January 14, 2014

It's Been A Long Time...


...I shouldn't have left you, without a dope beat to step to. That's a line from a hip hop song. For real, I shouldn't have left for so long without saying anything. For those of you who are coming back after all this time, thank you. For those of you discovering the blog for the first time, I hope you like it.

Those of you who are coming back, you are probably wondering what happened. Why the long break? To simply say "not much" would be a lie. In actuality, there have been tons of things going on. One of the biggest reasons would simply be work.

As a chef, the holiday season can be rough. This last year happened to be one of busier seasons in the last 3 or 4 years. Six day work weeks with lots of hours and lots of desserts.

After that, life has been pretty good. With a new love in my life, I all of a sudden had a personal life to attend to. With so much more time spent out the house, sitting down at the computer almost became a thing of the past. Almost....

In the past 2 weeks, I've had friends and coworkers ask me about the blog. After the 3rd or 4th person asked, I knew it was time to get back on here. The only problem now is figuring out where to start.

Since I'm not even sure how often I plan to do this blog thing, I'm not going to bother doing a bunch of individual posts on one subject. Instead, I'm going to show you some of the high lights and a low light of what I've been up to with a brief explanation.

What you see above are mushroom and onion fritters on top of garlic hummus. The red dots are drops of sriracha. This was supposed to be the next blog post. I had a bunch of pictures and everything. As time went on, I ended up losing the recipe for it and just put it on the back burner. Oh well. It was pretty good though. The only thing I can remember at this point is that the hummus was a great compliment to the fritters.

This was a caramel macchiato or something from The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. It was good. Not great, but worth the price.

I made this plate for dinner because I wanted something a little lighter. While the meatballs are in the center of the plate, the real star of this show are the sauteed collard greens on the right. Lately, I have been eating an ass load of collards. I can't help it! They are fucking delicious! Plus, they taste way better than kale. I could give a rats ass how special kale is. Too many other greens taste far better than kale. I could seriously go on a rant about kale, but I will leave that for another time.

Now it's time for that low light I mentioned earlier. Last month, I told myself I would do a blog post on a place I had never been. Somehow I ended up here. This place had posters saying they carried gourmet burgers, with a Korean bbq burger being one of their specialties. It sounded ok, so I gave it a try.

While the burger looks good from here, the taste didn't quite hit the mark. The bbq portion tasted fine. The patty tasted ok. Together, the flavors got muddled. It's like the two meats were fighting and there was no winner. It was a  tad pricey, and in my opinion, not worth it. Oh well, they can't all be winners.

What you see above is what they call THE REAL DEAL! This is a burger from a restaurant in Bellflower, CA called Fronk's Restaurant.

A coworker started talking about this place and how good the burgers were. A bunch of us decided to go after work one day, and ever since then, our minds have been blown. Seriously, this place fucking rocks! It feels like one of the places you see on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. Here are a few more pics:



All the food I've tried from them has been great. Not good, FUCKING GREAT! If you live in SoCal, get up off your ass and go to this place!


This is the last set of pics here. Sorry about the dark picture, but their fucking sign was out! It's there fault!

Anyway, a coworker and good friend of mine had accepted a job in China and was going to be leaving soon. So, an after-work food binge was in order. We first went out for Korean bbq, then we went to this place for dessert. I didn't know anything about it, but my friend Sue said it was like snow cones, but even softer.

There is Sue and her husband, Elzhar. Sorry if I messed up the spelling on your name, homie!

Here is the beautiful Aimee Lynn and yours truly. Now for the food!



I can't remember what all the flavors are. I know I had mango with bananas. The other two....fuck, I don't know. Anyway, Sue was right. It's like a snow cone, but super soft! I didn't know you could get ice crystals that small.

The place is kinda cool. You pick from a variety of flavors you want for the ice. Pick some toppings and you are done. Plus, they have a good selection of sauces to choose from to take to your table. All around, it's a cool spot to take someone.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed a quick look into what I've been up to. I'm not sure when the next post will be here, but here is a sneak peak of what to look forward to.

Thanks for coming back!

I'm out.