Beautiful Hawaiian ahi tuna loin came in this morning… Who’s up for some sashimi?!

Chef Gabriel’s wet burrito…. Bomb

Perfect turkey son!!

I know it’s late for thanksgiving but we made turkey and stuffing at work

David vs. Sea-bass at work part 1

Grilled pork, barbecue pork, pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, just a smidgen of pâté, cilantro/coriander… all atop a slightly buttered, crispy baguette. ….. yup quite amazing.

So I did a catering event on Sunday and I gotta admit it went kinda smooth.  There were a few small things I would of wanted to do differently though.  For example we made a crispy skinned salmon, which I wanted a harder sear on, but was pressed for time but still came out crispy.  I also made an avocado salad that was for a different dish, I wish I had a little more time to really focus on it and develop the flavor profile a little more, but other then that I had a great time.  the family we cooked for was really cool and chill, except when we first got there i though the dog was goin to bite me on the ankle , but he settle down as the day went on lol.  it would have been nice to relax after but no i rushed home and changed rite quick and went to work to cook more haha sunday was a good day for me.

I woke up really tired this morning after a quick nine hour nap that seemed not long enough.  Realizing I had not done any of the assignments that were given to us to do during the weekend, today was one of the few days that didn’t want to go to school.  Being the star student I am though, not really, I went along anyways.

After arriving at west campus, and going on a brief hello tour to people I had not seen in like two days, I had learned that none of the assignments were due today, imagine my excitement.  This small piece of valuable information was a brief “pick-me-up” to start my day.  As the hours went by, so did my energy and “excitement” for learning, I had fallen asleep three times in class only awaken from the vibrations of received texts.

Alas we had a brief break between our classes and I had accidently stay out thirty minutes too long.  The quick stroll through Pasadena’s old town had somewhat relieved me from the wretched voice I had to endured for 3 hours, along with the thought of returning to a reasonably more enjoyable class, which went by remarkably fast.

After school I had plans to have dinner with my dad at Roy’s in Pasadena, which was very nice.  On the way home it seemed very quiet in the car, during dinner we had talked about my well-being, and my cousin and best-friend who had gotten murdered two weeks ago, r.i.p.  I had wondered if this was the primary reasoning for the quietness, well it was for me and I had left it at that.

I don’t have an outstanding ending to this story, like my other entries because of the fact that this entry is different.  This entry is just a release, I’m not upset or mad, I just feel like talking. Days in the life of Jason are either quite remarkable, for my standards, or they can be days I really don’t mind forgetting about.  But this day was different, it was just an average day, nothing horrible, nothing great, nothing sad, and nothing happy.  So I guess the only thing to do is tell the “super-being”, thanks.

Pancakes and Sausage

A delightful stack of our signature vanilla-bean and candied almond pancakes, accompanied by our freshly-made, house-smoked breakfast sausage.

Burger and Fries

100% Angus Beef,  American cheese, oven roasted tomatoes, flash-fried onions, crisp butter lettuce, house dressing.

Cake and Ice Cream

Our freshly baked Japanese Melon Pan served with a Lychee-Raspberry Sorbet.

I received a call about six in the evening from my friend, Ray, whom which I had been friends with since elementary school.  He exclaimed to me that we needed to meet and talk about something pretty important, being curious and intrigued I agreed to this meeting and told him to pick me up around seven so we can have dinner.  After being retrieved, he told that he wanted to have dinner at this torta place in Baldwin Park, after hearing the word torta the rest was gibberish and had no opposition to his request.  Before I knew it we had exited the freeway and was in the heart of Baldwin park, which is not saying much.  Parking in the parking lot of a Home Depot at last we had reached our destination and walked into Tortas Sinaloas.

Seated towards the back of the excessively warm temperatured establishment we had a nice view of the place.  It was simple yet spacious which is actually quite abnormal for a mexican restaurant.   The atmosphere was quite nice with artistically painted walls of warm, vibrant colors of what I assumed was the Sinaloa, Mexico country-side, and the intoxicating aroma of sweet peppers, onions, garlic, and pork perfumed the place and the sounds of slow spanish serenades filled the air.  That is until the door between the dinning room and the kitchen was opened and the slow spanish serenades were immediately over powered by an obnoxiously loud stereo with a serious electrical problem probably caused by a spilled Dos Equis playing Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina. Directly to the right of us were large plastic containers filled with freshly made agua frescas and as we treated ourselves to them I had learned why I was here.

Ray, being a famous SoCal D.J.  and club promoter known as DJ Ray Rhythm appearing on Power 106, KIS FM, and hundreds of clubs throughout California and Las Vegas, he had come to me with a business opportunity.   He wanted to open up his very own nightclub, and he had come to me because of my experience in this venture.  Myself being that I am from a family that owns five very successful Gentleman’s Clubs in Los Angeles, that I have worked in and managed since the age of seventeen, he figured I was the right person to come to.

In the middle of our discussion the food had arrived from our very attractive waitress, yet my wandering eyes went straight to the delicious looking torta that sat upon my plate.  The smell alone was hypnotizing and the fat sandwich in all its glory was asking me to woof it down.  I took the first bite of the pastor con aguacate torta, and it was the way a real torta should taste with slowly marinated pork, fresh avacados, pickled jalapenos, crisp red onion, and lettuce, it was pure brilliance.

As we ate our sandwiches it was as if we had forgotten the reason why we were here.  I had asked him to continue with his adventuress business proposition and to tell me his ideas.  He only had one thing to say, with a full mouth of torta he calmly stated “I want to takeout Spice” .  This was a daring and bold statement, club spice being the number one club in the San Gabriel Valley targeting the ages of 18-25, with extremely high female attendance, not to mention a common place he DJ’s.   I had explained to him the difficulties of the adventure we were about to embark on, yet in a way there was no way we were not going to do this, it would be saying “no” to too much fun and too much money.  I made a quick phone call to my cousin who overlooked most of the business in the family, I set-up another meeting for the next day.  Ray’s idea’s were heard and loved, and were immediately put into action and are now currently in it’s financial stages and Club Hypno is presumed to open in the summer of 2010.

As for the over-sized sandwiches we had destroyed that day, I thought to myself, that this is food I was never going to forget on a day I was never going to forget and the flavors of that torta still accompany my memories, that I dream about ‘til this day.

Who’s the FNG?  The first words I heard when I walked in the back door of my first job in a professional kitchen.  The words weren’t exactly the words I was expecting to hear as I entered, but then again I didn’t know what to expect.  I looked at the guy who felt the need to announce my presence, he was of average height, short hair,  with a neatly trimmed goatee, thick silver hooped earrings, his left arm was covered in a tattoo sleeve, he had an off-white jacket covered in stains similar to mine. He was standing in the perfect position of sunlight that you could see he was wearing no under shirt and had both nipples pierced, and as I took a quick glimpse of what he was doing I read the word “cook” tattooed on his right hand knuckles and the rest of his arm was covered in scars, burns, and was severely discolored, which I later learned was from an oil accident he had while working at Geisha House.  His name tag said Isaiah, he looked at me like he was the shit, he was and he knew it.

The man responsible for my first job, Executive Chef Tim Guiltinan, came up to me shook my hand and made a brief announcement, ” Everybody, this is Jason, he’s going to do some prep for us on weekends and maybe more after we see how it goes today, Okay?” Immediately follow by “Yes Chef!”  Their reply had taken me back, I had heard these words before at school everyday but never like this, its was thunderous,  in unison, and had so much feeling and respect behind it as if Chef Tim was their general in a room full of soldiers.  He told me to follow him, and as I did, I noticed he walked with a slight limp and like he really had to take a piss.  The kitchen was quite big for a small restaurant, it equaled the size of a lab at school if not bigger.  He took me on a quick tour of the kitchen, introduced me to most of the brigade and he showed me the walk-in which I thought was also pretty big, and he showed me where things were such as pots, pans, utensils, etc.

We stopped at what I assumed was his station, he was in the middle of portioning beef tenderloin.  As he continued to do so,  he asked me if I was ready and that I can take out my biggest knife, which was my Chefs Knife, and to put my bag under the table to the right of him.  He told me ” alright man today’s your big day, this is what I need from you:  there’s two sheet trays of Foie in the reach-in, bring one to me and i’ll show you how big I want each portioned and then portion all of them and then back into the reach-in.” As I began to walk away, thinking oh that’s not that bad, he said “wait that’s not all, I also need you to clean about 120 scallops that are in the walk-in, just take off that little shit that hangs on the side of them you know what I’m talking about, then put them into the reach-in, fillet and take off the skin of all the salmon that’s in the walk-in, portion it, ill show you how big, sheet tray it up and then reach-in, there’s 3 boxes of ducks back there, take apart one box of them, breasts go in the reach-in and french the legs and give them to Vinny. Toss the heads, put the gizzards in the walk-in, roast everything else and get a duck stock going, quarter about 40-ish tomatoes and soak 3 full sheet trays of watercress in ice cold water for 20 minutes then give them to Marco. The prep sinks back there, .” He pointed in the direction of Isaiah, but the sinks were past him, I made a mental note to walk around him.  After I finished writing my list of chores, I replied “Yes Chef” and began to walk away.  I got about three steps away and heard my name again followed by, “oh and you got an hour, so I would start rocking shit out! And set up a court bouillon on the stove behind me in a 40 quart.”  I quickly replied “Yes Chef”, and began my tasks.

As the hours went by I was given about seven or eight tasks a hour.  It was now about 5:30 p.m., my very first dinner service was in 30 minutes, I was excited and terrified at the same time.  I had thought to myself, hey I’m doing pretty good, but I wasn’t sure because I wasn’t getting any feed back from the Chef or anyone else like at school.  All of a sudden I hear from Isaiah,” twenty-five minutes ‘til service, yes?!”  Followed-by “Yes Sous-Chef!”.  I thought to myself what? He was my sous chef? Why didn’t I know this? Until I realized I was never introduced to him, he never spoke to me the whole five hours I had been there. I was just told his name, but they failed to mention he was sous chef.  I was too busy and I had bigger things to worry about, so I didn’t.

About 10 minutes before the first customer was to arrive the chef came up to me and said ” take a five minute break and then go to Marco in Garde Manger, your taking his place by the end of the week, oh and a…good job.”  He said in a very awkward manner as if he had never stated those words before, which made me feel good.  I went outside and smoked a much needed cigarette with Jeff who was on grill station tonight.  My five minutes were up and went inside to Marco,  he asked me if I was taking his spot, I said “Yeah and then asked him why he was leaving.” he replied “I got a job in Vegas at Mesa Grill with Bobby Flay.”  And before I can congratulate him, Thomas the maitre d’, came into the kitchen and notified us that the first customers had arrived.  I took deeps breaths to try to calm my raging nerves and listened to everything that Marco was telling me about the Garde Manger station, until we were interupted by Chef Tim, in his monsterous voice he shouted ” Order up table 14: 1 tomato, 1 scallop, 1 duck, 1 pork!” The brigade which now included myself proudly answered  ”Yes Chef!”

My culinary career had begun.

I asked the hard though-out questions, the pain in the ass question, the kind of questions that make a Grandpa fake a sneeze attack in order to leave the room: Who’s God? And if there is this “ultimate being” that vows salvation, has a voice that commands respect, creates beauty that even words fail to do it justice, and forgives all, Where is he? Is he on vacation?  Where do gods go on vacation? Where do they go kick it with their heavenly homies?  I mean he’s got a preeminent view of this nice size rock he created, in seven days by the way, when will he remove his Gucci Locs and realize enough is enough?

And I’m not talking about the things that man did to itself, so shut the fuck up!  I’m talking about the primitive rights that one should be born with.  To a lot of people, is water too much to ask for? Is the lowermost shelter only for people that pray?

The point I’m trying to make is, faith is a lot to ask for when there is so much defect in this creation that even Apple wouldn’t release it.  When asked for basic human necessities people are denied.  It’s come to the point where it would be unnatural if these wrongs were rectified and basics were met.

But who the fuck am I right?

My bad for the negativity your holiness.

Resume your Mai Tai sippin’ and lower your Locs because outta sight, outta mind right?