Coffee – Part 2

Let’s talk a little more about coffee, shall we?

In part 1 of this blog, I extensively ranted about the disgusting sludge called coffee at Starbucks. Do any of you buy Starbucks coffee and make it at home? Whenever I buy any quality brand coffee, I tend to buy the whole beans and grind them at home..it gives me, and I am sure you as well, the delusion that the coffee is fresher and will taste better. I’m not sure if that is true, but there is a trend that I have noticed when purchasing coffee beans for home consumption.

Starbucks’, along with Peats’ and many other brands, coffee beans tend to look oily and shiny. Especially with beans that are dark or extra roasted..why is that? And when you brew the coffee, there seems to be an oil slick ON the top of the coffee. Do you know why that is? Because the beans are OVER ROASTED!!

Now let’s look at this logically….would you over cook a roast? When making toast, do you toast the bread to the point that it is almost black? Of course you wouldn’t, so why would over roast and practically burn the coffee beans? I’ll tell you why…..Because it is easier to burn the beans and have exactly the same charred flavor than to bother with different tastes in different stores. Starbucks and Peats (among many other coffee chains) seem more concerned with quantity, rather than quality. I went to a Starbucks in Osaka, Japan in 2002 and the coffee tasted EXACTLY like the coffee at a Starbucks in New York. Now..while some of you may like “consistency”, if I am in another country, I don’t want to taste things exactly the same as they are in the USA. It’s a simply STUPID idea. I want to taste the DIFFERENCES!!

Enough about Starbucks…I could on and on because I simply despise what they have done to the coffee industry and how they have ruined so many peoples’ pallets. Funny that….many Americans prefer the taste of burned, over roasted coffee….hmmmm…what does that tell you about their pallets? Hmmmm……? And please DON’T make any remarks about the fact that it is “Dark Roasted” coffee..IT IS NOT! NOT! NOT! I drink dark roasted coffee all the time and it tastes nothing like Starbucks. IT IS BURNED!!

I was fortunate to have a date last week….yes, it does happen once in a while, and we decided to take a stroll in the Rockridge section of Oakland, Ca. While strolling, we happened upon a small coffee shop, The Bica Coffeehouse, and my date suggested that we stop in for a coffee, giving us the opportunity to sit, sip and people watch. It is a small coffee house, several people sitting in the windows, working on their laptops and sipping their coffees. As stated previously, I am not big on coffee that isn’t coffee..no flavors, no mocha, bla bla bla. But I do love a cup of Cappuccino. I mean, really..I’m Italian..all Italians are supposed drink espresso and Cappuccino!!

So, I ordered a Cappuccino…for $3.50..ISH! With, only one person working behind the counter, it seemed like it took forever for him to finish making the coffees. While I was waiting, I had time to chat with my date a bit more and took a phone call. Finally..the coffee was done. We sat at a table outside the shop, proceeded to people watch and sip our coffee. First sip…a lot of foam and very little coffee. Second sip, coffee…and much to my surprise, the coffee was delicious. I was expecting the typical, hippie over-roasted, oil-slick laded burned beyond belief coffee that is so popular among uneducated pallets these day. But much to my surprise, the flavor of this Cappuccino was amazing! Smooth, yet bold with no burned coffee bean taste, the proportion of milk to espresso was perfect and served at just the right temperature that you didn’t burn the inside of your mouth when sipping. Truly worth the $3.50. I recommend a visit to this lovely little coffee house. You can find them at www.bicacoffeehouse.com It’s not much of a site, but you can get their address there. And also, don’t forget to visit my friend Joe at The Celtic Coffee Company in San Francisco for a really lovely cup of coffee. www.celticcoffeecompany.com

Now..I know I’ll get a lot of comments about my favorite place to buy coffee, in California. But since most people here have C.U.P.S. (California Uneducated Palate Syndrome) and buy their morning coffee at those places mentioned above that I shan’t mention again, I have been forced to find a decent cup of morning coffee. I happened to have a craving one morning for an Egg McMuffin..yes, on occasion, I do crave a greasy, calorie-filled breakfast sandwich. So while ordering, I thought that I would give McDonald’s coffee a try. Much to my surprise, it was delicious! Smooth, not burned, tasty and the server made my coffee exactly the way I like it. I was impressed! McDonald’s has also jumped on the coffee band wagon, making all sorts of crazy coffee combinations, to satisfy the ridiculous trend of coffee drinks that so many people crave these days. (And that are also making people FATTER than they already are). So they are buying better quality coffee than they used to. I will give McDonald’s kudos on their coffee for two reasons..it tastes like coffee AND it is NOT consistent, depending on where you are in the country. McDonald’s uses coffee from more local sources than just over roasting their beans to taste the same in each location, giving you the opportunity to enjoy the subtle taste differences. But no matter which McDonald’s I visit, the coffee is always delicious. And I am happy to say, that I have converted some doubting Thomases.  Even Dunkin Donuts, the best coffee in the world, uses beans from different coffee suppliers, depending on location. Quality is always better than quantity, in my book.

So..what have we learned? Over roasted burned coffee beans, when brewed, makes a brown liquid that should be poured into your crankshaft. Properly roasted coffee beans, when brewed, make coffee the way it should be made! If you like those places that burn their coffee..well, that’s your loss, but I dare anyone to justify why it is ok to burn the coffee beans! If you really do, come on over to my place, and I’ll burn a meal for you.

Until next time…buon appetito!

This is more appropriate…………

Given that so much about the food industry pisses me off, I thought it appropriate, after my son Kreyg’s suggestion, to change the name of my blog.

As of today, my blog is now called “The Cynical Chef”.

More appropriate, don’t you think? Pretty funny!!

Coffee, Part 2, later this week and a side by side review of 2 steak houses in Contra Costa County, Ca.

Stay tuned!

Coffee – Part 1

OK…I know….I haven’t posted in a while. My youngest just graduated high school, between that, planning her grad party and being down with the flu for 2 weeks…I’ve just not had the time to blog. All is calm now so I can return to blogging and gracing you with my overly stubborn opinions!!

My cousins Jen and Stephanie inspired this one…Stephanie, because she insulted my favorite coffee and Jen because she thinks she’s actually going to change my opinion…HA! All I can say is that I love my cousins and good luck to them!!

Who doesn’t drink coffee? I can’t even wake up without at least one cup every morning, but usually end up drinking 2 or 3 more cups at work. I really love a good hot cup of coffee, light with cream, one sugar or with some of the new flavored creamers that you can find in the diary case at most supermarkets, although I do prefer my coffee to taste like…coffee.

Over the past 15 years, the coffee industry has exploded…there’s a coffee shop on every corner and the quality of some coffee has actually improved over what I grew up with in the 70′s and 80′s. More than likely the reason that the coffee industry has exploded the way it has is probably because some hippies thought that motor-oil like coffee was tasty and trendy, spreading the word to their other hippie friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on and so on.

You may have noticed that I have already insulted one group and one coffee chain…he he he…I haven’t even begun…hang on..there’s more…..

I have to default back to my move to California in 2004, as I have in many previous blogs, as a point of reference for my contempt toward current trends in coffee. After arriving here, I discovered that there are NO Dunkin’ Donuts within at least 500 miles of the San Francisco Bay area! WTF!! WTF!! You mean…I have to drink Starbucks…or Pete’s…or something else?!?!?! ISH!!! Do these people here have absolutely no taste whatsoever?!?! No Dunkin’ Donuts?!?!?!?!

So I tried Starbucks. There seems to be a Starbucks on almost every corner in California and each one of them has a line of people waiting for a cup of coffee….Now there’s something I had never seen before..a line for a cup of coffee…wow, that must be some good coffee if people are willing to wait in for it!!! I never saw more than two people at the counter at Dunkin’s Donuts waiting for coffee(probably because the staff at dunkin donuts doesn’t want to hear about each customer’s life story as is done so often in Cali, thus holding up the line for everyone else!!)…even in midtown Manhattan…this must be some good shit!! I can’t wait to try it…I may even shun Dunkin’ Donuts when I taste this fabulous brew from Starbucks.

I get out of my car, I proceed to Starbucks, I see that they have an almost lounge type atmosphere with big chairs, tables, people hanging out, chatting with each other, the aroma of fresh ground coffee lingers in the air, I hear an espresso machine in the background, ooh that sounds cool..then there is the line of people waiting to order…ooh..another line of people at the other end of the counter…can you order in both places? This is going to be a fun experience…Dunkin’s Donuts officially sucks at this point.

Then I heard it……….”Can I please have venti, double shot, low-fat, caramel macchiato with just a hint of cinnamon and at 130 degrees?” WTF??? Am I in the f@#king Twilight Zone?!?!? I thought this was a coffee shop…not a side show from a Fire Island Cabaret!!! What the hell is a “venti”??? What the hell is a “double shot”??? “Caramel Macchiato”??? “130 degrees”??? I thought that you took a pot of coffee, poured it into a cup, put in some milk and sugar and went on your merry way. OH NO!!!! Not at Starbucks! No..at Starbucks, you can order a coffee with 850 different ingredients in it, brewed to whatever temperature your cute little heart desires, get it in 4 different sizes, which are in Italian or some side show language AND then…then…you get to wait up to 5 or 6 minutes to get your coffee AFTER you’ve paid for it!!! Hell must be better fun than this!! Something doesn’t quite compute here.

So it was my turn. After waiting 7 minutes for only 3 people to order their “hmmm…I’m not sure what I want today even though I have been standing in line for over 5 minutes and have had ample time to decide…perhaps I’ll have venti double shot low fat soy milk Brazilian save the rain forest grown on a fair trade co-op while over roasting the beans so badly they leave an oil slick on the top of the cup caramel mocha americano macchiato with a wisp of cinnamon and no foam, oh and my son graduated yesterday from high school and I have so much to do before his party next week, while my spouse is away on a business trip this week making it harder for me to do everything, did I show you a pic of my son, isn’t he handsome and he graduated with a D+ average, we’re so proud of him especially since he spends all of his spare time listening to hip-hop and dressing like a thug so that he ensures himself of having a productive future” coffee, I asked the server if they had any regular coffee. She responded that they had some kind of “save the rain forest hippies and lentils and tree hugging” coffee or dark roast. I like dark roast coffee, so I decided that I would have a medium size dark roast coffee. “Room for cream”, she asked. Uh…they don’t put the cream in the coffee for you? “Sure”, I said. “$2.35″ she responded. $2.35?!?!? For what? A cup of coffee? Do I get a happy ending with that?? It’s coffee…not liquid gold!! She left about 1/4″ of space between the coffee and the top of the cup, for cream. I sprinkled in what looked to be the amount of sugar in a sugar packet and proceeded to pour in some half and half, to bring the coffee to the rim of the cup. The color of the coffee barely changed even after stirring it. Ok..I dumped a little out and poured in more half and half…suffice it to say that it took 4 tries before my coffee was the color that I like it. Then I tasted it. EWW! The shit tasted like motor oil. I have never tasted such disgusting coffee in my life.

Enough about Starbucks, for now…it’s just another example of how trends in the food industry sometimes take a wrong turn. I’m waiting for them to come up with an “Artisan” coffee…then I’m really going to have a field day ripping Starbucks a new one!

For the lack of Dunkin Donuts, what about your small coffee shops? Most small coffee shops offer a blend of coffee that they buy from their local coffee distributor or roaster? The coffee is usually ok, but most of these shops, when you ask for cream, put milk in the coffee, which is totally offensive to my taste buds. Half and half is the only way to go! You see, there is a small amount of natural oils in coffee, which tend to lend themselves to the slight natural bitterness of coffee. If these oils are left alone, they tend to give the coffee a slightly nutty and earthy flavor, which takes away from the pure coffee taste. I don’t want to taste earth or nuts (quiet Brent!), I want to taste coffee. There is enough fat in half and half to bond to the oil molecules in the coffee and subdue those unwanted tastes.

A great example of a small coffee shop that offers good coffee at good prices, along with a great variety of delicious home made goodies, is the Celtic Coffee Company in San Francisco. Stop by there sometime, say hello to my lovely friend Joe, and have a GREAT cup of coffee. The coffee tastes like coffee and not something you put in your engine block to make your car operate. And try one of his scones…they are delish!!

I guess my point here, is the same point I have been making in other blogs. Why do we need to cover the taste of something with a shitload of artificial flavors and garbage when the taste of coffee is delicious on its own?!?!

Part 2 of my coffee dissertation will cover other places that have crappy coffee and good coffee and explore a little more deeply the need for Starbucks (and other coffee brands) to over-roast their beans.

Until next time…

Hot Dogs…………here we go………………….!!!

OK…time to talk about hot dogs, or frankfurters, as you may call them. Hot dogs are truly a regional food, depending on where you are in the USA, a basic hot dog is served differently. And of course, being from NY and overly opinionated about everything, I will present you herewith, a discussion on proper hot dog etiquette.

Are we ready? Let’s begin, shall we………

There are more than an ample variety of hot dogs on the market these days. There are chicken dogs – gross! Turkey dogs – I didn’t know turkeys like hot dogs! Veggie and tofu dogs – Do I even need to say anything about those…FEH! These hot dogs taste like ass!

The only good hot dog, is a beef hot dog!! Several superior hot dog manufacturers only make beef hot dogs and are worth a mention: Nathans, Sabrett(East Coast), Boar’s Head, Kaspers (West Coast), Caspers (West Coast), Best’s (East Coast) and Hebrew National. There are other beef hot dog makers, but the aforementioned hot dogs are the best that money can buy. Now don’t get your knickers in a twist, I will explain.

A good all beef hot dog should be firm and not mushy as other types of hot dogs are. When you bite into a beef hot dog, the natural casing should *snap*, releasing the juicy goodness. The taste of the hot dog should always have a background hint of garlic and NO overly smokey flavor! Each of the mentioned brands of hot dog stand up to these standards. A good hot dog has a slightly tangy flavor, which compliments the mustard you will put on your hot dog………YES, I do enjoy mustard on a hot dog….spicy brown or dijon…not that nasty yellow crap!

A little description, for your reading pleasure of my experience with hot dogs:

New York Dog- Hot dog with mustard and/or sauerkraut, and maybe some red onions from the dirty water hot dog carts in NYC. Nothing else..that’s it! And for those of you that are not from the NY tri-sate area, that is exactly what we call them..”Dirty Water Hot Dog Carts”. You can find them on almost every street corner of NYC and they are THE BEST hot dogs in the world!!!

Chicago Dog – Hot dogs, served on a seeded bun (vomit), with yellow mustard, white onions, tomato slices, a dill pickle spear, neon-green relish, celery salt and pickled peppers. Uh…WTF is that?!?!?!? If I want salad, I’ll order a side dish of salad! How in the world can anyone eat something like that???!!!??? I mean, really…a dill pickle spear…on a hot dog? Tomatoes??? I feel the nausea coming on now.

West Coast Dog- Anything goes…tomato slices, mayonnaise, ketchup, avacado..you name it, they’ll put anything disgusting on a hot dog here. GROSS!!!!! Mayo…on a hot dog?!!?? Avacado?!?!?!?! WTF?!?!?! WTF?!?!!??!

There is a constant debate in my house about whether ketchup belongs on a hot dog. I think it is sacrilege, but Gracie and her BF seem to enjoy it. Hmmm…I admit, when I was a kid, I ate ketchup on hot dogs..and most kids do, mainly because their taste buds have not developed enough to enjoy the special taste of mustard. However…once you pass puberty, ketchup on a hot dog should be forbidden!!! The sweet taste of ketchup does not blend well with the tanginess of a hot dog…plain and simple! I can’t even imagine what it would taste like…simple vile!

And what about the bun? Seeded??? I don’t think so! Steamed or boiled hot dogs, deserve a steamed bun. Grilled hot dogs deserve a grilled and toasty bun. The texture of how the bun is prepared actually compliments how the hot dog is cooked…..think about that…..imagine it…and it’ll make sense to you too!

Along with pizza, hot dogs are my favorite food in the world (no smart ass comments please). There are so many ways to dress a hot dog – bacon wrapped, chili, chili-n-cheese, and the list goes on and on. Our discussion today was about basic hot dogs and the do and don’t of eating a hot dog. I am hopeful that you learned some useful information and that you will also eat your hot dogs properly!!

Until next time….Kali Orexi!

Pizza!!

This blog was supposed to be a rant…or was originally planned that way. I was going to use my unwavering bias to praise NY Style Pizza and to rip everything else to shreds. But, in light of the fact that I already ranted pretty angrily this week, I decided that I would present a calm, although heavily biased, blog today.

So…Let’s get right to it!

There are only 2 kinds of pizza -

1. New York Style

2. All the other stuff (including, but not limited to Chicago Deep Dish)

Shall we discuss…………………?

Pizza is one of those foods that people get passionate about. I, myself, am extremely passionate and overly-opinionated about it! (like I’m not overly-opinionated about everything else..lol) Everyone has their own favorite toppings, their own favorite type of crust and their own favorite place to eat it. It is painfully obvious, though, that all pizza is not created equally…….which is one of the things we’re going to discuss today.

Pizza shares the top spot as my favorite food. Pizza is everywhere..every town has a pizza joint; cities are peppered with pizza places; a large portion of the frozen food section of the supermarket is dedicated to pizza. But, frankly speaking, most pizza is on the level with frozen pizza. Don’t get me wrong, frozen pizza can be tasty when needing to satisfy a craving or the munchies or when going out for pizza is not an option. But let’s not confuse frozen pizza with freshly made pizza.

OK..so let’s get to it. A lot of what I have to say about food comes from moving to California in 2004. Until then, I never traveled any further west than Chicago as most of my traveling was up and down the East Coast. But when I moved to the West Coast, my taste buds were in for a shock! I’ve really never considered myself very naive, but I have to admit, I was expecting that food was the same all over the USA. Boy, was I wrong!! One of the first food lessons I learned here, was about pizza.

Any New Yorker will admit..no, they will argue, that New York Pizza is the ONLY pizza that should be allowed to exist in the world. Take a walk or a drive around the Tri-State Metro area of New York, and you’ll see a pizza place almost anywhere you look. Walk right in, order a slice of pizza and a soda, sit at a table (or in the old days you could stand at the counter), eat your slice, drink your soda, and the meal is complete. When you eat that slice of pizza, you pick it up, fold it, tilt your head slightly and take a bite. The slight crackle and crunch of the crust, along with the hot blast of melted mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce is a distinctive sensory experience that you only get from NY Pizza. While the slice is folded, a few drops of grease drip from the folded side of the crust, actually giving the crust even more flavor than it already has. And for those of you who don’t know it, the drips of grease or oil are from the cheese, not from the sauce, or anything else on the slice. It comes from using “Low-moisture” or slightly aged Mozzarella as opposed to using “High-moisture” or Fresh Mozzarella. The higher the quality(or younger the age of the  cheese) of the low-moisture mozzarella, the less drips of grease/oil you will get. If your slice of pizza yields a lot of those drips of grease/oil, the pizza place is using cheaper, inferior quality, old cheese, or a blend of cheeses. EWW! Why would anyone in their right mind use anything but mozzarella on pizza??

As I already mentioned, you can walk into any NY pizza place and order “a slice”. That’s all you have to say..and in two minutes or less, you will receive a slice of cheese pizza, hot and delicious. Yes, I also stated that you pick it up with your hand to eat it. Let me repeat that…you pick up the slice of pizza with your HAND in order to eat it.  Why do I mention these two VERY important things?

Firstly, let’s not confuse “Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza” with proper pizza. Chicago Deep Dish is NOT pizza. And before all of you mid-westerners disagree with me, hang in there….In all fairness to Chicago Deep Dish, it is quite tasty, but it’s a pie, not a pizza. Constructed of thick dough, layers of cheese, sauce, meats and veggies and usually an inch or thicker, it is a pie of sensory overload and decadence. One can’t pick up a slice of Chicago pizza with one’s hands, as one would a NY Style or any other kind of slice of pizza. It’s made to be eaten with at least a fork, most of the time a knife is needed as well, as you would eat any other piece of pie, be it apple, cherry or deep dish Chicago. Proper pizza is made to be picked up with your hand to be eaten..NOT with a knife and fork. Although this blog is not a rant, I have to say that it offends my senses to see people eating a simple slice of pizza with utensils. I mean, really…would you eat a hot dog and bun with a fork and knife (no smart-ass answers are necessary, thank you! LOL)

Secondly, you can’t order deep dish by the slice. Nor can you buy pizza by the slice in many pizza shops on the West Coast. In lieu of a slice, many pizza shops offer a “personal size” pizza…..uh…..FEH!! Because I am neurotic, I actually figured out that a personal pizza has 3 times as much crust and only 1/2 of the sauce and cheese as compared with a proper slice of pizza. I like the cheese and the sauce…who doesn’t?! If I want that much crust, I’ll just eat a couple of slices of bread.

There is something to be said for NY Pizza. Ask any New Yorker and they will tell you that NY Pizza has the perfect proportion of cheese to sauce to dough. It’s enough of each, without any of the ingredients being too overpowering.  Much to my surprise, many West Coasters don’t like the thin, snappy crust of NY Pizza. They prefer the thick, chewy, flavorless crust that is so prevalent on the West Coast. I say flavorless in this case, because it is just that, but I have tried to keep an open mind. To be fair, I have made it a point to eat pizza in as many places as I can on the West Coast to formulate my opinion, and I consistently come up with the same conclusion: the crust just lacks flavor.

It has been said to me countless times that it’s the water that makes NY Pizza so unique. The water is different here..and that’s not really a far-fetched notion. I have even tried to make my own pizza dough at home here in Cali, and in order to duplicate or come close to duplicating the taste of NY pizza crust, I have to increase the salt by a factor of 2 and use sea salt that is higher in minerals than ordinary sea salt. Sounds weird, but upon further research, I found that the mineral content of the water in NY is waaay different than it is on the West Coast. That could explain it….

I wholeheartedly believe that the crust is a huge majority of what makes a pizza tasty or not. But how it is cooked is important too. Pizza MUST be cooked on a stone slab…any other method just doesn’t work. A hot stone slab is what gives proper pizza it’s crunchy on the outside chewy on the inside texture. You just can’t duplicate that cooking pizza in a pan or on a wire rack moving through an oven. Again, we get back to the sensory experience. The slight smell of fresh bread, the crunch, the chew…all of which are really important to that sensory experience.

Toppings or lack thereof………..When it comes down to it, whether it’s frozen, NY style, Cali style..I’m a purist. I like plain, cheese pizza. Only recently, I graduated to eating pizza with pepperoni. And not because I am a snob (well, maybe a little) but I don’t like to mask the pure and simple taste combination of the right amount of cheese and sauce on a crunchy crust.  And what about these places that put weird stuff on pizza?????? Pineapple????? Caviar?? French Fries?? Pesto Sauce??? Sour Cream & Chives?? Pineapple aside, I guess this is part of the “haute cuisine” sect. I look at it this way…I wouldn’t put apple juice on my Frosted Flakes..I would stick with the original, milk. Insofar as pizza is concerned, I wouldn’t eat any of that silly stuff on it either. Again, this only serves to complicate the sensory experience. And frankly, putting something like pesto sauce on a disc of dough just isn’t pizza! You may ask, why not experiment, or open yourself up to new experiences….I say “Why”? Why mess with something that works just the way it is? Besides, I have tried those kind of things on pizza..I wouldn’t call it pizza…it doesn’t taste like pizza….it’s Foccacia.

The sauce itself, if made properly, already has several layers of flavors to work through. There’s the tomato, the basil, the oregano, the seasoning and the grated Parmesan cheese (most pizza places put a hint of Parmesan cheese in their sauce). Pizza sauce should NEVER be cooked ahead of time. I’ve worked in several pizza joints when I was younger, so I have a bit of experience with this. Every place I ever made pizza..the sauce was not cooked. The sauce was seasoned, slightly differently at each place, but consistently uncooked. Cooking the sauce ahead of time tends to make the sauce more acidic. And you would actually be cooking it twice, once on the stove, and a second time when baking the pizza. A third time in a case where a pizza place makes pizza ahead of time to sell by the slice. By the time you get a slice, the tomato sauce would be overly acidic and ruin the taste of the pizza. A good pizza place that makes “slice pies” ahead of time will cook several pizzas in advance, slightly underdone, so that when the single slice goes into the oven, the crust and sauce finish cooking and your slice is as fresh as it would be had you ordered a whole pizza.

A simple food, properly made pizza is a symphony of flavors….with the tasty crust, the sauce and the luscious mozzarella cheese. Take the time to eat a slice and allow your taste buds to slowly experience what a good piece of pizza really has to offer. Bite, chew, taste, look for flavor combinations, feel the textures….maybe you already do that…..Hmmm…..Perhaps that is why so many people are so passionate about their pizza….And the discussion ensues……….

Until next time, Buon Appetito!

My Blog – Why and When

This will be a short blog today…I want to thank everyone for their comments and interest yesterday when I posted my first blog..it’s very cool.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while..the more I watch cooking shows on TV, the madder I get..I should be on the FoodNetwork, not some of these rent-a-chefs that are on there…ISH! Gracie keeps telling me I should try out for one of those cooking contest shows. FEH! All bullshit and hype..I wouldn’t lower myself to the level of reality TV. (And for those of you who don’t already know it, I despise reality TV..when it comes down to it, it’s just another reason for people to act like assholes..it has really caused us to lose our grasp on respecting each other). So…in lieu of being the greatest FoodNetwork personality in history, I’ll just remain mild mannered, overly-opinionated, always hungry John, and write this blog.

What I think I will do is to post a new blog every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. One of those days it will be a restaurant review, the others will be rants, food talk or a discussion from a suggestion made by a reader. After yesterday’s discussion on mustard, we’ll definitely have to cover mayonnaise and ketchup (Mauriceo can get his digs in then…lol).

Food can be passion..and passionate. I can only think of one other total sensory experience that evokes as much passion as food…..he he he. But we’ll save that for another time.

Thanks for reading…keep watching for new posts, please comment, correct me if you think I’m wrong (HA!), debate with other readers, have some fun and Bon Appetit!