eater. But then again, the Chronicle’s pure amount of readership and perceived prestige may be too hard to pass up.

However, despite a lack in content and a true critical voice, Eater presently enjoys a clear cut advantage in their ability to provide content and industry relevance. Hospitality and culinary professionals often tune into Eater on a day-to-day basis (or multiple daily visits even) whereas the Chronicle is not a relevant daily reader beyond the occasional poignant Bauer blog entry/reviews. It is and will continue to stand as a newspaper geared to the consumer base. While things have the prospect of shifting with Paolo now in tow, I wonder if a new and enthusiastic editor at Eater SF/National would entertain the idea of pushing the boundary of the current Eater mold into expanded content – utilizing a readership that consists of more industry professionals and well-informed diners. Do you think Eater would ever have the ability to render the Chronicle any less relevant than it is today or vice versa?

I won’t dispute there are a lot of factors that may alter the perception, niche and style of the new Chronicle scoop page, but there seems to be a battle for market share on the horizon. And, if you were to take odds on who would forecast to be the more prominent industry online presence in the near future, where would you place your bet on?

Wednesday Test Kitchen Special: THE RED PASTRAMI PROJECT

2010-02-26T12:39:00.001-08:00

For a few months now, I’ve been curious as to why red pastrami is non existent in the West Coast and why it is specifically made in the East Coast. And to be honest, I still have no answers. But, I will however give everyone a little basic information behind this fascinating different treat.

In the East Coast, when you buy pastrami at a deli, you have a choice of either Red and Black. Black is the common coriander and pepper crusted beef brisket/navel cut of meat that you see at the deli. It is normally relatively lean and is kept warm by steam in its own juices (preferable). Red pastrami gets it’s famous red color and flavor from Hungarian sweet paprika and an optional combination of different chile pepper powders. But aside from the amazingly wonderful complemented sweet smoky flavors, red pastrami is all about the F – A – T. Yes, the fatback and fat layering is the best and most essential part of red pastrami. Unlike lean black pastrami, red pastrami is best served when seared on a flat top and layered with cheese (provolone is likely what we use in East Coast). And, when the fat renders during searing, there is a release of flavor that cannot be had with basic black pastrami preparation.

Most mass produced pastrami are done with a wet cure, liquid smoked and steam cooked to finish. While a dry cure is possible, it is normally not preferable due to the following reasons: 1) even salt distribution in meat, 2) size of the cut of meat, 3) meat moisture/water retention advantage of brine. There is good pastrami out there nowadays, but I think the bad stuff outnumbers the standouts by a significant margin. Mass production has also essentially killed the true smoke, fat and salt (nitrite) flavor in pastrami.

And so with all this in mind, I annoyed a Golden Gate Meats butcher for 10 minutes to show me 3 different brisket cuts in order to find the most appropriate cut (approx. 5 lbs) for my West Coast Red Pastrami. I did some basic research and sampled different chiles and spices to come up with a Hot Food Porn proprietary red pastrami spice blend. I took the basic ratio of the wet cure/brine from Ruhlman’s book and altered basically 1/2 of the spices on his brine list to come up with what I thought was a suitable red pastrami brine.

I rotated the meat every 24 hours and brined for 4 days. The result can be seem above.

It was time to smoke…this is how I clean my grates while I get my cherry wood chunks ready for smoking.

I then took it through the process of a hot smoke to about 145-150 F roughly over 4 plus hours.

The brisket then sits to cool and then gets placed in a bag and into the circulator for 2.5 hours more at a temperature of 155-156.

The result? Sexy red pastrami food porn. These are initial pics, but the meat should be kept cold in its original juices, it will only soak up the smokey, meaty sweet discharge more over the next few days. The meat is best eaten after sitting for about 1-2 days.

Company Loyalty

2010-02-23T16:12:00.001-08:00

It’s fairly rare nowadays for anyone to bother with a discussion about company loyalty – it is a lopsided emotion. People are suckered into unrequited loyalty and into disillusioned ideas that their companies care about them. It’s very obvious in our current financial situation that companies know this basic principle: when the going gets tough, the people get going (to the unemployment line that is).

When the story about Red Mill Natural Foods broke out this week, I didn’t think too many people brought attention to it. If you haven’t heard or read it, owner Bob Moore essentially gave all his shares and ownership to his employees right before his retirement. I have little faith in corporate and professional life, but this is one of the very few stories that really helps curb some of my skepticism. Praise is thrown around too easily these days, but this is really an amazing and magnanimous gesture.

So cheers for Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods, I’d certainly pledge support for their products just on principle.

Inspiration Meets Opportunity

2010-02-18T15:47:00.001-08:00

So I’ve been working on a new project for a few months now and there are complications obviously – as all new projects have, but it’s also been time consuming in many instances. Without a traditional nighttime kitchen job, things have been quieter in the evenings and sometimes I catch myself still with the feeling of excessive downtime (not really true, I’m just overactive/workaholic most of the time). Basically, it means I don’t know how to relax.

As I was walking out from my office at the end of last week, my coworkers started to mumble about the raise in cafeteria prices. With a sensitive and recent across-the-board salary reduction, people were a lot less receptive to paying $1 more on average for a mediocre semi-prepackaged processed hospital lunch. With a drink and two baby overcooked sides, the cafeteria meal can average as much as $8.00. With one whimsical comment, a new idea and opportunity was born.

“For $5, I can make a lunch 10 times better.”

As it happened, I reasoned and played the idea out in my head during my drive home. Over the weekend, I calculated the logistics, feasibility and budget. By the end of the weekend, I had a menu, budget, and my own itty bitty newborn lunchtime delivery service. Of course, I am only currently servicing one place once a week, but it’s a nice fun start and my own fill-in-some-free-time creative outlet. Of course, I made absolutely $0.00 this week (in the hole, when you consider labor), but I got a chance to provide something different and fresh (literally) to my office so that brightened my day.

At some point, I got tired of paying for the Sysco junk. I don’t know why I waited this long, I guess you just have to put up or shut up. Next week is looking like a nice boost from this week so that will start to make things more interesting. Wonder how long I can go before the cafeteria finds out… wonder how long before I’m tempted to try to deliver to elsewhere…

For those interested in what I feature week to week for fun, you can find my weekly menu with a picture review at curiousworkshop.blogspot.com.

New Year’s Tradition

2010-02-11T13:18:00.001-08:00

Sadly, I will not be in Boston for Chinese New Year’s because on this day, some families consider this the Superbowl of traditional Chinese food lunches. Let me help you avoid the bunch of cliché online drivel regarding Chinese restaurant specialties and little Chinese themed recipes. A true Chinese New Year’s involves some of the following food items:

Traditional Grub

1). Chinese Sesame Beignets

It’s not the thick skinned, sticky itty bitty suckers with the red bean paste in the middle that you may get from the dim sum restaurants. Those are imposter metropolitan run-of-the-mill inferior sesame balls, see below…

The ones that we have for New Year’s are the big hollow thin donut balls seen above being fried by my grandma below. Fried puffy sweet crispy balls of goodness. Traditional local heirloom recipe boys and gals – so sorry, no sharing.

2). Shrimp Chips

It’s hard to get the heirloom recipe stuff, but its easy to get a nice package of shrimp chips from a Chinese grocer and fry some of those bad boys up. Be careful, don’t throw too many into a hot fryer, they expand to 4 times their chip size. Crab chips are also mucho tasty. This pic is from somewhere else random, but you get the idea. Personally I don’t buy the ones with color because I find the simple white ones in the longer boxes taste better and end up bigger.

3). The Vegetarian Mixing Bowl aka Luo Han Zhai

Loosely translated, it is simple named “Zhai” or sometimes known as Luo Han Zhai or something stupid like “Buddha’s Delight.” New Year’s day is also the day you are not supposed to be eating meat – one rule that I simply have not been able to follow consistently.

What normally ends up in this veggie pot wonder is a ridiculous assortment of stuff, all eventually cooked in one pot and melded into a crazy assortment of flavors. The classical Luo Han Zhai is supposed to have 18 items named after the 18 monks they represent. Well mi familia normally rocks it with the following minus one or two things from the list:

1. Yuba (tofu skin)

2. Fat Choy (a super thin weave of black noodles, actually a veggie of some sort)

3. Fried tofu

4. Snap peas

5. Vermicelli

6. Shitake

7. Napa cabbage

8. Daylily buds (aka golden needles)

9. Wood Ear (aka black fungi)

10. Water chestnuts

11. Dried oysters

12. Arrowhead

13. Fried Wheat Gluten

14. Carrots

15. Bok Choy

16. Lotus Root

17. Peanuts (untoasted)

18. Bamboo shoots

Pretty much the most ridiculous thing you can ever eat. It tastes pretty awesome.

4. Mochi Cake – aka Nian Gao

It’s a glutinous rice cake that gets steamed. It is sweet, gooey and can be eaten cold as well. I honestly do not touch the stuff. Some people love it like my moms, but it is one of the few things that I do not shovel in my mouth – a rarity on this blog.

5. Pan Fried Yuba Rolls

We normally eat these guys with shitakes, water chestnuts, vermicelli, bamboo shoots, golden needles and smothered with a savory sauce. Pretty awesome. This is an example of how it might look (except those have shrimp in them).

Rules and Superstitions

Think about this for a second, it’s a holiday devoted to stuffing your face with food and stuffing your pockets with money. It’s a total win-win situation. Now that we’ve identified some of the food, here are some basic rules to follow:

1. Do not wash your hair, it means you’re washing away your luck.

2. No cursing

3. Do not eat meat.

4. When visiting family bring a shiny box of something (cookies, cakes, nuts, etc) and don’t forget to put oranges or tangerines in the bag. Preferably 3 I think.

5. Red envelopes are passed to those who are younger by generation and by marital status. So if I happen to have a 21 year old uncle/aunt that just got married, he’s going to be throwing some cash my way. Yes, it does pay somewhat to be single during New Year’s or you can look at this from the perspective that this is another sacred thing that marriage has ruined.

6. Don’t keep your hand out when expecting a red envelope unless you are expecting a backhand (just kidding, not really).

7. Pour and serve tea to parents and grandparents and always pass tea cups with two hands.

Wednesday Test Kitchen

2010-02-10T10:56:00.001-08:00

Yeah, its been a while. Personally, I’d love to get more stuff up quickly, but the last few months have just been go go go. Where does the time go? Hopefully sooner or later, certain things come to fruition and I can start freely updating the blog with a little more frequency and regularity. I think I still have yet to finish my NY trip recap. Doh.

These were a few dishes I had been messing around with for the last couple of weeks. They’re not particularly special in much of any way, but rather more of just a byproduct of the stuff I’ve been able to get my hands on.

Seared Short Rib w/ Bitter Melon and Black Bean Sabayon

Basically, it’s a semi-Chinese classic reinterpretation. Black bean sabayon is crack good though. Didn’t bother to do much with plating, it was more family style kind of dinner and I was probably a little lazy.

Roasted Trout on Bed of Salsify Garlic “Noodles” w/ Meyer Lemon

Fried Trout with Savoy Cabbage Salad, Cayenne Mint Nuoc Cham

I ended up with two 1.5 lb trout from my buddy Ben who happened to be fishing over the weekend and decided to make a nice little trout dinner. Happened to have some meyer lemons from Hamada and some tender baby savoy cabbage from Dirty Girl.

Itty Bitty Piggy Buttermilk Biscuits.

I made a couple of duck ones too. Hmm… piggy.

Dungeness Crab Tomalley & Roe Custard Cake with Ikura and Aged Shoyu

I made the custard cake after I hosted a crab dinner with some friends. They were wondering what we should do with all the gooey stuff that was coming out of the middle shell, so I naturally showed them that eggs + gooey crab guts/roe = tasty. I bought an entire sack of ikura which was a pain in the ass to clean, but 1/2 the price per pound and I could control how much brine it was going to get. Sometimes they overwhelm it with salt when you buy it cleaned/brined.

Beating A Dead Horse

2010-02-08T10:42:00.001-08:00

I truly understand, respect and acknowledge the importance of the critic and their ability to elucidate some of the more nuanced and overlooked details of the dinner experience, but I’ve also realized that there are a few topics that I just generally have no interest in hearing about any longer. At some point, certain topics can be left to be addressed by the diner and does not warrant a discussion so frequently. There are also a few topics that every critic seems to pick at despite how it sensibly has no technical use or application for their actual job. The writing is fantastic and eloquently argued at times, but increasingly, the topics are becoming masturbatory. Here are a couple of list of things that I would like to see the critics and writers to start to move on from…

The “Let It Die” topics of yesteryear:

-Restaurant noise

-Charging for bread and water

-Pizza

-Anonymity

-Top Chef

-Bacon (soon to be the “Tuna Tartare” of this decade)

-Bourdain comments on Alice Waters and Food Network (it was fun… a year ago)

-NY vs. SF

The “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” self-serving topics of restaurant critics:

-The importance/relevance of critics

-The unimportance/importance of bloggers or blogging

-Being a critic today versus critics of the past

-Creating new diner etiquette based on personal opinion/value/digression

-Defending ratings systems

Dinner and a Trip to the Bathroom... Classy

2010-02-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

I ran across this on a blog (barstoolsports.com) and thought it was funny and food/porn relevant. With SF being such a liberal city, I wonder if anyone would be tempted to offer such a fantastic deal. Other possible dates for repeating this promotion are March 14 and Christmas...

Here's the story:

Restaurant promotes sex in its bathrooms

Mildred's Temple Kitchen is inviting customers to have sex in its bathrooms.

The Valentine's weekend promotion takes uncomfortable but electrifying sex from the close confines of an airplane and transfers it to the unisex stalls of the Hanna Ave. restaurant.

The Liberty Village restaurant proposes its modern bathrooms become one of the "101 places to have sex before you die."

Mildred's has always elicited a certain response. One customer, who didn't want to be named, remembers going to a wedding at the eatery's old location and seeing a copy of the Kama Sutra in the bathroom.

"They invite it," said the customer.

This time, the invitation is explicit. On its website, Mildred's asks: "Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?

"Check out Mildred's Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture."

Actually, the picture is clouded by practicalities. Is the restaurant supplying condoms? What about the health risks of body fluids? And who's cleaning up?

"We've always had little trysts in our bathrooms," says chef/co-owner Donna Dooher, pointing to lingering weekday lunches as a popular time. "We're taking it to the next level on Valentine's weekend."

The restaurant's four bathrooms light up outside when occupied. Staff have learned to watch the light flicker twice when two customers enter the same bathroom, usually a few minutes apart.

Toronto Public Health says as long as there's no sex in the kitchen and the restaurant keeps its washrooms clean and sanitized, it's not fussed. "As far as bodily fluids, it's pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there," says Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program.

Dooher says customers must bring their own condoms but she's hiring a maid to tidy the washrooms that weekend. "She'll be there with her feather duster and cleaning supplies."

At least diners aren't encouraged to use furry handcuffs, part of a $55 "naughty love hamper," while at Mildred's. "Best to savour and enjoy (those) long after you leave the restaurant," the restaurant says.

Recipe Creation and Menu Originality

2010-02-04T11:33:00.001-08:00

There have been many occasions when I go through the process of recipe development and testing that I catch myself formulating a flavor profile, technique or ingredient combination that feels too close to a dish that I had either previously cooked (another chef’s recipe) or enjoyed at a restaurant. Every time that this happens, I normally take a step back and methodically go through the process of breaking down my own recipe to avoid any confusion/misinterpretation. This is not to say that I haven’t tried reproducing a familiar flavor combination in a dish, but sometimes certain lines between what can be deemed artistic plagiarism or inspiring tribute are muddy at best.

There are many different situations or arguments for trying to establish a specific set of guidelines for proper ethics when it comes to recipe creation. In many cases, it would be asinine to argue plagiarism for recipes that have been developed and published for a thousand years (e.g. pizza – trust me, everything done to/for pizza has already been done somewhere else). I would argue that there are specific situations that are questionably legitimate at best. I fail to believe that seeing Oysters and Pearls Sabayon on any menu other than The French Laundry (or Per Se) would be anything less than culinary hackery.

Many times though, I do understand a restaurant/chef’s desire for creating a dish based on another dish’s inspiration, but these new dishes are normally subjected to reinterpretation and tinkering. One of the issues that exists in a copycat industry (not by design) is that people are too keen on current trends and often too empowered with a lazy self-justified approach under the philosophical guise of “letting the food speak for itself.” Clearly, you are going to be more prone to seeing multiple versions of something as mundane as Shaved Asparagus Salad or your early 2000’s explosion Tuna Tartar. I sense you can argue that these examples play more along the lines of a lack of originality than piracy, but lesser cases have been argued and won in musical copyright infringement.

One of my favorite examples of clear cut creativity came from an anecdote in a written piece on Grant Achatz (New Yorker, I think) – who upon discovery that another chef had done something partially similar to his new concept, decided to nix the entire idea altogether. By nature, many chefs are very guarded with their original recipes and techniques, but within the trade, there is also a desire to share and be open with their work and their discoveries.

I’m not trying to imply that rustic/classic cooking is not creative and beautiful in its own right because making ingredients taste great or perfecting a recipe whether old or new is already a feat in itself. Traditional cooking is what satisfies us and makes us go back to all our familiar places/dishes, but for those who want to continue to approach food as means of progressive artistic expression/creation may have to look outside of their current surroundings for new exposure and ideas. It would be nice to see some people venture out of a comfort zone.

Here are a few guidelines I like to generally follow:

classically defined recipes and family inherited dishes are all fair game and can be done without any reservations
classical dishes reinterpreted are fine, duplicating the reinterpreted dish is not
all new techniques developed and shared publicly.published are open to use
no more than a combination of three techniques and or primary ingredients from someone else’s recipe should be duplicated
if the ingredient is served in the same exact technical form, all other supporting ingredients must be different

Here are a few basic restaurant menu rules I wish were followed:

Grilled chicken breast salads should be forsaken from menus
Edible visual garnishes only matter if they assist in taste or texture in any way
Anonymous “Mixed Green Salad”
Abusing asparagus as the first sign of spring
Bad coffee costing more than $2
“Throw the Vegetarian a Friggin Bone” dishes (not literally)
“Throw the Vegans a Friggin Bone” dishes (wouldn’t be on this list if it was literal)
Fried Calamari in a non-Asian restaurant
Tuna and salmon on 90% of menus (except for sushi; sadly, only 1 out of 10 restaurants cook salmon/tuna properly)

Business Segregation by Economics

2010-01-27T15:49:00.001-08:00

A few months ago, East Bay merchants raised a hissy fit over the increase in parking toll prices due to the fact that they would discourage business. Today, it was announced that the Bay Bridge and other bridges would see a toll hike – one that would raise the commuter toll price of the Bay Bridge to $6 from $4. Upon hearing this news, people are not happy today. See here.

I’m normally discouraged to travel to the East Bay or anywhere out of San Francisco for much of anything, but sometimes I do make the effort because there are worthwhile places to go (such as my commute to my day job). I have quite a few East Bay friends who often react similarly when it comes to visiting the city, but they manage to do so once in a while to enjoy a meal or a night in the city. At first, this toll hike issue may surface as a common daily commuter problem, but if we apply the very basic idea of trickle down economics – everyone pays, including a fragile restaurant/hospitality industry.

I’m not sure if I need to remind people about how ominously quiet San Francisco happened to be when the Bay Bridge shutdown for a week. With a jobless rate at 12-13%, gas prices hovering $3 and parking tolls at $.25 per 5 minutes, I wouldn’t blame anyone living as close as Emeryville to seek other dinner and entertainment options away from this city.

As for the East Bay, a good chunk of the Bay Area’s disposable income resides within the wealthier confines of San Francisco and the Peninsula. People who used to plan on saving some money by carpooling to eat and buy goods in the East Bay, (e.g. Ikea or WalMart to name a couple) will now have to fork over $2.50 for carpool travel. If you couple that with the additional amount of gas spent on sitting idle in your car to pay this new toll, you will have a whole new group of pissed off people who swear never to venture out again.

But, you’re probably questioning if those situations are equalizers for each other – meaning are SF residents more likely to fill the blank spaces in SF and East Bay residents likely to do the same? There may be some sort of cancellation factor there, but I’m pretty sure of three things. The first is that there is an uneven amount of people going across one side of the bridge versus the other. So I’m not sure who ultimately suffers more, but someone comes out worse off. The second is that the services in SF that are desirable for people in the East Bay are not the same as the ones that SF residents travel to the East Bay for. This means that the merchants that lose customers due to toll hikes are not the same people that may see a boost from them. Third and finally, everyone will end up paying for this because this is eventually going to cost the food truckers more money in the near future – adding another tiny deficit to the already delicate profit margins and fragile operating revenues. And, we all know that when you add costs to supplies, those costs will likely transfer to the diner’s check.

On top of all these good feelings, if you can believe it, the contrast between Oakland and San Francisco might end up worse than it already is. I'm not implying that there are a lot of people in San Francisco who are out of touch with reality, I’m just trying to say that there’s a good contingent who happen to seem out of touch with other people’s realities.

What can you do about this grave injustice? Hope you’ve got a good cushion for someone else’s pushing “and everybody hurts…some time.”

Have Coffee? Will Travel.

2010-01-26T11:47:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: Dear coffee nerds, I am not super knowledgeable about the crazy machines, all the crazy roasts, all the crazy regions and all the crazy farms. Please do not kill me for writing this post. I like what I like. Thank you and enjoy.

Basically, I’m a sucker for tasty coffee. Am I connoisseur or expert? No, but I am an enthusiast. The true specialist in my family is my cousin Peter who happens to have an obscene coffee shop setup back at his place in Cambridge, MA. We’re talking pricey shiny grinders, big ass espresso machine and siphon percolators. It’s part ridiculous and part totally awesome. I’m still working with my single cup cone dripper and a Bodium press.

During my holiday visits to Boston, I end up making a trip to a little coffee shop called Simon’s in Porter Square. Peter and I happen to share the same affinity for the coffee that they serve there – which so happens to be the fantastic George Howell Terroir Coffee. And so, on the last day of every Boston visit, it’s now part tradition that I go to Simon’s Coffee Shop to buy a few bags of beans for my return trip to San Francisco. At first, this happened in only one city, but then there was another and another and another.

As odd as it may be, coffee seems to have found a way to become a fixture in my travel plans and I’ve started frequenting different specialty coffee houses in different cities. In fact, I’ve started to regard coffee as one of the key components of any successful trip. I know coffee may sound like a mere footnote to a grand vacation, but you’d be surprised at how satisfying and fun it is to include it as a notable destination. The best part about travelling for coffee is that it will never be touristy (except for Seattle’s original Starbucks) and rarely disappointing.

I thought it’d be fun to highlight some of the places that I’ve enjoyed in the recent past, so that you may find it in your travels as well. I’m not saying they are the best, but they are very enjoyable:

Favorite Places:

Boston/Cambridge: Simon’s Coffee Shop serving George Howell Terroir Coffee

New York: Mud Truck Coffee; La Colombe (also in Philly); Sweatleaf (LIC) serving Stumptown

Washington DC: Murky Coffee (RIP recently, d’oh)

Portland: Barista; Stumptown

Chicago/LA: Intelligentsia

Seattle: Caffe Vita (perfect w/ Paseo sandwich from next door, hmm…)

And, of course, if you happen to be in San Francisco:

Coffeebar; Blue Bottle; Four Barrel; Ritual; Sightglass; Trouble Coffee (because its a fun destination)

Personally, I’m a mid to dark roast drip/press kinda guy. I enjoy lattes with a touch of raw sugar. I like fuller bodied, little smoke, nuttiness, bittersweet chocolate, earthy flavors, citrus and even some lighter berry flavors.

Some of my favorite roasts:

Terroir Daterra South Italian

Stumptown Panama Carmen Estate and Mind Bender

Intelligentsia Agua Preta

Coffeebar Riserva Del Diablo & Bolivia Cenaproc

Blue Bottle Three Africans & Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

Going Dark: The Last Nights in the Kitchen at Poleng

2010-01-19T16:07:00.001-08:00

I’m not particularly sure I wanted to write this blog and I definitely didn’t know what kind of tone it would logistically have. It has become more of a mental chore the last couple of days to avoid the thoughts in my head, so I was inclined to simply put them into words.

Last Wednesday, Poleng announced its closing on twitter and their main webpage. As a friend and former member of the Poleng kitchen, my reaction was obviously shock and disbelief. For many people that work in the restaurant industry, it is common knowledge that cooks and chefs often rotate from kitchen to kitchen in short periods of time. So, by default, sentimental attachments (or even good feelings for that matter) naturally are not built between ex-staffers and restaurants.

But, Poleng was a important step in my life and I’ve always acknowledged its integral part in building my foundation in San Francisco. It’s cliché to continue on and blabber about the strength of the relationships that I built, so I won’t bother. I still have some very close friends from Poleng that I will continue to forge strong ties with, but for the most part, I don’t know most of the staff there anymore. In fact, I don’t know the former staff that the current staff replaced either. People have moved on, Poleng moved on, and more specifically, I moved on. That train of thought really made me question whether I really had a basis for my attachment to the current version of Poleng.

I’m still years away from sniffing 30 (so feel free to take all this with a grain of salt) but every year that I get older, I feel like I get better at detaching myself from situations – personal, professional, social or anything otherwise. I’m not talking about detachment by design/choice, but rather, detachment as a subsequent byproduct due to a lack of effort. I seem to simply be better at finding less to really care about. That said, nobody held me accountable and nothing kept me beholden to Poleng, but I wanted Poleng to survive simply because there were still remnants of an institution that I cared so much about for so long. With bad things happening at every turn, it gets harder to really care and invest in anything at all – and, in that same frame of mind, it magnified my strong feelings for the restaurant.

On Wednesday, I had a chance to speak with a couple of the owners in hopes of finding a resolution with their struggles, but I was sure that nothing could be done at this point. I felt my efforts would be pointless, but inaction equals immediate failure, so it was worth a try. After much talking and discussion about too-late-too-little-last-ditch situational efforts, I eventually reconciled myself to the fact that nothing would change this close date. Food service would end on Sunday. At that point, I told Desi (part owner, co-founder) of Poleng that I would like to be there Friday, Saturday and Sunday to work alongside the kitchen crew for their last weekend of food service. I was inclined to do so because these would be the same team of guys that I worked with long ago.

On Friday, I returned to the kitchen. I have never been part of a kitchen closing, but I have recently attended multiple closings. The grandest closing I could remember was Postrio. Chefs flocked back from different restaurants and cities to properly sunset the restaurant by working special dishes and throwback prices on the menu. Local celebrities and Wolfgang sat shoulder to shoulder in a crowded and lively room. It was a joyous, raucous and bittersweet moment when I looked from afar, but I had no false expectations that closing Poleng from the kitchen would be anything close to that type of spectacle.

Friday service began and ended just like any other Friday service during their 3.5 years. The volume was much heavier, but it eventually ended mercifully. I plopped at my old bar spot (“101” on the POS) and started drinking with a group of familiar and unfamiliar faces. And much like many other nights there, I took a regrettable shot, had a charming pickup conversation with a nice looking well-endowed woman, closed my tab and went home tired and happy.

Saturday was equally busy, but we weren’t nearly as plagued by large parties ordering a la carte, so service ran much smoother. This time around, I wasn’t in as great of a mood to hang out – having exhausted most of my energy for the weekend. The process of ‘86-ing food had begun to pick up momentum as we were steamrolling items while heading into a final Sunday showdown. For the second night in a row, we were well into 200+ covers. Some of the cooks would not be returning Sunday night, so it was my last chance to say goodbye. We all shared a drink together and exchanged numbers. It was mildly depressing, but thankfully not overly emotional. During service, it was apparent that the unevenly brutal service coupled with the emotional rollercoaster of losing their jobs seemed to cause their frustrations to boil over. This was surprising because these were some of the more composed, carefree and calm cooks I’ve worked with before.

When I got in on Sunday, I quickly found out that we were going to be seating 6-8 parties of 10 or more. 3 of these parties happened to be 20 tops (full of customers and VIPs), but only one of them had a buyout ticket. In a restaurant, anytime that you have a party over 10 ordering individually off the menu, you are essentially condemning your kitchen staff to a night of misery and hell. Now, combine that with the fact that none of these tables would seat before 7:00pm and you have utter chaos. Pure madness ensued as we started to cancel menu items left and right with one call for “86” following another for every half hour of service. I took a breath and kept 10 new tickets sitting on a stack as I calmly fired a groups of coursed tickets approximately 5 tables at a time. I apologized to the servers and simply told them, “please let your customers know that due to the volume tonight, they will just have to wait until I work towards their ticket order.”

And to the credit of the faithful and understanding customers there that night, they seemed to be calm throughout the final dinner service. The servers all seemed to say that customers were happy for the most part. Then again, this was one of the few occasions in my life where I legitimately didn’t care and couldn’t do anything about how the customer felt about the pace of their meal.

I tried to stay and keep the cooks in control by simply not allowing the idea of an over-frantic pace to unsettle them. There were no repercussions for a last night, but there should still be no mistakes for the food going out. By 9pm, most of everything was gone and over a 120 customers were served in a short 2 hour window. I was sure we had hit the 200 covers mark for three successive nights. Reservations and seating had already come to a close by 8:45pm. Just as I began to exhale, I could see a realization settle into the eyes of the cooks. There were no tears or anything close to melodramatic, but they all seemed to possess a very barren stare. Normally at the end of a long service, you can see cooks with an expression of either exhaustion, exhilaration, relief or frustration. But, the emotion and mood couldn’t be categorized as any of these.

After everything was cleaned up, I walked out to the dining floor. There were no DJ’s tonight and there wasn’t a after-dinner party buzz. I milled around and had a drink with some friends who showed up earlier for food, but couldn’t get seated. Eventually, the entire kitchen staff took some pictures, said our goodbyes and closed up. I went with my friends to NoPa for a martini and shortly after that, the Poleng kitchen went dark.

*fyi* Poleng will continue their nighttime entertainment service until the end of the month.

Help Save The World, Eat An Ugly Fruit.

2010-01-12T09:54:00.001-08:00

During my dazed drive to work from the gym, I was partially listening to a story on NPR regarding farms in Florida dealing with an unexpected winter frost. The story was a generic report about farmer issues with maintaining the health of the crops – which is a similar issue that Napa farmers seem to deal with every other year. I was entirely tuning out the radio until the narrator’s semantic selection caught my attention. For some reason, he chose the word “cosmetic” in reference to maintaining the quality of the fruit. And, for some other reason, I couldn’t help but digress upon whether or not the narrator really made a mistake.

One of the few things that most consumers seem to overlook is the basic idea of fruit/vegetable cosmetics. Much like how we judge other people, we normally seem to associate exterior appearance with interior quality. And, fittingly, much like how we discover other people, we realize quickly that a pretty fruit can actually turn out to be an evil bitch - ahem, which is to say it can taste bad.

Basically, if you are clueless in learning how to determine whether a certain fruit is ripe, fresh or sweet – then, you are obviously more inclined to pick pretty fruit. And because, farmers and distributors know we are senselessly prejudiced and dense human beings (for the most part), they decide that they must make fruit to look pretty to appeal to our desires. But to make fruit look pretty, they must perform cosmetic manipulation – chemical tummy tucks and boob jobs for produce if you must. As a result of this cosmetic manipulation, your food is now more harmful to you, costs more to you, tastes worse, and might become a dirty whore that cheats on you when she says she’s going to have a girl’s night out but really is meeting up with an orange muscled dude who wears like a size 15 shoe but has a tiny package because he got screwed for juicing. You know, shitty.

Nothing I just wrote should be a surprise to you. The important lesson is to really learn how to pick produce (ask someone!) and don’t rely on the shiny wax coated stuff at the supermarket. Just think, when you pick the ugly fruit from a market stand, you are doing yourself and the world a great justice. You know, it’s fun, like taking the ugly girl home for a party. (That quote is from a show or a movie, by the way, I am in total support of inner beauty.)

NY City Mulling Over Banning Flavor

2010-01-11T12:48:00.001-08:00

This article appeared on the NY Times today:

Citing Hazard, New York Says Hold the Salt

First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.

On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.

Read rest of it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11salt.html?ref=dining

I have to tell you that I wasn’t necessarily the biggest fan of laws that regulate eating in any way, but a trans fat ban did help curb a health risk normally associated with processed, commercial and industrialized food. However, this new “salt” legislation aims to probably end up as one of the dumbest ideas to come from the NY government.

First of all, I am not a supporter of any movement that comes within a hair of suppressing basic civil freedoms. I believe in basic accountability – which roughly translates to “if you decide to get lazy and fat by eating garbage, you should own up to the fact that YOU destroyed your health.”

On top of all this, I fail to believe that any type of salt restriction can be enforced for restaurant or business owners. I know it says it may be limited to chains and packaged foods, but imagine if they expanded it. Such legislation would probably end up destroying half of the Asian menus in the city. I’d literally carry fleur de sel in my pocket to every restaurant if that were to ever happen. Would they consider a ban on pizza? I bet more people die from pizza than salt in NY.

Tireless in New York – Day 1

2010-01-06T13:58:00.001-08:00

Last Monday, I jumped on a Bolt Bus (overrated by the way) and made my way into Manhattan on a frigid Monday morning. During the ride down, I was multitasking between a bevy of entertainment options that included watching I Love You Man (underrated) and tweeting suggestions for my inaugural New York Trip meal. Ultimately, the weather became the natural swing vote for my first meal, but nonetheless, I knew it would have to be a great one to start the week off in grand fashion.

And so begins the recap of my New York New Year’s Week. The pics were all taken from my Palm Pre, which sometimes sucked ass, but this way, you can feel the grittiness of the experience. And I’m sorry I don’t want to bring a $1200 camera all over NY city in the cold. I was more worried about keeping my nuts warm.

Day 1: “Yes, I’m ordering two bowls of ramen.”

I hauled ass to my friend’s Lower East Side (LES) apartment and found a gang of four people who were obviously in an afternoon recovery of a classic 3 A.M. NY night – a common occurrence for the rest of the week. I’d normally welcome the sight of two girls lounging in tank top jammies for a little longer, but the hunger in my stomach was overwhelming the hunger of my loins. I required sustenance, I required satisfaction and I desired ramen.

After waiting for two girls and one guy (who gets ready like a girl) to shower and change, the five of us went off to Ramen Setagaya (one on St. Mark’s). Once we were seated, we placed our orders quickly. The waitress seemed a tad surprised that I decided to order two bowls of ramen, but I figured that would be my only chance to get a taste of all the broths they offered at Setagaya during this trip. How can you go wrong with an extra bowl of ramen?

While we were en route to Broadway, we ran across a familiar Astor Place favorite of mine: The Mud Truck. My favorite orange truck cup of Joe.

After a fill up, we got our shopping on in SOHO. I didn’t really buy anything except for a cheapo pair of gloves and a sexy fake cashmere scarf because I was resourceful, stylish and more importantly, bloody cold. All for a grand total of 10 bux. Why anyone living there ever pays more than that for basic winter accessories is beyond me. A few hours pass by, I’m drained again, so this time we duck into La Colombe for more coffee.

I scored a bag of Corsica from La Colombe. This will be the house roast at my Kingdom of Solitude for the next couple of weeks.

After getting sufficiently wired, we regrouped at the apartment and decided to head to dinner. I suggested Motorino - the pizzeria that spawned from Brooklyn and is now located in the old Una Pizzeria Napoletana spot.

For those that don’t know, Una Pizzeria is now gone. This itty East Village restaurant had become my NY “white whale” over the last few years. The first year I knew of its existence, I tried to drop by, but they weren’t open Monday or Tuesday. When they were open, they ran out of dough for the day. The next time I visited NY, they were closed for vacation. The third time, vacation again. It was really quite annoying. Finally, they closed shop, before I could make it out again – probably to spite me. Frick. Well, whatever, I guess going to Motorino partly excised some demons.

The ingredients at Motorino were very memorable and the pizza was very good – crispy and soft with just a bit of chew. I’d say it was a dough closer to the style/ratio of Pizzeria Mozza’s dough, but maybe not as crunchy or chewy. The ingredients and flavor profiles were very bright though. They apparently burn birch wood I think. We all had a good time sharing 4 different pies. Margherita, Brussels & Pancetta, Parma Prosciutto, and Sopressata.

After pizza, we went rummaging round town and skipped over to the West Village for some art bar. It was craptacular. Note to people out there: when places claim “industry night”, there are rarely industry people in there. So we ditched the West Village and ended up in Chinatown where we went into a bar called Apothecary (not that there was a sign, of course). It wasn’t speakeasy quiet, but it definitely had that spirit about it. Me and some gals ended up having a 2 hour conversation about biological clocks, women/men in their thirties, having children and marriage. It was pretty fucking heavy for bar conversation, but definitely not soporific. You’d be surprised by what I’d have to say. And that was that for a first day.

Greetings from The East Coast

2009-12-30T13:54:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone, sorry I’ve been on vacation hiatus from writing and I am currently running around in NY. Here are a few rumblings and mumblings from my trip here:

-I missed and enjoy the cold. No, seriously. It’s in my blood.

-“People on the streets…dadadeedadee… people on the streets.”

-I have now eaten pizza 3 times in the last 2 weeks. Not really shocking unless you take in account that I ate pizza 3 times in 3 months prior to flying out here.

-I couldn’t goat the guy from Sam Adams Brewery to serve me some damn Utopia. He had charisma, but that does nothing for you when you don’t give it up. That’s a lesson for the kiddies.

Here are some pics from the brewery:

-No, we did not feed my niece any Sam Adams Boston Lager. It was only IBC Root Beer.

-My niece Sophie is in the running for Cutest Baby Ever, but she doesn’t know. Thank goodness. My other niece, Madeleine, always knew. You’re shit outta luck when babies know how cute they are.

-Today, I went to Eleven Madison for lunch. It was exquisite and elegantly understated.

-Ramen Setagaya is still the king.

-“What I want, you’ve got that might be hard to handle. Like a flame that burns a candle. ”

-I am a true believer that when you travel and plan all trips around good places to eat, you will inevitably have a successful and great trip.

-Shake. Shack.

-No one in NY has put their stamp on becoming a signature coffee roaster of the city. Blue Bottle in SF, Murky in DC, Stumptown in Portland, Intelligensia of Chicago/LA…what’s going on NY?

-NY is all of a sudden pooling up with an overabundance of underwhelming and overrated American-Mediterranean cuisine. Please, cease and desist.

-I have not eaten a cupcake yet since getting here and I have no inclination or urge to.

-I can’t get into the Tim Burton exhibit at the NY MOMA. Planning FAIL.

-Getting into PDT is annoyingly difficult, but what I don’t ultimately understand is why I can’t get easily get a good cocktail when I spend $12-$14 on one. I miss drinking in San Francisco.

-I’d have to be all types of stupid to pay $7 for Hamachi Nigiri. That is a “pass” on sushi in NY.

-Another thing that I “pass” on, designer Banh Mi. I’m not sure I ever want to pay more than $4 for traditional Banh Mi. It’s especially stupid considering I’ve had great classic Banh Mi in DC for less than $2.50.

-Still haven’t seen much offal or game in many restaurants – forget about trying to find out what farm it’s from.

-Bob Dylan’s Christmas collaboration with Los Lobos is a travesty of music.

-Few more days in NY, everything seems to be building up for a big hurrah!

-Don’t forget the most important thing on New Year’s is a breath mint. Don’t be that guy.

-Try to kiss and hug like you mean it: own it.

-I’m not making any resolutions, but hopefully I can genuinely try to continue to be fair, honest and good to as many people as I possibly can. I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.

Do You Love Something Enough To See It Burn?

2009-12-21T14:36:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine alerted me yesterday to a NY Times article regarding the Buzzwords of 2009 – one of which happened to list the word: Aporkalypse. I wasn’t so sure of exactly what he specifically meant by the term at the time, but the sound of Aporkalypse intrigued me a little.

Take a second and turn on your stereo. Load “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies and absorb yourself in a clear stream of thought. What would happen if there was a direct correlation between conventionally produced pork meat and a widespread disease/flu breakout? What would happen if something like Aporkalypse became a reality? What if we had to destroy the majority of the pig population in attempt to limit a spread of influenza?

I’m not much of an anarchist, but given that the scenario takes place, wouldn’t it be nice to get a shot to start with a clean slate? Wouldn’t we get a chance to redevelop and properly breed classic heritages instead of massively over produced hybrid pigs of some kind? Wouldn’t we be forced into sustainability out of fear of another massive outbreak? Wouldn’t the realities of an Aporkalypse serve as the shining example and resounding alarm for true food reform? Could true reform happen without making the smoking gun absolutely obvious?

Aren’t you curious?

Maybe just a little?

Favorite Guilty Pleasures

2009-12-15T14:00:00.001-08:00

I think a lot of people often are curious as to how chefs eat at home. And, to be perfectly honest, the cooking at home for chefs is likely to be a good deal better than a regular home cook’s attempts at putting together a dinner. Unfortunately, that’s not normally the circumstances that food professionals seem to eat under. If you cook all day and night, sometimes you just don’t have the energy to put the time and effort into the same thing at home. Given the chance for dinner at home (rare for night staff), the meal at home can sometimes be the most egregious 3 minute slap-together hodgepodge you can imagine. So I thought it’d be kind of fun to give you a honest window into my favorite guilty pleasures and after work meals.

In no particular order:

Insatiable Morning Craving: McDonald’s Sausage Egg McMuffin

Yes, from the processed cheese to the slightly overnuked egg…oh sweet perfection. I could probably eat 3 of these. It remains as 1 of 3 things I can still enjoy from McDonald’s. No, fries are not one of them. Shocking, huh?

Favorite Late Night Four Minute Meal: Nissin Ramen w/ Over Easy Fried Eggs

I’ve timed out perfectly that while it takes 3 minutes for the noodles to get soft, I can effectively cook the eggs on the pan simultaneously without any wasted effort. If there was ever an instant ramen hangover late night joint, I’d rock that station.

Favorite Mutant Habit: KFC and Costco Chicken

I get about 1 or 2 chances every couple of months to eat at either establishments, but I dare and challenge you to deny how good that mutant chicken tastes. Seriously, $6 for a juicy rotisserie chicken. It’s actually cheaper to buy the cooked chicken than a raw one at Costco I think.

Favorite Processed Goodies: Tater Tots

Oh my crispy fluffy golden globs of goodness. Tater tots are like human kryptonite because they pair crispy fried potato with memories of fun childhood indulgence. Not enjoying tater tots might just be un-American. I’m just saying.

Most Wrong Creation That Was So Right: Fried Rice Blanketed In Egg Omelet

Yes, I cooked fried rice with leftover pork parts and green onions, then I made a 4 egg omelet and wrapped the fried rice in there like it was a golden quesadilla. Because some egg is good, but lots of egg is great.

I Don’t Know Why I Occasionally Drink This: Red Bull and Vodka

Everything about Red Bull and vodka is wrong. Decent vodka is already tasteless, which means that the generic stuff is just shit. Red Bull speeds you up and vodka knocks you back a little. It’s like getting kicked in the nuts and enjoying it. It sucks and I suck for somehow reasoning that this is a good idea on certain nights.

Sweet Lovin: Powdered Jelly Donuts

I love semi-fake fruit filled donuts. The messier, the better. The only negative thing about the jelly donut is when they go cheap on the filling. Hate it when that happens. I hate you for suckering me out of filling and I hate myself for wanting more.

Worst East Coast Addiction: Dunkin Donuts Ice Coffee “Regular”

A “regular” ice coffee at Dunkin Donuts for non-East coasters is a coffee that is filled with cream and filled with sugar (I ask for splenda substituted). East Coasters drink this because they enjoy the subtle hint of actual coffee in there. It’s what you can call a sugary “half and half latte”.

Most Overindulgent Sandwich/Sub/Grinder: Hot Red Pastrami, Provolone, Lettuce, Tomato, Mayo and Ketchup

When I say pastrami, I don’t mean that lean black stuff. I want the red shredded fatty good stuff and I want a ton of it. The pastrami is seared on a hot plate and then cheese gets laid on top. Everything goes into a long sub roll and then into an oven for toasting. Ahhh, greasy goodness.

Favorite Soda That No One Else Buys: Diet Sunkist

I think I contributed to 50% of their sales at one point when I was working a zillion hours. I don’t know why, but after a long service, nothing appealed to me more than getting a Diet Sunkist soda from the gas station across the street. Yes, I am likely the reason that Diet Sunkist is on your supermarket shelves.

Favorite Meal That Makes Me Feel A Little Dirty: Chorizo and Lengua Super Burrito

If you have not had a combination chorizo lengua super burrito, then you are missing out on a oral orgy of flavors and textures. And when you finish this monstrosity, you will likely wallow in your own food coma and shame for a good 3 hours.

Favorite Thing That Nobody Else Really Wants To Eat: Crispy Fried Pig Intestine and Chinese Red Sauce Braised Chicken Feet

Pretty much self explanatory. The intestines are so good with a little sweet sour sauce. The chicken feet are normally found at dim sum spots under the pseudonym “Phoenix Talons”. People have issues with the texture, but I love that chewy little cartilage.

Awesome Food Art

2009-12-08T09:39:00.001-08:00

Never saw this before, but I got this from a coworker today in mail. Thought I’d share this with people. Pretty friggin awesome.

“Artist assistants stand next to 3,604 cups of coffee which have been made into a giant Mona Lisa.

The 3,604 cups of coffee were each filled with different amounts of milk to create the different shades.”

People Get Panties In A Bunch Over Cartoon Raisin Girl

2009-12-04T15:16:00.001-08:00

Apparently, some people aren’t thrilled about the new Sun Maid Raisin girl because she’s too sexy. I saw this little tidbit via sports website Barstool Sports. See below:

But honestly, if you find that offensive, I think you need to stop having a reaction to fully dressed fake 3D models of raisin mascots. Of course, no one objects to the St. Pauli girl, especially considering that she totally digs chefs like Chef Boyardee. Seriously, I’m much better looking than that asshole.

And if you REALLY want the queen of sexy food mascots. Look no further than Campari, because without Salma Hayek – I’m not sure anyone really would drink this stuff.

The Unequivocal Joy of Ramen

2009-12-02T11:13:00.001-08:00

No, this is not a review.

It’s not even a think piece or a historical piece.

This is simply my way of securing ramen into one of the pedestal shelves in the corner of my heart – a place where everything stored is normally greeted with the type of hug that is shared only between intimate friends and ex-lovers.

All of this started with a very good bowl of ramen in Los Angeles and a hour long conversation between friends during our drive back to San Francisco. Our argument was centered around the noodle thickness at the ramen restaurant we both visited separately. As if by fate, I even received an invitation that very night for a ramen tasting party.

Some people don’t understand the relationship. For those people, I can only explain it as symbiotic. Many people develop irrational fears with certain foods because of bad experiences and improper exposure, but almost equally, people often develop an irrational love for foods that are consistently present at our most emotional and developmental moments. If you choose to label this as “comfort” food, you are more than entitled to, but I’m not certain that they are the same. While comfort food may be items of homage that recall fond memories of mom’s culinary repertoire, it is not always intrinsically emotional. I can only relate by telling you that the idea of comfort food is to ramen as “In My Life” is to “Tears in Heaven.” It just possesses a different gravity.

To this day, I can still eat 3 packs of Nissin Ramen (seen above) easily in one sitting. Personally, I love an over-easy fried egg and Chinese beef tendon meatballs on top. The little blue robe blonde Japanese kid is a close personal friend and childhood fixture. He’s been there more than most people in my life – cold wintery mornings, tough emotional times, drunken stupors, weekend hangovers and all types of mental breakdowns. Of course as the years have rolled on by, ramen has taken new forms and risen to new heights. In high school, I found out that ramen could not only be fresh, but it could also contain all types of wonderful tasty partners nestled in a big bowl of broth. This was an epic discovery because on that day, my brain melted to soft jelly and my heart warmed to a feverish pitch.

My most recent discoveries (epiphanies sometimes) over the last few years have really pushed my expectations for a great bowl. It has become a yearning and a constant search for something great – akin to the longing for a recognition of one’s soulmate. With newfound maturity and a fully developed palette, ramen now has a different mystique. The ability to properly critique (a happy byproduct of exposure and experience) has elevated the craftsmanship of ramen into art. The noodles, the broth, the egg, the pork, the house selection of accompanying vegetables and the texture are all now subjected to a rigorous analysis stemming from the mouth to the cortex of the brain.

I have to tell you that it isn’t all love. This affinity to ramen is both a curse and a blessing. The average price of a bowl normally sits at about $8-$9, which is not a lot of money for a meal by most people’s standards, but it becomes the weighing scale in determining how judiciously it was spent. A bad bowl of ramen feels like it has come at a grave and heavy expense, but a great bowl of ramen may feel as light as pennies. Not many specific items in the culinary world have such a well defined teetering seesaw scale. Ask the likes of my former chef and friend Tim Luym and many other enthusiast chefs alike – and, they will tell you all about the inherent thrills and mind numbing disappointments that await at every ramen shop. Sadly, the most common phrase that seems to come at the conclusion of most ramen meals is normally, “well, if they only did this…” or “the _____ wasn’t that good…”

I won’t lie to you. Success is a long drawn road. You will come by failure upon failure many times in a quest for a good bowl. You may even begin to believe it doesn’t exist. Your search is one of desperation as you cling to merely the whisper of a recommendation that there may be good ramen…somewhere. You will begin to take recommendations 10, 20, 30 or 400 miles away. You even take recommendations 3000 miles away. You may go as far as NY to find it, and – if you are like me, you schedule a block of time in your calendar just to eat it.

Content people and those without this obsessive affliction may simply settle for a “that’s pretty good” type of place. And, for most people who enjoy things on a comfort level, that’s perfectly fine. But please understand that if you want greatness out of what you decide to keep as a constant in your life, you will have to work to achieve it. And that work is sometimes fruitless, but ultimately, you will find that true love and devotion is rewarded.

And when it happens to find you…

it is nothing but satisfaction, redemption, relief and exhilaration. It’s kind of feeling where the world begins spin around you without focus on anything but your tasty noodles. Mesmerizing.

A truly tiring and wonderful drug. It’s enough to make you want to pass out afterwards…

Thanksgiving Recap

2009-12-01T09:43:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday. Sadly, I didn’t get much rest due to the 12+ hours spent driving to and from Los Angeles. It certainly didn’t help to have wrapped up Thanksgiving dinner at 12:30AM only to drive out at 5:00AM on the same day. But I regret none of it because I had a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving with some very close friends as well as some very new friends as well. All in all, it was a dinner filled with food-coma induced silences and probably the raunchiest post Thanksgiving conversation ever (including using condoms as a hotdog condiment holder/dipper, toasted latex as bacon, and a late night chitchat phone call to a random 16 year old in Texas who was apparently looking for action on twitter). Mom wouldn’t approve. Anyways, Thanksgiving is about the company and the food, so a special “thank you” goes out to Peter, Angelo, Kai, Haruka, Violet, Ben, Gariff, Richie, Sky and Zhaira for being terrific company on this festive night.

The Food:

Cherry Wood Cold Smoked and Roasted Diestel Farms Turkey (17.8 lbs)

Rainbow Beet Salad with Yuzu & Meyer Lemon Gastrique

Roasted Brussel Sprouts w/ 18 Year Barrel Aged Balsamic

Fig and Sausage Dressing

Crunchy Pecan Crusted Mashed Yams

Creamy Mashed Gold Potatoes with Green Onions

Classic Apple Pie a la mode with BiRite Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Classic and Bourbon Vanilla Cranberry Sauces

Good Ole Gravy

The pics:

Cherry wood fire and heart shaped turkey cleavage.

The REAL butterball.

The last of the fresh figs I could find anywhere…

Jason Biggs Food Porn – Don’t lie, you know you want to.

The lineup

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, I am going to LA after Thanksgiving and frankly I've been inundated with a load of stuff prior to the big Gobble Gobble. So, I will share with you my trusty map of all the In-N-Out locations from San Francisco to LA via I-5. I hope you treasure it. I will be visiting at least a couple of these bad boys. When I get back, I can hopefully do a recap of my turkey, LA and other goodies. Stay warm and food comatose. Enjoy.

View In and Out En Route to LA. in a larger map

Wednesday Test Kitchen – 11/18/09

2009-11-19T13:17:00.001-08:00

Finally, I’m rolling out a prompt on-time Wednesday Test Kitchen. I really must say that there was only very minimal planning this week for what I wanted to make. The colder weather really dictated on how I wanted to approach these two plates. Both are hearty and best when hot.

I ended up with some really nice wild head-on gulf shrimp because I originally intended to make some Shrimp and Grits, but I had all this nice fennel, sausage and fumet stock hanging around, so I decided that a soup would be best. My roommates occasionally do a Tom Yum soup, but I didn’t want to mess around with spice blends or any packaging. I decided to make my own interpretation – which oddly ended up pretty close, but vibrantly more layered and brighter than your standard. With the exception of dried shrimp paste used in my Gold Cayenne sambal, there were no powders used. I threw in andouille and 4505 Meats Golden Dogs. Why? Because they have a spicy sweetness to them that tasted awesome when paired with the soup. That and it’s my soup, I can do whatever the hell I want to it.

The other dish was a creamy farro risotto. It was cold and I really felt like something warm and creamy. (That’s what she said. Sorry.) I was planning on cooking persimmons all week and blending it into savory, but I wasn’t inspired to pair it with meat that night. I just had no desire to cook meat. (Yes, it’s shocking, but it can happen.) I happened to have wonderful farro literally fall into my hands when I opened my kitchen shelf. It was meant to be. The dish really harkens back to the good old days of the Orson kitchen (really not long ago actually, feels like forever…) when there was a seasonal farro dish on the menu (once with cabbage stock and later with peach). What was wonderful about the presentation of the peach farro dish at Orson was really the complexity established with elements of savory and sweet. It wasn’t an established comfort food, but it was definitely a comfort dish. I partially wanted to recreate the philosophy of that dish, but at the same time, do nothing even remotely similar in terms of flavor combination. The dish gets finished similarly, but I guess nothing in the prep process or ingredient list was remotely similar except for lemon. I don’t think it’s a reinterpretation or copy, but I’d like to call it a tribute.

Onto the Menu:

Tom Yum Soup

-Fumet fennel shrimp stock, wild Gulf head-shrimp, 4505 Golden Dogs, Andouille, homemade Gold Cayenne sambal, finished with torpedo onions

Pumpkin “Farr”-o Risotto

-brown butter sautéed persimmons, Meyer lemon, Andante Minuet and yuzu zest

*the yuzu zest adds to the depth of flavor and complexity, but I also tried a bowl with Meyer lemon zest, which meshed better into the flavor profile. Both were awesome as garnishes, but the yuzu was like the Veronica to the Meyer lemon’s Betty. Tough choices.

Cooking Out Of Joy

2009-11-17T10:04:00.001-08:00

It seems that for some reason it’s gets easier and easier to get aggravated by really stupid things. Maybe we can blame the weather change. Generally, I’m a fairly calm and positive person, but the last couple of months, I’ve been very agitated with things that normally don’t bother me and sometimes I don’t even know why…

“But, I’m trying Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd…”

To suppress or alleviate this unwanted sense of anger, I sometimes desperately try to find the most relaxing or soothing things to do. It’s the kind of stuff that provides you the right distraction for a happy few minutes. It’s the desperate escape your brain needs sometimes. Aside from listening to mind numbingly happy songs like 1234 or Here Comes The Sun, I try to enjoy simple cooking/food related things that make me smile and keep my blood pressure a nice mellow low of 150 or better. Cooking can be therapeutic even though many people often feel that its a chore, so I thought I’d give people a few good examples. Maybe you can come up with your own as well.

The following is a list of some of the cooking related things that make me smile:

the sound of meat searing on a pan
pounding and kneading pasta dough
the hot gust of aroma when you first open an oven with a roast
the smell of wine/alcohol deglazing
drinking the wine/alcohol you’re using to deglaze while deglazing
stirring slow forming mounds and curds of scrambled eggs
watching egg white strands form webs in poaching liquid
watching souffles rise
watching souffles fall
seeing the tiny bubbles when emulsifying
the smell of brown butter
licking the last of the honey coated on the spoon
strolling the aisles in a supermarket
mixing hamburger/sausage meat with your bare hands
smell of zesting lemons
watching risotto thicken
making quenelles with spoons
flipping fried eggs
watching grits absorb milk
brulee-ing anything, fire rocks!
crisping meat skin
stuffing a bird
watching quince poach from yellow to pink to red
whipping foam, yeah yeah yeah, I know its so 3 years ago…
breaking down ducks
smoking pork belly, i.e. makin’ bacon
“tasting” hot chocolate chip cookies out of the oven
pouring cake batter
flouring surfaces
cooking anything in duck fat

Remember we’re almost at the holidays. Stay relaxed, stay calm and stay hungry.

Classifying Art and Politics for Cooking

2009-11-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Let me begin with a slight disclaimer. There are many journalists, op-ed columns and talking heads that can argue this topic more eloquently than I can. And, I’m entirely happy for their righteous selves because I don’t want to incite the type of all encompassing national debate that - for example, is taking place between Michael Pollan and the Evil Empire (in his eyes at least) standing before him. I don’t have enough saliva or patience to withstand the hours it’d take.

I do want to discuss a more sensible paradigm of food, art and politics within restaurants. Basically, it all started when a recent discussion at a Linecook 415 podcast really got my brain stuck on this idea of a chef’s “freedom” with their food. Within this abstract sense of freedom (whether most chef’s really have it or not), I had somehow started to extrapolate and examine a relationship between interpreting food menus as an artistic or political argument.

The principle questions that I would pose are:

How often is dining an extension of an individual’s sense of art or the result of their politics? Or both? Are they always best as a marriage? Does the presence of food politics stifle food art?

I don’t have to blink before I can come up with two very prime examples of food politics in this city: Chez Panisse and Cafe Gratitude. Both are representative of a specific lifestyle and or philosophy that is very derivative of some form of politics – whether it is by their own choice/admission or not. But, as a diner, I can see the value of Chez Panisse based on my politics. For almost the same political reasons, I find absolutely no value in dining at Cafe Gratitude. Sorry, but I’m a “give me a foie torchon or give me death” kind of guy.

From the perspective of food as art, we have some great examples of artistic interpretation in Alinea, and to a certain extent, Montreal’s own Au Pied Du Cochon (APDC). Alinea is America’s best example of a restaurant who creates, manipulates and molds an ingredient for the purpose of presenting food as artistic interpretation. Alternately, APDC can be argued to have every bit of much artistic merit with their sometimes ridiculous interpretations of Montreal’s regional French fare (like the Foie Maki roll, Duck In A Can). In both cases, art can be more openly seen as a component of their identity and byproduct of their freedom. They have the creative license and ability to do anything they want, which in turn, gives them artistic merit. There may be governing styles, but there are no rules, restrictions or politics for the creation of their food like there would be for Chez Panisse (cooking out of the backyard) and Cafe Gratitude (hosts the yearly PETA conference). Everything, it seems, is fair game.

Having distinguished a some examples for what can be considered art or politics, there are obviously blurry gray lines all over the place. I’m sure the food at Chez Panisse can also be considered as artistic, but for the most part, it is widely considered as the home of “figs on a plate.” Every dish there may have artistic merit, but the cooking is not classified as artistically progressive by many people’s standards.

Let me put this in another way of thinking: impressionism is beautiful and artistic in its own merits, but there’s an issue when everyone is painting in the same style. The paintings, colors and subjects may be different, but ultimately you are constrained to looking at sometimes wonderful, sometimes exciting or sometimes regurgitated impressionist work. The question is: what happens when you’re looking for something from the Modern Era? Where’s the Picasso and Dali?

An overarching argument can be made about whether or not food politics are suppressive to food art. Can a food community (owners, chefs, diners) with strict ideals shaped by their politics (e.g. the local 100 miles restaurant radius resource list) be the contributing factor for starving creativity? I am aware that money is the driving factor in any type of discussion for culinary freedom, but it’s a catch-22 when you consider that personal [and food] politics can starve creativity – which, in turn starves a business.

This might be an asinine discussion that probably applies to a minor percentage of restaurants and concepts out there, but this is where my interests lie at this moment. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a chef who doesn’t dream of a world of creative autonomy, and more importantly, a diner’s patience and trust.

Wednesday Test Kitchen – Fall Squash & Pumpkin

2009-11-10T12:55:00.001-08:00

This is the fall version of the Test Kitchen I would guess. Last week, I had a ginormous hubbard squash and a bunch of pretty little sugar pumpkins from Iacopi. I roasted both of these – making a soup with the squash and pumpkin biscuits.

Onto the menu:

Pumpkin Buttermilk Biscuits w/ home churned butter

Hubbard Squash & Dogfish Punkin Ale Stew served w/ sous vide beef shank

Onto the pics:

The Stew:

Stew was fragrant and amazingly tasty with the sweeter spice notes from the beer spelled out nicely. The shank was actually still very pink in the inside because I essentially just brought it back to temp when it cooked in the stew. You could easily braise all the meat in the beer over 3-4 hours and then add the roasted squash to finish for 1-2 hours. That would also be a kickass stew.

Biscuits:

Biscuits were nice and fluffy, but just a smidge too dense. I’m sure the butter temp was very cold, so maybe the dough was a little too wet/dense because of the pumking buttermilk mixture. I might have to account for that or find a way to get a little more rise out of the baking soda/powder combo. Definitely still tasty as hell. I did also go with shortening this time since I had it, but next time I may go back to my all butter recipe. Just needed a itty bitty tweek and I’m there.

Wednesday Test Kitchen – Long Overdue

2009-11-06T14:18:00.001-08:00

Sorry, this took awhile, but I’ve got a logjam of stuff I guess to post, so this will be first of the stuff.

So a few weeks ago, some friends and I went fishing and we caught a pretty well sized Striper in the Suisun Bay. Here’s a look at the sucker with my buddy Ben:

I think the fish measured out to around 31 inches and it was probably close to 10-12 lbs. During out boat ride (sucks I don’t have pictures of this), I performed ike jime on the mofo while it was still pumping its dear heart out. Here are some pics of the cuts that we had for sashimi, and ceviche. To say that they were impeccably bloodless, translucent white, and clean tasting is an understatement. We grilled the other half to perfection.

I didn’t bother with taking pics of our food, but here is what we had:

Striper Sashimi, Striper Ceviche with Granny Smith Apples and Grilled Striper.

With the bones, collar and the head, I roasted them and made a fumet. Well, I ended up eating most of the collar, so we’ll scratch that out.

With the fumet, I add Japanese yam for some sweetness, but mainly to build a broth that has a tinge of that earthy sweetness. The yams (still whole after cooked in the stock) are mashed and mixed with a small amount of milk. The end result is:

Striper Fumet Ube Soup (kinda fun to say)

Pics:

A couple of other Test Kitchen dishes:

Pork Chops with Bacon White Bean Puree and Ong Greens & Enoki Mushroom “Noodles”

Sauteed Chicken Hearts with Maitake Mushrooms and Andouille Sausage

Greatest Show On Earth

2009-11-04T12:21:00.001-08:00

You too can see Guy Fieri’s ~~shit~~ Roadshow for as little as $28 or if you go with the “Off Da Hook” package, you’re guaranteed:

Off Da Hook Package Includes (MUST be 21+ older):
-1 Seat On Stage
-Tour Laminate
-Copy of Guy’s New Book
-2 Squirt Bottles
-Pre-Show Meet and Greet

Linkage: here.

Wow. I could barely contain my enthusiasm for such a fantastic offer. Grand total cost of this wonderful night of joy: $253.00.

A few things that I can’t understand are: why must you be 21+ to meet him and why does anyone want 2 squirt bottles?

This is the event description I got off my ticketmaster email:

“The famous Food Network Chef is bringing his first-ever culinary tour to a city near you with the Guy Fieri Roadshow. Don’t miss this two-hour Food-a-palooza as Guy marries mouth-watering fare and rock-‘n’-roll while he gets away with everything they won’t let him do on TV!

Look for great seats to catch all the action or get up close with one of these tasty ticket packages.”

Holy shit man, food and rock-and-roll go together like PB&J, right? You too could have both things and lessons on how to bleach your upper chin hair and make pink smoothies at the same time.

Oh yeah, take all that good stuff and add “everything they won’t let him do on TV.” Too bad I don’t know what that means, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get your money’s worth unless he’s humping a goat or taking it from a donkey – even then, it’d be a show for an entirely different crowd.

To put things in perspective, with less than $253 dollars, you could do something like:

Dine at Alinea, buy the Alinea cookbook, possibly meet the chef, buy two squirt bottles, buy the Fieri cookbook and burn it with some free matches.

P.S. Maybe the squirt bottles are for putting out the flames and ashes. Show producers are so smart.

Fantasy Cooking League – Cook Ratings

2009-11-02T08:04:00.000-08:00

I was in a pointless but rather fun discussion with a couple of friends of mine the other night. We somehow started debating the idea of 1). restaurant cooking as a sport and 2). physical ratings for cooks - whether or not there is such a thing as physical advantages that make a cook better than another of equal skill level. The hypothetical discussion was really centered on some different examples. For instance, take a physically bigger cook: does he naturally have a physical advantage with butchering that makes him better than a smaller cook with the same experience level? Other examples that we argued included a cook with longer nimble fingers who could be assumed to be “naturally” better at making dumplings/dough shapes.

I’m sure repetition and experience is the ultimate development of talent, but I’m thoroughly convinced that no matter how much time I put in, my hand paws could never put the fine touches on making dumplings like my grandmother’s longer thinner fingers could. Like I said, it was really a pointless conversation, but I thought it’d be kind of fun to make a ratings guide or judging game for cooks. And if you play an EA Sports type game like Madden, you might recognize some of the categories… onwards:

The Basics:

Speed: The basic judge of how fast you can consistently go in a kitchen when it comes to prep, cleaning, mis-en-place, etc..

Endurance: How long you can maintain your speed.

Accuracy: Going fast means nothing, if your cuts look like you were using a hacksaw. Oh yeah, the salmon tastes like cardboard.

Power/Strength: Are you the puny guy that can’t lift the deep hotel pan alone or are you the beefcake that pours out the hot oil every other night?

Agility: How well you juggle multiple pans, navigate behind other cooks/chefs and avoid hot pans running right at you while ducking back and forth in your own station

The Finer Points:

Hands: How well you do peel, cut, catch, mold, press, position and handle items, e.g. the skills to make dumplings, samosas, pinch pie crusts, stretch out pizza

Coordination: Naturally clumsy people are not very useful in the kitchen obviously. Fumbling eggs are bad, fumbling hot trays are worse.

Palate: You might think it tastes right, but too bad everyone else is scraping their tongue over the garbage can.

Touch: No more obvious than the difference between medium and medium rare.

The Intangibles:

Teamwork: Are you the disgruntled guy watching everyone burn or are you trying to save someone from the weeds?

Awareness: Do you even know who’s in the weeds? Stop leaning on your station, wipe something.

Toughness: Ouch, it burns… or… ouch, it burns so good baby?

Coaching: The ability to coach and the ability to learn and be coached.

Chemistry: Look around - if you don’t like anyone, then in all likeliness, nobody likes you either.

Clutch: When it comes to being on top of your shit during game time, are you the rock or are you the sand? The difference between the guy who walks away when he’s done cleaning or the guy helping everyone else finish at the same time.

The Random:

Equipment: Your tools, your clothes.

Professionalism: Work is work, play is play. Learn to keep it in the pants buddy.

Appearance: I don’t want to eat the fleas of your pube-y looking beard or your blood stained apron.

Cleanliness: Nails, hands, hair, bodily fluids – the less the better.

Attitude: Go Big or Go Home.

To make a fun profile, tally up your scores on a rating of (1-100) for each category and then divide everything by 2 to get your overall. What do you think your rating is?

Don’t Mess With Vermont.

2009-10-26T01:12:00.001-07:00

I’m from Massachusetts and I won’t lie to you about this. I have spent countless hours of my life laughing at the abundance of hippies, hicks and hillbillies that live in the uneventful state of Vermont. But, like all good bigger brothers, New Englanders don’t like it when anyone shits on our states except for ourselves.

I found this story more than a week ago and thought it would be nice to bring this (now a national) news story to light via my blog (the media powerhouse that it is).

Basically, Hansen drink company makes the energy drink called Monster (which in my opinion, sucks). A small microbrewery named Rock Art Brewery in Vermont decided to name one of their beers Vermonster. The products have seemingly nothing in common except that Hansen has aspirations of making beer/alcohol in the future with the name Monster (probably something like the Smirnoff Ice shit). So they sent Rock Art a Cease-and-Desist type letter that threatened to sue. Their whole douchebag intention is to screw this small businessman into a legal battle that will bankrupt him and force him to relinquish his use of the name. Dick move Hansen.

Here’s the story via MSNBC, read here.

Here’s the video directly from the owner of Rock Art Brewery:

So after this story went public and people got pissed off, finally Hansen relinquished and dropped the suit a few days ago:

From the AP:

“A small Vermont brewery can keep making and selling its Vermonster beer.

Last month Corona, Calif.-based Hansen Beverage Co. told Rock Art Brewery to stop producing the beer because consumers could confuse it with Hansen's popular energy drink, Monster.

Lawyers for the two companies negotiated a deal: Rock Art can keep its Vermonster product as long it stays out of the energy-drink business.”

But there’s more bullshit on the horizon with Hansen’s trademark witch hunts apparently…

Well regardless, for all of the people that feel like social media has a useless and or negative effect on society, here is a shining example of it’s ability to band a collective community/support for the little guy. See, the internet isn’t always just for porn, facebook, and fantasy sports.

Oh yeah, by the way, Monster energy drinks are disgusting and I would never buy it due to the basic principle that it tastes shitty. Maybe they can trademark a new slogan, “Monster: Sounds better than it tastes.”

Menu Identity – Navigating The Chef [vs.] Owner Relationship

2009-10-22T08:02:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a restaurant SBA class the other night and one of the seemingly most innocuous and non sequitur questions of the night came from a prospective restaurant owner who posed this to the instructor:

“How do I find a good chef out there?”

The instructor went on for 5-10 minutes about poaching a sous from a great restaurant or stealing a #3 from somewhere. I’m perfectly sure he was right, but my brain tuned him out because I was envisioning a dozen of chefs that I could imagine being successful with their own kitchen regardless of whether they were a sous at this moment or not.

I initially dismissed this as more of a comedic and pointlessly irrelevant question, but then I began to think about it in more detail. Wouldn’t it be infinitely more interesting if the question was phrased from the chef’s perspective:

“How do I find a good owner out there?”

For many diners, one of the more mysterious and inconspicuous aspects of their dining experience is the relationship of the chef and the owner. The big question for the diner from this train thought is: “how does this affect my meal?”

And, like all good questions that require proper articulation, the answer is “yes, it does” and “no, it doesn’t.” Listen, I’m not about to start blaming what shows up on the plate on how good/bad the a owner chef relationship stands. The execution of your dish has nothing to do with that because a perfectly cooked piece of meat/fish definitely has more to do with the cook than the administration. But… have you ever thought about the menu?

Many chefs have great minds and possess great talent, but there are plenty of situations where that brain is never properly on display. In many kitchen situations, there are often chefs that are stymied by unnecessary meddling from their owners and constant setbacks due to this constant need for trend evaluation and concept change (which involves mass menu changes). I’m not saying that concept change isn’t necessary, especially during these times, but I will note that an even hand (when it comes to requesting changes) and proper menu cultivation/trust with a chef is important. It sounds stupid, but yes, working together in this crazy world of ours is THAT hard.

You’d be surprised by how many sad stories often come about in regards to responsible chefs who complain about being needled night and day by a disrespectful owner. It is the type of owner who disappears when everyone is digging deep and can’t seem to disappear fast enough when truly informed management decisions are needed. Sometimes the most important aspect of ownership is giving the chef the proper respect to perform the work they were hired for. Included in the haystack of issues regarding poor ownership are: constant worker policy shifts, poor/unpaid vendor management (without notifying kitchen staff), last second menu demands for change or service adjustments, uninformed requests based on number figures [not management] and constant business hour adjustments. Ultimately, the owner has the power, but it is the mismanagement of that power that ends up hurting the chef, the staff, the bottom line and eventually the food.

There are plenty of great owners out there and there are plenty of chefs that appreciate them, but when a chef owner situation turns negative in a kitchen – the enthusiasm is deflated and it takes a very good chef to prevent the food from suffering. All things being equal, the chef versus owner model can be a good example for the basic need for faith and trust. Please don’t apply this situation to every chef turnover reported on eater.com because every situation is inherently different and not every chef is a responsible, understanding and talented individual. Everyone has had an annoying boss in their lives, but quitting in the restaurant industry just happens to be more high profile I guess.

I was intrigued to blog about this because I felt like it was a slice of the industry underbelly worth identifying from time to time. That and it might be fun to throw a curveball into your dining experience because there are certainly many things that the common diner would never begin to perceive as having an effect on their food.

I’m not saying chefs don’t need to trust or understand owners when they properly address changes and operating problems, but in the same breath, I think owners need to trust that their chefs have the pride to work through those issues with concern, cooperation and, of course, ownership.

Pim Vs. Chang - CRIPPLE FIGHT!!!!

2009-10-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Now I think David Chang is a awesome chef, but lately this whole controversy about his SF comments isn't helping him. He's got a big mouth, but there are plenty of reputable chefs who are known to be brash and arrogant. On the other corner of the ring, we have Chez Pim, who I can softly say that I am not a fan of. I wouldn't begin to imagine how something like this could get started, but it apparently does. If this story is true, this is a pretty dick move on Chez Pim's part. No one deserves that. I love myself a good chef gossip shitshow because it makes my day go by faster - now I know why people read trashy celeb magazines. I just caught wind of this and maybe I can try to confirm this happening from a source I know. You draw your own conclusions. Enjoy the following report from the site Opinionated About.

This is awesome, credit my boy @leonardstinks for shooting me this story:

"Here is what I was told. According to three different people who work at the restaurant, when Pim first arrived at Ssam Bar the day before the dinner, she went down to the restaurant’s basement kitchen to drop some things off. While down there she noticed photos of various chefs taped to one of the walls, one of which was a photo of her friend Daniel Patterson the chef/owner of the restaurant Coi in San Francisco (a super-talented chef in my opinion.) I asked Chang about the photos and here is what he told me: “Since we don’t take reservations, when we know a chef is coming to town we put his photo on the wall so the staff can recognize him." (a photo of the wall is at the top of this article.) Now that sounds harmless enough. But Pim purportedly got out her cell phone and called Daniel and told him that Chang had his photo on something that she called “The Wall of Shame" and that he was making fun of him behind his back. "

Read the rest of the whole thing here:

Random Musings

2009-10-15T13:57:00.001-07:00

I haven’t been able to focus recently and I don’t know why, but cohesive thought has escaped my brain…I’m still working on developing some other test recipes, but I’ve been busy enough with other things that that’s going REALLY slowly. There are a bunch of things I can’t really particularly make heads and tails of right now, but I figure I’d throw some random musings out there…

-seems like everyone’s talking about social media nowadays and I guess you’re either in or you’re out… don’t see advantages to being out of the loop…

-can you be technologically relevant and up to date, but at the same time feel like you belong in a different generation? That’s me.

-I rag on Top Chef and TV food whores, but I’m not stupid enough that I can’t understand that, hype or not, you can either cook or you can’t. And, these are skilled people. Still not high on the idea of putting you face in front on your food when it comes to chefs appearing on Top Chef and I’ve disengaged from watching – it’s a little sad, because the talent looks awesome this season.

-I don’t care about David Chang’s comments. He’s a great chef, but being obtuse to the work of your own profession in a equally influential food city only speaks volumes about yourself. Personally, I can tell you the wonders of eating in a city as random as Alexandria, Louisiana. I, too can be a real ego-maniac, but I get sick of myself pretty often.

-Thomas Keller is the Michael Jordan of cooking. He is an iconic chef that doesn’t exist to put his personality or sound bites out there, but at the same time has become supremely recognizable, marketable, and overwhelmingly business-oriented. He’s got great game and sells a ton of his brand, but no one will ever dare call him a sellout. That’s MJ-esque.

-I’m guilty of throwing little jabs at NY once in a while (like their retarded infatuation with cupcakes), but I easily confess to loving to eat and spend time there. The constant NY vs. SF penis jousting may just be the absolute byproduct of social media hype and sensationalism – something that’s no longer just for the conventional newspaper and TV. Be aware.

-Portland and Chicago can give less of a shit about NY vs. SF, they’re just going out there and doing what they want. They’re kicking ass and don’t care to take names. People from LA: please stop telling me how much better everything is out there, can’t you just let me find out for myself? That’s my summer recapped to three lines.

-I’ve avoided the “burger” in a bar/restaurant sensation completely over the last few months. I’m going to Hubert’s Burger Bar though because I recall fond late night Vegas memories at the original. Good times.

-There must be a mysterious drug in their food because inevitably every Thursdays, I crave to eat Lers Ros. I’ve started making slogans for their food. Here are some that I love:

Lers Ros: #62 bitches.

Lers Ros: Hmm hmm bitches. (in a Samuel Jackson accent)

Lers Ros: So good that you won’t care about pronouncing the “s” at the end of Lers.

That’s as much of a restaurant review as you’ll ever get from me.

-I didn’t get to recap Notoberfest, I was happily tucked away in the kitchen away from the mobs. Some girl brought me Hooker (appropriately Hot Food Porn named) chocolates. It marks the second time a girl has gotten me chocolates in my life. Feels weird, but good and, obviously, tastes even better. If she gave them to anyone else first, I’m pumping them out of my stomach.

-Was working with Melissa Perello for the first time while helping Ryan for the Notoberfest event – nervous much? It must be a chef-crush thing (ala like a man crush but involving chefs)… I was seriously trying not to fuck things up while cooking/hanging out, but it was a ton of fun and she was all charisma and class. On some days, it’s never about being the man because you can be damn happy to just be to be the dude. So excited for Frances!

-I am currently producing the Todd English Lifetime movie: Tears of a Chef: The True Runaway ~~Bride~~ Groom Story of An Abuse Victim. I’m casting Shia Lebouf because he’s got that wonderful je-ne-sais-quoi that makes it okay to see him being beaten without feeling too bad… a necessity for the actor portraying this chef…

-Along the lines of @shitmydadsays is Shit My Mom Says: “Learn how to cook, because you can’t trust the woman that you’re going to marry in this generation to know how.” If there’s one guiding line that likely triggered my initial interest in cooking, that might just be it. Yeah, I’m a momma’s boy, got a problem with that?

-One of my favorite things that I do every holiday season (when I head back home to Boston) is that I try to learn/steal another heirloom recipe from my grandmother or mom. It’s a great way to spend and waste time. Xmas is nice, but its boring most of the time.

-I wonder what the ratio of chefs that love kitchen music versus chefs that don’t are? Hmm… does enjoying kitchen music make your work less competent or more rhythmic?

-Seems more and more recently, my initial plating for my food has been unbelievably lame and somewhat antiquated. It’s taken 3 or 4 tries to get things even remotely close to the what I want it to be. Sadly, most of the time I don’t really know what I want it to be until I’m hours away from cooking. There’s a need for some newfound clarity and perspective on my behalf… or fancy new plates. If you don’t think plating is the x-factor that differentiates a good dish from a great dish, then you’re lying to yourself.

-Thinking of making pumpkin biscuits.

-Not sure if I want to listen to the Pete Yorn Scarlet Johannson album, I feel like it’s the type of album, I’ll d/l, listen twice and never play it again…love the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack…oddly enjoy Meagan Smith’s cover of Here Comes Your Man…oddly dislike Zooey Deschanel’s cover of Please Please Let Me Get What I Want…not a fan of Simon Garfunkel.

That’s all folks.

Bridging the Gap: Education, Elitism, Exploration and Experimentation

2009-10-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

My perception is skewed in one direction and often it’s hard for me to come to the realization that I’m constantly absorbed in a culinary bubble. I’m not sure how to properly label this understanding or awareness, but I do know that my possessed information is generally lost on a majority of our population. To be honest, I have no desire to slow or dumb down the constant learning process required for what seems to be an infinite set of principles, techniques and ideas, but recently, there have been many situations where I’m conspicuously out of touch with identifying with people who have a less than a basic understanding of their food (seeing food only as a means of necessity). As a result and byproduct of food education, I can get caught off-guard by the perception of food snobbery. But I wouldn’t say that this issue bothers me, because I have no qualms with how people choose to react to me. My self-image is controllable, but I have no interest in being disingenuous - rather, I find myself wondering why such a big gap exists between people with a general knowledge of food and those who have no interest in learning or understanding what goes into their body.

The two concepts, exploration and experimentation, seem inherently related by denotation. Both can be identified as acts of curiosity or interest, but their methodology and governing philosophy are obviously separate. It is exactly this separation that our understanding of a majority of food issues lie. If we look at the idea of exploration, it connotates a positive act of courage with acceptable risk and a satisfying end (albeit unknown) result. Experimentation is normally viewed as an act of higher risk that needs to be approached with caution and sometimes fear. I think most people can agree that they are much more willing to explore in most cases than experiment with their food (which we can identify as the perceived gap, i.e. risk), but, in reality, the end result for either scenario is the essentially the same. Why is fear marginal for some ingredients and in some instances, but not in others? That has never made sense for me.

We know what we’ve known for the longest time – a key problem with a person’s fear of food is perception. A lot of people fear trying offal, bison, venison, goat, smelly cheeses, etc., because the perception is that they are experimental, but in reality, that is almost no different than the exploration of gorgonzola or blue cheese on a burger. (Would like to note that this discussion excludes religious obligations to denying food – talking just about fear of food)

For the most part, I’m very understanding of how and why people approach food. Different people hold vastly different set of values when it comes to how they regard food. Some are intrigued and involved with every detail of its creation or slaughter, while others only view it as a means of sustaining life. This divide can sometimes be easily identified and attributed to the gross generalizations that plague efforts to bridge the gap between those that are food conscious and those that are not. For instance, take the word and the idea of a “foodie” – it has become the primary calling card for food elitism in the sense of positive self-identification (e.g. The Foodie Handbook, Diary of a Foodie), but it has also been regarded with absolute disdain as a polarizing and a segregating label.

Let me clarify, being knowledgeable does not make and equate to becoming a “eat organic/sustainable/local/raw only” neo-hippy that starts pushing their food ethics on others. Because many of those people are real assholes. Education brings to consciousness a person’s ability to identify their own food decisions as they are best suited to their own means and how they affect their lifestyle/environment. It would also be a shame to separate yourself from learning your own options based on the potential fear of being labeled as something as meaningless as a healthy hippie or a foodie.

Polarization, lack of understanding, unfounded fear, segregation and perceived elitism are essentially the barriers for self education – just like it was for every conflict in history based on class, race and gender. And, in the most true sense of irony, education is also the key to breaking through. We’re not talking about ground breaking ideas here – I’m practically just applying the basic model of prejudice to issues regarding food awareness. Imagine a world where people understood the issues that plague the problems of consumption and hunger. Imagine a world where people understood the issues that are attributed to increasing health risks of children (new chemically induced food allergies, processed food bacteria/poisoning, obesity). Imagine a world where I didn’t have to wonder if people have ever tasted duck before?