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) 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".
Work Girlfriend
Named so as she spends a lot of time at her day job with Girlfriend Actual.
Work Girlfriend is the official outgoing face of chomple.com. At the 2009 Winter Fancy Food Show, Work Girlfriend was responsible for schmoozing all of the press reps and getting us press kits and samples. Her overzealous undertaking of this responsibility led to significant weight gain amongst the entire chomple.com staff, leading us to dock her paycheck to pay for Jenny Craig.
She can be seen about town driving in her ginormous white pickup truck named Elsie Sue. She is no longer allowed to park near Girlfriend Actual's Prius, Dave, as Dave gets scared.
Work Girlfriend's primary area of expertise is sauces, as she frequently feeds the neighborhood children healthy food which must be disguised as something unhealthy, sinful, or just plain wrong. Work Girlfriend once tasted 191 sauces in one day, which turned her tongue purple, dehydrated her and caused some old guy from Ireland to describe her as "saucy". That last one may not have been related, but we were drunk at an Irish pub and all the writer remembers is wanting to go find a Scottish pub and throwing a brick through the front window.
She lives with her dog, Hazel. Hazel can eat fire. Seriously.
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.
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.
Cosmopolitan Girlfriend
Named for the Cosmopolitan Dinner at Eastern Empire, Cosmopolitan Girlfriend is arguably the friendliest Chomple staffer. She is frequently responsible for calming down the more histrionic members of the Chomple staff.
Under her friendly exterior, Cosmopolitan 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 Cosmo in Cosmopolitan Girlfriend.
Being the most mathematically inclined member of the Chomple staff, Cosmopolitan 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 Cosmo Seal of Approval.
Cosmopolitan Girlfriend is Chomple's official expert on Chinese food.
Naruto Girl
We were introduced to Naruto Girl as a rumored resident in Work Girlfriend's house. Although Work claimed that she had a daughter that occupied one of the bedrooms, we were never sure if there was anyone in there. The door was always closed and we never figured out if the claim was true.
Turns out that there really was someone living in there. We finally met her and she turned out to be totally awesome. Naruto Girl usually accompanies us with Work Girlfriend to various Chomplevents. As with all the Chomple staffers, she works for food, which actually turns out to be more expensive than paying her an actual salary. Then again, if we were trying to make money off of this website we would have shut it down a long time ago.
Some have asked why Naruto Girl is not named Naruto Girlfriend. It's very simple: she's 15 going on 16. Calling her a girlfriend would be sort of creepy, at least for someone of my age. When she turns 18 we'll call her Naruto Girlfriend, but by then I'm sure she will have done something to deserve another name entirely.
We may end up calling her Mango Girlfriend. She has a voracious affinity for the Thai dessert mango sticky rice. If she could drive she would probably drive herself to San Francisco for some at the first place she ever had it. Happily, we've brought her to Thai places closer to home that she could reach after a moderately long bike ride. Or Work Girlfriend could just be nice and take her there. But Naruto Girl needs to get better grades in French and Math. Or so we've heard.
Naruto Girl also holds the record for the most people that have sent in viewer mail asking if she was single. This has necessitated a header on every post she is involved in telling potential suitors to calm down. We all realize there's something inherently sexy about eating roasted vegetables, but seriously.
In addition to a highly developed palate and being the only Chomple staffer that likes being filmed in HD, we hear that she writes some seriously awesome fan fiction. But until she shows us some, we just know her as the girl that really really likes mangoes.
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
