chomple.com

After a very rough day, I reached a milestone!

It's been a long day, but somehow ultimately successful.

The day began with Actual stuck in a 6 hour meeting where people were deciding to be extremely frustrating. By the time she got home she was very wound up and in a very bad mood.

On the other hand, I spent the day trying to figure out how the hell monster.com is still in business. Maybe people figure that if you can put up with the ugliness and lack of functionality of that website, you will be able to deal with whatever legacy company application they are going to force you to use as part of your job.

After a day of frustration we headed out to dinner. I have been having a raw oyster craving for weeks, and Sacramento has a significant lack of places to have raw oysters at anything resembling a) a realistic price point b) a selection of oysters more robust than what I refer to as "Louisiana Brown". So, despite our beter judgment, we went to the one place that would serve us oysters at a reasonable price: Hooters.

When we arrived Hooters was jam packed. Apparently it was UFC fight night which meant a) no tables available until after the fight and b) all bills had an automatic 18% gratuity. Now this last one threw me for a loop until I realized that they were perhaps practicing some hilarious socioeconomic profiling. Just like the lockup case in your supermarket's liquor department contains not the highest priced stuff but what is most often mentioned in rap songs (and thus, goes the logic, most likely to be stolen), Hooters was probably practicing a similar strategy. I'll let you connect the dots on this one.

Not wanting to wait for hours for a table, we hopped in Dave (our Prius) and headed out looking for another place to eat. Across the street I saw Olive Garden. The line stretched out onto the sidewalk. Seriously, America, as long as that many people choose to dine at Olive Garden I don't believe there's actually a recession of any sort.

Further down the street we encountered Tex Wasabi's, Guy Fieri's original joint. Now, most of you know that I ate at Guy Fieri's restaurant Johnny Garlic's and gave it a one-star review for general mediocrity and lack of anything interesting. I was so disheartened by the experience that when I got home I went into our DVR and cancelled my series recordings for the two Guy Fieri shows that I had set up. The same part of my brain that decides to taste Arby's Horsey sauce once a year fired up and I said "Let's go eat there."

This place was also jam packed. 45-55 minute wait for a table. In this economy? Are you kidding me? For a place where just about every online review site is full to the brim with lackluster reviews. And it gets better. The entire 50 foot sushi bar was empty. We asked if we could sit there. "No, you can't, because we don't have waitstaff here to cover the sushi bar." WHAT? Sigh. We left this place too.

Finally we decided to go to Whole Foods because we needed snacks anyway to take over to Cake Sister's house. By this point, Actual was way past starving and was losing the ability to make decisions and was very agitated. We circulated the store twice trying to find something she wanted to eat, but Actual was so hungry that nothing sounded good.

On her third rotation she decided to take advantage of their meal deal and get a meal of three sides, as the chicken entree they had there looked very unappetizing. Upon reaching the window she noticed lamb shanks braised in Guinness. SCORE!

So before I go through the rest of our haul, I must share that I reached a milestone today.

A year ago, a food meme was circulating. It was a list of 100 foods and you had to mark down which ones you had consumed. So I went through the entire list and it turned out there was only ONE thing I had never consumed: nettle tea. We found some at Whole Foods today and I had it. So here's to my 100/100 on the food meme!

And while we're here, here's a closer shot of my favorite t-shirt...

This is Actual's meal deal from Whole Foods. Lamb shank braised in Guinness. Her sides were asparagus and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were good but the asparagus was cut and not snapped (aka, Whole Foods got lazy) and thus had some wood-like stems. I had some of the lamb and it was phenomenal.

Whole Foods is still having spelling problems by the way...

We also bought these. It's nice to be able to eat your car.

Actual's dessert kit to be shared with Cake Sister. Fresh strawberries, our favorite Straus heavy whipping cream and Straus ice cream. Worth every penny, which is impressive considering had we substituted Straus for Walmart supermarket brand we would have saved 6 dollars!

By this point I was too tired to find real food for me to consume and I suspected Actual had found the only really good hot food in the store. So we stopped at Wienerschnitzel where I got their pastrami sandwich. It's not Katz's, but it's really good for something from a hot dog chain.

And there's my Saturday. Hope yours was better.

Golden Dragon: Traditional Szechuan Food! In a strip mall!

Thanks to Yelp I found this gem of a Chinese restaurant in a random strip mall in Rocklin. It really is honest to goodness Szechuan food, and it's really in a strip mall.

You would never think from the exterior that something special was waiting for you inside.

There's a normal McChinese menu here, and the boring Chinese food is really good. But you're here for the fun stuff. Ask for the Special Menu, which is the pink thing on the right. Ignore the hilarious and sometimes very bad translations on the menu. I'm sure "drooling chicken" is probably really good, but I'm kind of scared to try it.

Sushi Girlfriend was having a very bad day and requested "normal food".

Sushi was very excited to find sesame chicken on the lunch menu.

Soup courses first. This is the chicken and corn soup that I shared with Actual. Think a normal egg drop soup, but add sweet corn, tender chicken and enough MSG to cure an elephant. Usually they don't use too much MSG, but it was enough that Actual only had a couple bites. Being Asian and having a natural affinity to MSG, this was the best soup ever! This week, anyway.

Sushi's Hot and Sour. Danger, Sushi Girlfriend, danger! This being a Szechuan restaurant, the soup was turbo fiery. When the waitress put it down, Sushi remarked "Um, I can see the peppers in there!"

Next up are Szechuan spice dumplings which are Actual's favorite. They are handmade pork dumplings, given a quick boil then served in chili oil with crushed Szechuan pepper on top. The pictured portion was ordered mild which equals hot at most other places. We have ordered these hot before, and they came with so much Szechuan pepper on top that we couldn't see the dumplings.

Here's Sushi Girlfriend's sesame chicken combo. I really have nothing to say about this.

My obvious boredom for/at her dish elicited this reaction from Sushi.

Back to the fun food. This is the hot and sour noodle soup made with bean vermicelli.

Last but not least, the best dish there. This is on the special menu under the very innocuous sounding "diced chicken with pepper". Our best guess as to how they make this: they dip raw chicken cubes in a water and corn starch mixture, then toss it into a super hot wok with peppers. It's easily one of my favorite 10 dishes in the world. I love this stuff so much I wasn't willing to stop Actual from serving it up just so I could take a picture.

Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant
4800 Granite Dr # 4800
Rocklin, CA 95677
(916) 632-9542

Breakfast

Not so tasty.

Cooked beef, raw beef and some musing on restaurant promiscuity.

Most people aren't very adventurous when it comes to food. That's why we call it food porn a lot of times, as we end up depicting our consumption of food where either the food or the location is almost out of bounds for the average person. For all of his hilarious discussion about the subject, it's almost ironic that Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations represents what some would argue is the pinnacle of food and travel pornography.

I bring this up because most people I know are very monogamous when it comes to where they eat. Once they find a place that consistently delivers what they feel is an acceptable product, they keep eating there. I used to do the same thing. Find a place that makes good fajitas, keep going there. Want fajitas, go to designated fajita place. Nevermind that there are 20 more places in town that make fajitas, or that odds are one of those is probably better. Why risk it? This place is good enough for me. I tried one of those other places and it wasn't as good. And that place that everyone says is the best in town looks dirty and is in a neighborhood where the people don't look like me. Can't we just go to Chili's? Please?

Over the years I've become a lot more disloyal to the restaurants I eat at and a lot more promiscuous when it comes to picking places to eat. This is harder than it sounds as I try to keep myself out of chain restaurants, which means I'm not cheating on a corporation but a person or family. The places I frequent, the owners know us. We hang out when I come to eat. I know about how their restaurant is doing in this crap economy, they know what I want and how I like it served. They comp me things all the time. A new ingredient comes in, I get to try it first. We call it the "inner circle" treatment. It sounds like Alice Waters' idea of the neighborhood restaurant, and in a lot of ways it is.

Part of this is friendship, but it's really about customer service and retention. They know I'll be back, if not out of friendship or loyalty, but because I get the VIP treatment. And that's the beauty of a small family owned restaurant: every repeat customer gets the VIP treatment. Almost every person that works there has a vested interest in your continued business and will do everything in their power to keep it.

Of course, we always go try new places, but I feel a twinge of guilt each time I do it. Especially in this economy, where now FIVE of my favorite restaurants have gone under. Maybe if I had just eaten there more, they would still be around. Maybe if I had written more about them, maybe I could have driven more business there--enough to keep them afloat. Maybe maybe maybe.

Congratulations if you read this far. I'm actually going to start talking about what I ate now. The above ranting will become relevant in a few pictures.

We were so hungry after we left our place that we ducked into Sonic.

This is Jody pouting because she's waiting for me to take a picture of her chicken toasted bread bacon sandwich concoction. I forget what the real name is. It's really good!

This is my meal. Half of Jody's tater tots and a corn dog.

And of course supersized Sonic drinks. Half off all drinks during their happy hour from 2-4. Nothing beats a 44 ounce iced tea for 95 cents. We almost stopped coming to Sonic altogether a few months ago when we arrived at 3:55 with one couple in line ahead of us. It took those space cadets TEN MINUTES to order two drinks and a burger (note to readers: if I encounter you out in the wild taking more than 10 minutes to order ANYTHING or attempting to pay with a check, I will ridicule you on this blog, that is a promise). When we got to the counter, we were denied happy hour drink pricing. We tried to protest, but the yokel behind the counter just waved us off. Remember what I said earlier about people with a vested interest? Yeah. Not at Sonic.

With the immediate hunger problem solved, we headed on to do some shopping. For dinner we went to Queen Sheba's in downtown Sacramento to pick up Ethiopian food.

I felt guilty eating here.

For years we have been going to the other Ethiopian place in town called Addis Ababa. It's a small family operation and we know the owners. Every time we've eaten there food has been excellent. The place is almost always empty or nearly so when we are there. I eat there when I can. Queen Sheba has been here the entire time, and I've never gone. I've been able to justify avoiding it for this long because it comes highly recommended by an individual that has the palate of a dung beetle.

They apparently have a great lunch buffet. I'm never in this area around lunchtime so I wouldn't know whether the reviews are true. One of you down there go for me, will ya?

Much fun decor inside. They must have thought I was nuts walking around snappng pictures while they finished getting my take out ready!

Here's our take out. Ethiopian food is served on a porous flatbread called injera. The injera is also your eating utensil. In a traditional meal, once the bottom injera is finished, the meal is done. The food comes packed with an additional injera on top.

Now you'll have to forgive me for the fact that the food in these boxes doesn't look very luscious. Had I eaten there they would have presented it very nicely on a large round injera. Instead they had to cram it in a box for me. Also, most Ethiopian food is eaten with and by a piece of injera, so their cuisine tends towards stews and other loose foods that don't photograph very well.

This is Actual's vegetarian platter. Clockwise from the top left, she has yellow split peas stewed in tumeric and some other stuff, stewed cabbage and potatoes, chopped collard greens and spicy lentils. I could try to describe how good this stuff tastes but unless you've had Ethiopian food it just won't make any sense. You'll just have to trust me until you go get some of your own.

My first box was gored gored. Basically raw beef cubes in a spicy sauce. Cringe if you want, but this was the best thing I've put in my mouth since the foie gras sushi I had back in November. The texture of the raw beef combined with a sauce that I swear has 8 layers of flavor. Freaking amazing. If you get to an Ethiopian restaurant, try a plate. Served with homemade Ethiopian cheese (this stuff is like crack, Jody gets an extra order every time) and some extra sauce in case it wasn't spicy enough.

My next box and more raw beef. This is kitfo, which one could loosely describe as Ethiopian steak tartare. It's raw beef that's chopped, but the similarities end there. The beef is mixed with a butter and spice mixture. This stuff is more fiery than the gored gored. And believe it or not, it feels silky in your mouth.

And if you're wondering, yes, this place is better than the other place I've been eating at all these years.

Check out their website for a much better explanation of how Ethiopian cuisine works.

Queen Sheba Restaurant
1704 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818
(916) 446-1223
www.queenshebas.com

This is why I'm a food critic...

...and NOT a music critic

Taco Tuesday!

For Taco Tuesday the chomple.com crew along with a bunch of our day job coworkers headed to El Azteca in Roseville. This place is hilariously referred to as the official lunch place of all the corporate campuses in the area, as every single person in the place at lunch is wearing an employee badge of some sort.

Making this Taco Tuesday extra special is that one of our coworkers is leaving... and she's the super extra special princess of Taco Tuesday. Most of the people in our group come and go when it comes to Taco Tuesday, but this coworker is always there. Taco Tuesday won't be the same without her.

Once you order and pay you take a seat at one of their tables. Every table gets one or more baskets of chips and some salsa. The chips are pretty good but the salsa is bomb diggity. I know good salsa, and this stuff is great. It's much better than most salsa at other Mexican places, and loads better than 99% of the salsas available at your local grocery.

This is Sushi Girlfriend's dish. It's a regular quesadilla. There was some confusion when this thing arrived as the waitress announced it as "veggie quesadilla". Look, lady, a quesadilla is a tortilla with cheese in it. A veggie quesadilla has vegetables in it. Eventually got her food after we almost sent it back to the kitchen. Sushi described it as gooey and crunchy and very good.

This one belongs to "Hot girl whose name I forget who was at the last Halloween dressed as a sexy prison guard." Shredded beef tacos. I love the tacos at this place but I usually opt for the lengua and cabeza. Most people don't share my odd taste in tacos.

Princess Taco Tuesday's plate which ironically has no tacos. This is her quesadilla and enchilada combo. PTT must have loved it, as she cleared her plate in record time.

This is "My Favorite Filipina" and her two taco plate. I think she got pork. MFF gets bonus billing today because she brought me some awesome furikake yesterday!

A brief note about beverages. At most places the largest drink is the best deal. Now, this doesn't really matter at a place with free refills but I like to take my drinks to go. El Azteca has the requisite soda machine and iced tea but also has a big jug of horchata. At this place, the small cup is $2.10. The large one is $2.20. As you can see, there's more than a slight difference between the two, and you're getting a lot of soda for the extra dime.

"Guy who sits next to My Favorite Filipina" and his wet burrito. The salsa and chips were so good he didn't even touch his burrito until it had been placed in front of him for more than a few minutes.

Work Girlfriend and her enchiladas. I don't know whether or not she's intentionally giving the middle finger to Sushi who is taking the picture. Work Girlfriend has been showing a lot of attitude lately as she goes to meals extremely hungry and she's tired of people being in her face taking pictures and not being able to eat. As you can see from a previous post she was so ornery when we left that she threw Nerf darts at our car.

Girlfriend Actual got a shrimp diablo quesadilla. This was a double-wide quesadilla filled with shrimp and a spicy sauce. See the second picture where Actual lets us peek at the luscious insides.

This is my tamale and enchilada combo. Nice and boring, but delicious. I can't bring you wild and exciting food all the time.

Actual and Sushi had a contest to see who could open their eyes the widest. This is what happens between courses when the chomple.com crew gets together.

Sushi obviously couldn't handle the sheer "Glare at Yod" ability of Actual.

A food coma overcame Sushi and she passed out. Actual decided to use this opportunity to suck some blood.

El Azteca Taqueria
4006 Foothills Blvd # 103
Roseville, CA 95747
(916) 772-6682

Updated--Meet the chomple.com staff!

Chomple.com is run by a group of hungry, usually well-mannered people who eat and write for the blog in their spare time. To protect our anonymity (we're afraid of disgruntled chefs, malicious waiters and most of all, chain restaurant investigative squads--that means you, Guy Fieri) every chomple.com writer is given a code name when they start writing or tasting for the blog.

Of course, some of you are saying "But... there are pictures of you guys all over the blog! And sometimes you guys use your real names! We can figure out who you are pretty easily!". Well, that's true. As you might have noticed, we're food bloggers and not spy/secret agent bloggers. Maybe we just wanted funny names.

So if you've ever wondered who makes up our hilariously hungry staff...

Yod

Yod is the only person on chomple.com that uses their real name. Many have wondered why this is is the case, and the most popular theories are 1) He's not cool enough for a code name 2) He really likes his real name 3) His picture is on the front page of this blog so he's not really anonymous anyway 4) He set up his name as Yod when he signed up with Typepad and he's either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to change his name.

He has apparently been food blogging for a long time. It all started when on a trip to Quebec when he was 9 years old, his parents forced him to keep a travel log in a ratty old notebook from a thrift store that smelled like a combination of musty basement and wet dog. To their utter horror, Yod only wrote about what he ate and where he ate it. Turns out, Yod's parents didn't believe in eating out when on vacation as they felt it was a waste of money and that they were only there to see (and not taste) the sights. Although the Quebec travel log was meant to be shown to family friends, his parents thought better of showing their friends written proof that their child subsisted for two weeks on ramen and Chef Boyardee straight out of the can.

Yod's food tastes tend to be very varied and bizarre and he professes to like anything as long as it is not mediocre. As a person that loves to document things in writing and pictures, anything is worthwhile as long as he can tell a story about it later. This means that Yod loves to search out food that is very good... or very bad. Some say that the best steak he ever had was at a Denny's. The steak in question was thin, overcooked, and tasted like it had been injected with about two gallons of saline solution. He enjoyed the badness of that steak so much that he has ordered it on at least three more occasions.

Yod was educated at Duke University and has a degree in Economics. As a result of this, Yod tends to prattle on constantly about obscure economic disciplines and game theory. This is what causes the bored and bemused look frequently sported by chomple.com writers in pictures posted to this blog. His educational background also leads the chomple.com staff to frequently delegate the task of determining the gratuity to him, although all this usually proves is that one can get a degree from Duke and still have problems doing simple math. Yod has frequently threatened to replace himself with a $1.50 solar calculator to avoid this, but the proposal has been rejected by the chomple.com staff as most if not all calculators do not have jobs and therefore would probably not pick up the bill.

His cat Ebby is the most followed animal on Twitter with over 4900 followers. Yod sometimes feels that this is not the best thing, as the cat's discontent is now very well known.

Girlfriend Actual

Girlfriend Actual, or "Actual" for short, is named this for actually being Yod's girlfriend (unlike the other Girlfriends on chomple.com, who would only date Yod if he was the last man on Earth AND aliens were invading and said that they were going to kill them if they didn't date Yod AND said aliens were actually aliens and not some ploy by Yod to hook up with his staff AND it was just a plan by one of the Girlfriends to convince him to get into a large kettle pot to be stewed since there was no food left on Earth AND ok this is depressing me... err the writer now so I'm going to stop, but you get the idea).

The Actual comes after the Girlfriend as a shout out to our friends in the armed forces. Anyone with a callsign ending in "actual" is the commander of whatever came before the "actual", and Girlfriend Actual is the de facto commander of the chomple.com Corps of Girlfriends.

Having been subjected to Yod's odd taste in food for years, Girlfriend Actual has developed a very high tolerance for bad flavors and food poisoning. This makes her the official War Correspondent from chomple.com, as she is frequently the only Girlfriend to accompany Yod to eateries which appear to be either unsanitary, radioactive or both.

Girlfriend Actual brings a unique perspective to food and wine as she is anosmic (has no sense of smell). This is due to a freak accident many years ago involving a track and field meet, a discus and the poetry of e e cummings. Actually, the last part might be sort of inaccurate. To be honest we never ran her background check, mainly because we spent the money on Pocky at the Japanese store.

She sports a degree in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Sacramento. Girlfriend Actual also spent time at the University of California, Davis, where she worked at a bakery and became good friends with a very friendly strain of yeast named "Burton". She has since lost contact with Burton, although every time she eats a baked good she wonders if she might be ingesting a part of her old friend.

Girlfriend Actual spends her free time feeding Yod's cat Ebby, even though he PROMISED when they got the cat that he would take care of the cat. Apparently by "take care" he actually meant "pet and meow at constantly".

 

Designer Girlfriend

Originally named for the Cosmopolitan Dinner at Eastern Empire, the Chompler formerly known as Cosmopolitan Girlfriend is arguably the friendliest Chomple staffer. She is frequently responsible for calming down the more histrionic members of the Chomple staff.

Designer Girlfriend was renamed as such for two reasons: First, we haven't been back for the Cosmopolitan Dinner in a long while, and she felt her name was gathering cobwebs. Second, too many people assumed that this was some sort of Sex and the City reference. Needless to say, Designer Girlfriend has better taste in entertainment than that. We think. There are rumors that she loves reruns of Reba.

Under her friendly exterior, Designer Girlfriend plays the secret role of Texture Tester for all Chomple meals and tastings. Even minutely subtle defects in texture and mouthfeel will find a Great Wall of Designer angst in Cosmopolitan Girlfriend.

Being the most mathematically inclined member of the Chomple staff, Designer Girlfriend uses a complex point scoring system to measure the unhealthiness of food as well as the flavor. If the flavor score does not exceed the unhealthiness score, the dish does not receive the Designer Seal of Approval. 

Designer Girlfriend is Chomple's official expert on Chinese-American food and cheese. Not together.

Barbie Girlfriend

Barbie Girlfriend was genetically engineered using a combination of Barbie Doll parts and some living flesh we cooked up at an organic biolab on the outskirts of Sacramento. Chomple scientists then mounted various bionic augmentations on and in Barbie Girlfriend. We wish we could reveal more, but much of the technology we used to make her that hot is still patent pending.

Her bionic circuitry was programmed by Girlfriend Actual, so she leans more towards enjoying American food. Barbie Girlfriend has multiple subroutines inside of her designed to convince Yod that instead of eating at the third Chinese restaurant that week, perhaps it might be a good time to go out for some burgers.

Having been fitted with a bionic sauce-tuned mass spectrometer built into her eyes and special crust resistance sensors in her teeth, Barbie Girlfriend is a requirement when Chomple reviews pizza places. No matter how small the imperfection, Barbie Girlfriend will detect and describe the flaws in any piece of pizza.

When not reviewing food, we send Barbie Girlfriend off to recreational soccer leagues to use her bionics and run circles around people. 

Cake Sister

Cake Sister is the biological sister of Girlfriend Actual. She is an extremely accomplished cook and baker that makes dishes that are usually much better than anything I could ever pay money for. You may be wondering: why am I doing dating the sister that isn't the one with superhuman cooking skills? It's pretty simple. She's already married. 

Ok, I'm kidding. It's really because she has an advanced version of the Yod-Drownout bionic TalkToTheHand unit XL-2000 that Barbie Girlfriend is fitted with.

I'm still kidding. Do you really think I pick my mates only by cooking skill? If that were the case, I would have married that 60 year old woman with the taco truck that used to park in front of my office. Besides, Girlfriend Actual makes the meanest steaks, pasta, Thai curries and peanut sauce in existence. It's even better than what my mother used to make. (Hey, Girlfriend Actual, don't worry. My mother doesn't read blogs.)

Regardless of my family dynamic, Cake Sister is named for her completely out of control psycho good cakes. They really are that good. At a recent charity event, someone paid $350 for one of her cakes and felt it was worth every penny.

Cake Sister honed her baking skills under the tutelage of a mildly insane Frenchman in Davis, CA. Once on her own, Cake Sister discovered her inner cakitude and brought baking to a whole other level. After receiving her Master of Frosting Administration, she got her Ph.D in Cake Engineering. Her dissertation was titled "Convection Dynamics and Cake Layers when applied to Cakey Goodness."

Unfortunately for most of you, Cake Sister is not yet (we're working on convincing her) a professional baker. She's an architect by trade. So the only way you're getting a Cake Sister cake is at an auction or if you convince her to make one for you. Trust me, you would pay tons of money for one of her cakes, but the fun part for me is that you can't. Mine mine mine!

That being said, if you own/run a high volume, special event restaurant and need the best cake baker on Earth working for you, give Cake Sister a call. Just keep in mind that Cake Sister is an architect, and therefore won't work for the slave wages we know you pay the other people in your kitchen. Don't try to deny it either, we read Tony Bourdain's book. 

 

LTK

And now it's time to introduce our tame food taster.

Some say:

• he possesses a secondary set of teeth specifically for chewing peanut butter
• he once yawned on a deactivated jet engine and it came to life
• he can use AutoCAD with his feet
• Disneyland once closed Space Mountain after LTK challenged the stars to a brightness duel
• he can communicate with dogs and children using ultrasonic waves only seen in the Large Hadron Collider
• celery stops growing in his presence
• he can make guacamole by channeling his internal hate chi of avocados
• he believes bacon to be vegetarian, and cheese to be a fruit
• he turned down the role of Iron Man because the suit didn't come with shorts
• his medals from the Marines are made of papier mache in case he is discovered by the enemy and he needs to cover his tracks
• Converse makes special LTK high tops, but they don't know where LTK is. So they just release his special shoes into the market and hopes he finds them. They are a collector's item popular with dictators and jugglers
• he believes the natural state of food is out of a refrigerator, and that farm animals should be refrigerated for maximum freshness
• upon eating baby back ribs, he can identify the wood or charcoal used, the kind of grill, and whether the meat was Kosher
• he once won the Concierge World Championship by fulfilling the request "I want a bathtub full of fondue"

...but we just know him as LTK.

Captain America

This Chomple staffer is Cake Sister's husband. Of all of the Chomple contributors, he is the one that strikes fear into restauranteurs around the globe. 

Captain America is a dyed in the wool American that loves American food. Having been raised on spectacularly good grub (I've had it, trust me) and now being married to Cake Sister, Captain America has no time for your bullshit excuse for a steak and mashed potatoes.

Captain America has no time for your tricks. You will not fool him with a strange sauce, or foam, or foam sauce, or covering your crappy food with enough truffles to turn a polar bear black. 

If you cut corners, Captain America will smoke you out. If you use crappy ingredients, Captain America will know. 

Captain America may not like some of the odd food other Chomple staffers eat, but bear in mind that his palate covers most of what restaurants in this country serve and what most of us eat on a daily basis. If he hates your food, it's likely most of America will hate it too.

This bears repeating: most of the Chomple staffers are food freaks that will eat anything. The fact that we like your restaurant has nothing to do with whether you will actually make any money. Captain America is the real food critic here. Ignore him at your peril. 

 

 

 

Chomple staffers on strike:

The following Chomple staffers are on strike for various reasons. Most center around the lack of pay, benefits, and kittens.

Sushi Girlfriend
Carnitas Girlfriend
Ketel Boyfriend
Work Girlfriend
Naruto Girl

Work Girlfriend is disgruntled

Work Girlfriend decided after our latest meal that it would be a good idea to throw Nerf darts at our car on the way back. Apparently her job satisfaction is taking a hit because she's tired of waiting to eat until the pictures are taken.

Rudy's Mexican Gourmet--My favorite Mexican place

Rudy's is not traditional Mexican. Rudy's is not Tex-Mex, Fresh-Mex, Cal-Mex, Mex-Mex or Anything else-Mex.

Rudy's is just Rudy's, where Rudy does his take on Mexican food.

Rudy's is damn good. And Rudy's a cool guy. I can think of no other place that I eat on a regular basis that loves their customers as much as Rudy's does.

I headed out to Rudy's with Jody, Work Girlfriend, and Sushi Girlfriend in tow.

None of us ordered soup today. This bothers Rudy, as he knows how damn good his soups are. Rudy has a technique for combating this. He gives out free samples of his soup to customers, knowing that next time you return you will have soup on the brain.

Today we got samples of his cream of turkey and tortilla soup. Both were hella good. The cream of turkey actually tastes like cream. Amazing. I was too slow on the shutter to get a pic before everyone attacked.

Rudy's fresh fried tortilla chips and fresh salsa. Beware of the green stuff. It's NOT avocado, it's more of a creamed green chili concoction. Delicious, but not the mild happy experience some people expect.

Entrees next. This is Work Girlfriend's carne asada platter. Carne asada is a food that I feel has been abused by most Mexican restaurants. I think most places it more resembles jerky than something you're meant to eat as part of a meal. Rudy's is fork tender and has great spicing. I was sort of pissed at myself for not ordering it.

Don't laugh too hard at the next three pictures. The other three of us got the grande combo with different arrangements of the same foods.

This is my combo: pork tamale and an al pastor taco. The tamale was pretty good but the taco blew my mind. The meat was crusty and juicy at the same time. The sauce that Rudy uses on the tamales and enchiladas is thick and earthy. I could drink it from a cup.

Jody's pork tamale and shredded beef enchilada. Jody says "the enchilada was exceptional"...

Sushi Girlfriend's taco and enchilada. Meats unknown (not that it was a mystery meat, I just don't remember what she got).

Everyone was full, but I bought dessert. This is Rudy's banana chimichanga. Yeah, you read that right. A ripe banana wrapped in a cinnamon and sugar tortilla, all deep fried and served with whipped cream. This was so good we all stopped talking. I think Work Girlfriend's eyes rolled back into her head.

Rudy apparently thought we needed even more goodness, so he brought us a flan on the house. Rudy's special recipe is extra creamy and has nuts on the bottom. The nut layer makes it crunch like the top of a creme brulee.  I seriously thought Jody was going to pass out when she tried it.

This is 90 seconds after the dessert arrived.

And as usual, a gratuitous shot of Sushi Girlfriend eating dessert (this was the banana chimichanga). Note the lady behind Sushi Girlfriend, she had that look on her face the entire time. That was very sad, because Rudy's makes everyone happy!

Rudy's Mexican Gourmet
6011 Stanford Ranch Rd # 107
Rocklin, CA 95765
(916) 435-4050

Golden Gate Bakery: The Temple of (egg) Tart

If you live in San Francisco, you have probably heard of the crazy Chinese bakery where the line stretches down the block as people try to claw their way to an order of delicious egg tarts. Since we were in the neighborhood, Team Chomple decided to check it out.

This is the beginning line out front. It's sort of confusing at first. The hilarious part was that Jody and Work Girlfriend were the only white people in line. All of the tourists walking past kept asking them what the line was for (assuming they were the most likely to be English speakers, I'm sure).

As you will probably want to check this place out, let me give you the rundown. This is how you acquire the best egg tarts this side of the Pacific:

1. Get yourself to Golden Gate Bakery (address is at the end of this post).
2. Locate the current end of the line. Depending on the time of day this can be difficult as upwards of 100 people may be in a line that occupies a standard narrow and crowded Chinatown sidewalk. The line starts from the front door and forms to the right until it runs into the street vendor in front of the store next door. At this point the line goes across the sidewalk towards the street to the velvet rope that's set up. From this point the line continues to the left for as far as necessary. This could stretch past a block at peak times.
3. Wait in line until you get inside. Your only job during this (other than being patient) is when you get to the crossing point from the street side part of the line to the building side. Your job is to move across the sidewalk when there is enough space for you between the last person on that side of the line and the street vendor sitting on his stool. Also, you are the line's temporary enforcer, and it's your job to make sure nobody tries to cut and avoid the street side line.
4. Once you somehow make it inside you will be called to the counter by one of the ladies. You should order at least one dozen "custard tart". What else you get there is up to you. The ladies will probably suggest some other items.
5. Pay. They will most likely not have any tarts ready, so you will have to wait for the next batch to come from the back. Try to find a spot along the wall to wait and let more people in. No matter how bored you get, do NOT take pictures. They get very testy about that.
6. Once you pay, the lady who you gave the money to will take out a pink box and assemble it. Keep your eye on this box! This is the box that will contain your egg tarts. When you see the box get filled and tied shut, be ready to be handed your order and fight your way out the door.
7. Enjoy as soon as possible. They are better when hot out of the oven. You will spot people in the immediate area digging into their pink boxes.

A shot of the madness inside. If you're the lady who told me no pictures, I'm very sorry!

This is my pink box of goodness...

And here are the egg tarts (custard tarts). Pure heaven. Silky smooth and perfectly set egg based custard sitting in flaky delicious crust. They are really that good and worth the crazy effort.

Golden Gate Bakery
1029 Grant Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 781-2627