With the summer season creeping up I have decided to take a break to spend some time with family, friends and myself  while stopping to see all that is around us here in America’s Finest City. With that said, the countdown begins at T minus 7 days before I say adios to this restaurant in Little Italy tucked away on the 4th floor of the hotel. If your around, stop by and and say hi, goodbye or just follow me on twitter @agreatchef to find out where the party is going to be and to see what kind of trouble I get myself into…;)

Cheers!

chefrob

From that first, or second post on Saimin I find myself here thinking about what has transpired in 2 years, and what the next year or 2 have in store. I am looking forward to posting more recipes, more ramblings n more blahblahblah in the coming 365 days, just hope you’ll all enjoy it as much as I do creating it…happy fat tuesday!

chefRob

To say that I am surprised writing a post on Valentine’s day is an understatement, if only to keep the charade alive on another sunny day. (Well, it was sunny when I started this post, now it is raining cats n dogs outside so my charade is gone).

Not to get into a history lesson but, the first feast of St Valentine (feast, I can only snicker) was in the year 496 and started by Pope Gelasius I. Jump to the modern time of 2010 and we see a very different holiday. To most, Valentine’s day is a day that you celebrate (or not) your lover, companion or loved ones, showering them with gifts of flowers, candies and charms. Being a chef, I wasn’t the type to shower anyone with such trivial gifts, but was more inclined to cook a special dinner, loaded with trusted and true aphrodisiacs for, well you know…;)

Since the time is near and I have just finished the aphrodisiac menu for the restaurant this Valentine’s day I thought I would pass along my 10 favorite aphrodisiac ingredients, just in case you are looking at spending some quality time at home this year near your kitchen.

Chef Rob’s Fav Aphrodisiacs (not in any particular order either )

1. Oysters, especially Kumomoto.
2. Truffles, the hypogenous fungi not the chocolate. For chocolate, see #4.
3. Vanilla…real bean, er pod…not extract.
4. Chocolate, especially truffles.
5. Arugula sometimes known as rocket. Small green with big pepper flavor.
6. Nutmeg, contains myristicin and other compounds related to mescalin. Who knew?
7. Raspberries, use your imagination…
8. Figs, the Romans likened this fruit to the honey pot. Go figure.
9. Ginger is said to get your blood moving. Perhaps that is why it is this chefs favorite rhizome.
10. Black pepper is another blood boiler. Salt n pepper shrimp anyone?

So there ya go, my fav aphrodisiacs for this year (2010).

So now I ask you…what’s your little hidden culinary gem that you keep in your back pocket for this one day a year?

chefRob

Here is wishing you and yours a very happy Holiday season and a prosperous New Year in 2010!

New recipes, new stories n new photographs are on the horizon, are you ready????

chefRob

and so it goes…

2 eggs
4 slices of turkey breast
a cup or so of gravy
1 English muffin
some freshly chopped herbs
about 5 minutes of your time
4 cups simmering H20

Poach the eggs for 3 minutes, heat the gravy and dip the turkey in to to reheat. Toast the muffin, butter is optional. Layer starting with the muffin, turkey, paoched egg, gravy, herbs. Choose your side of choice and your good to go…one of the easiest ways to take a small about of Thanksgiving leftovers and turn it into something edible. Then go home…

chefRob

One night back in the early ’90’s I was working the roasting station. Working the roasting station was a job of repetition. First, put 10+ pounds of red potatoes into a stock pot and get them working to a boil, next butcher the chickens. Remove the backbones, season, sear and then into the oven. Then the green beans, snap, blanch and shock to cool down. Pick the stems off the spinach, carefully brush the forest floor off the newly delivered Chanterelle mushrooms, make the sage dumpling batter. Some of the tasks like the mashed potatoes were a daily chore, others like the dumplings were not, a part that we as cooks looked forward to eagerly as we never really knew what the daily specials would be until we arrived. As we quickly learned, sometimes it is not what special creation you can coax out of your head that people will remember, but cooking an everyday item to perfection.

And so it goes, another night at Lark Creek. Ron Boyd on grill, Lindsay Bonner in the partry, Jeff on saute, me on roast, John Mitchell as our sous. Another busy service with the usual array of Marinites and splattering of some well known guests. Linda Ronstadt was recording an album, so her recording crew + Dolly Parton were in house. Mr. Cub Ernie Banks eating at the bar, and I am sure many many more that I do not remember were there too. One of the pluses of working the wood burning oven was that it was in the dining room, so you could experience the nightly spectacle, tonight was not my night to do so, I just working away in the back.

With the noise and chaos of a kitchen one filters out every sound except that of the printer. The printer is the lifeline of any restaurant, as it is your communication with your servers and it doubles as a scribble pad when they inevitably make a mistake and have to come back and offer along winded explanation of why they hit the wrong button. Filtering…oh what a joy! So all a cooks focus is on the sound of the little black box that spits our orders, sometimes sporadically, sometimes incessantly. It is the sound one always hears, besides the voice of your chef. Your chef or sous calls out the orders, and you respond by calling it back. So John calls an order and I laugh and then question, do you really want a platter of mashed potatoes? I was kinda bewildered, who in their right mind would eat almost 5 pounds of mashed potatoes, I mean I know they are good, cause I made them but really, a platter? Just as I was going to question, and as we were kinda chuckling about it the server ran back into the kitchen to explain ‘they are for Dolly Parton’s table”.

So now this is serious. This was one of the first times that I got nervous as a cook. Would she like them, are they seasoned, why so many. It never dawned on me that she had already had the potatoes with dinner. So the potato spectacle passes and we finish up dinner service without a hitch. Now come breakdown. Those who cook professionally know this time, the time between service and having a cold beer or drink of choice. This time if you have kept your uniform clean was the time that it would get dirty. Cleaning the stoves, the hood, the stainless and the floor are all part of breakdown and finding that beer. A server comes back and asked John a question we all can’t help but hear, Dolly would like to meet the kitchen. We all look at ourselves and wonder why. We looked like we had just come out of a war zone, filthy, smelly and just run down. So how do you say no…

5 minutes pass and Dolly enters the kitchen. For those who have not met her, she is awesome. proper, thankful and down to earth, someone who you can actually talk to one on one. So, it seems that I had made the best mashed potatoes she had ever had. She asked who made them and I came forward. I am, contrary to what anyone says, a quiet and somewhat shy person by nature, especially when it comes to people I do not know. I own up to the potatoes, make a funny about being from soCal and so on. As we leave the restaurant 20 minutes later we hear the Ronstadt people ranting about the food, the service and those mashed potatoes. Then comes the well deserved cold beer down the street, mmmm……

Some time later I find myself in Chicago, having a birthday dinner at Charlie Trotters. A friend offers up a wrapped box as a gift and I eagerly open it, who doesn’t love an unexpected present! In the box was a picture frame, and in that frame was a photo of Dolly, signed and mentioning the mashed potatoes. Amazing, and now I am wondering how the heck he got this (click here to see it). No matter, he had it, I now have it and know that there will be other days like this, where a moment in time, a chance encounter can and will set you on a path yet imagined, as long as you pay attention to those little details or in this case those tasty mashed potatoes.

chefRob

Thinking of some of these foods, and my inability to get my hands on some of them took me back in time to the places when my hands were firmly wrapped around the item(s) in question and I was with the people who helped define the moment. The moment when a food stuff, usually in my case something completely random, is an anchor point in life. The first experience, the first taste of something truly unique and mind blowing that I think back to it and the events that surrounded the moment many, or not so many moons ago.

Like the night I arrived in Bangkok on my way to Vietnam. I checked into the hotel burnt from a day and a half of travel. Dropped the luggage, hit the bed, rolled over and saw this red, hairy thing in the fruit basket. One taste and I was in love with rambutans.

…or the time after 3 flights + 2 continents and a squeaky 4 hour train ride, arriving at the train station at3 am, only to arrive at the hotel by 5 am…off for espresso at 9 am. Hungry, I sneak into a small cafe in Vietre su Mare and snack on the freshest buffalo mozzarella (caprese) salad I have ever had…

…or the runs up to the top of Texas street for Injera bread from the small Ethiopian cafe here in San Diego…

100 foods, 100 stories, 100 life defining events and 100 moments in time that will always put a smile on my face, no matter how bad the day is or how thick the cr@p is. Food, probably why I became a chef so long ago.

So here is the list. See if anything on it triggers a smile, either from a great memory or a laugh and a WTF is that! If you feel like it, leave a comment, or just a smiley face.

100 things I like to eat;

1. Pho bo
2. Bun bo hue
3. Gai yang
4. Tom yum gai
5. Miang kam
6. Beef bourguignon
7. Crème brulee
8. Rice
9. Ramen
10. Yakuniku
11. Saimin
12. Chicharones
13. Poke
14. Chicken mole
15. Oysters
16. Carpaccio
17. Kobe beef
18. BBQ pork buns
19. On choi
20. Pomfret
21. Skate wing
22. Fois gras
23. Truffles
24. Caviar
25. Smoked herring
26. Wolf berries
27. Lechon
28. Durian
29. Dragon fruit
30. Jujubee
31. Passion fruit
32. Guayaba
33. Lychee
34. Longan
35. Eel
36. Sweet sticky rice
37. Sugar cured bacon
38. Organic bananas
39. Chicken feet
40. Red beans and rice
41. Gumbo
42. Caprese salad
43. Heirloom tomatoes
44. Lau laus
45. Beef tendon
46. Chocolate mousse
47. Tiramisu
48. Diver scallops
49. Octopus
50. Quinoa
51. Amaranth
52. Fish tacos
53. Pistachio nougat
54. Black berries
55. Fuerte avocados
56. Pla ra
57. Buche
58. Paneer
59. Vindaloo
60. Doner kababs
61. Injera bread
62. Morcilla cocida
63. Paella
64. Uni
65. Duroc pork
66. Homemade ice cream
67. Hummus
68. Hot Italian beef sandwiches
69. Chicago style pizza
70. Smoked albacore tuna
71. Som tom
72. Buttermilk fried chicken
73. Hodads hamburgers
74. Beer
75. Laab pla dook
76. Jidori chicken
77. Raw beef liver
78. Fish maw
79. Ceviche
80. Geoduck clams
81. Fresh water prawns
82. Gai lan
83. Dried squid
84. Young coconut
85. Sopresata
86. Caperberries
87. Seaweed
88. Spam musubi
89. Shave ice
90. Biryani
91. Pandan anything
92. Chapulines
93. Caldo de res
94. Menudo
95. Jackfruit
96. Molasses
97. Congee
98. Bunashemeji mushrooms
99. Rice ball
100. Rambutans

Drum roll please…the “new” Porto Vista hotel site is now live! This is a momentous occasion, one that is coinciding with the 1 year anniversary of the Glass Door restaurant. After months of long hours, 7 day weeks and construction dust, it’s almost done and we are ready to lift the veil.

http://PortoVistaSD.com

and the “new” Glass Door section is here,

Glass Door restaurant San Diego

Glass Door’s new menu’s are here.

Breakfast

Brunch

Lunch

Dinner

There are still some images to be uploaded, some content to be massaged and created along with some general site tweaks, but for the most part the site is done. So please, dig around the new site and hit me up with your comments. If you see something that is broken of does not make sense, post a comment or drop me a line.

Now that this is done I can get back to cooking…C ya soon!

chefRob

The Glass Door

From an earlier post you may notice that we have redone the logo…and I am ecstatic! We also have a new menu template which in turn means a new menu.

• 22 Aug Update…logo has been redone again and finalized. Different than the one I posted but new none the less.

New menu. Now that I have the finalized logo I can start working on getting the new menu finalized and implemented. Keep your eyes and ears open for more information on this.

Hotel

• We are in the process of redoing 70+ rooms, all with a new paint scheme. This includes black and white wall murals in each.
• 35 foot color wall mural at the corner of Columbia and Fir streets. This should be up today, 22 Aug. Will confirm when I leave my office.
• Mock sun/rain shade for the Glass Door. Came in during lunch yesterday and attempted to fit the mock up to the hotel facade. When complete will help with the rain/drizzle that occationally falls here in San Diego.
• Jacuzzi removal. We are covering the jacuzzi and turning the area into a loungy kinda space. Removal of the gates/walls surrounding the tub will also go.

Whew…now I can start posting recipes and talking food again…c ya soon!

chefRob

The changes are, new Sous chef, new restaurant logo, new menu…in that order.

• New Sous chef

So it has been a year, a year of solitary confinement (to a chef) of working alone. As much as I will miss working doubles (right…) I could not be more ecstatic that I found Rocio Tamayo, who came with great recommendations to our doorstep.

Rocio has worked at EXY, Dussini’s, Anthology and the Robert Mondavi food and wine center and brings experience to our kitchen with her pastry skills and her overall food knowledge makes a great match for tGD. We welcome her to our family and if you see her around please say hi.

• New tGD logo

So it was bound to happen, right? With the re-branding of the Porto Vista hotel, the current Glass Door logo(well its really just a font) just didn’t really fit the new look and feel of the hotel, so….we are changing it.

so cats outta the bag on this one…whatcha think?

• New menu

Now that we have a new logo and the menu templates I will be working on getting a long awaited menu update out. Since summer is half over, and it is an El Nino year (that means rain folks) we will be doing another change in the fall. To end summer though you will have some new, tasty salads, entrees and small plates to nosh on. When we ge closer to a launch date I’ll let y’all know.

So that’s it for now…long day so I am outta here, have to be back at the crack of dawn to…well cook.

Cheers!

chefRob