Busy Food Week

So this past week has been pretty hectic. Last Tuesday, CNET rolled out a new unified code base and redesign for Chowhound and Chow. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet, I think it looks great. For some reason, the engineering team did not do much beta testing with long time chowhounders and did not give anyone advanced notice of the changes beforehand. Needless to say, the chowhound community was a little upset and everyone at Chowhound swept into disaster response mode to make fixes to the site. It was eerie reading so people's complaints, and also seeing the flipside of the engineering team frantically working to fix all the problems. This has opened my mind to a couple of ideas.

First, if there is something wrong, something you don't like or agree with, make noise and make people listen. Sometimes, it's not as easy as posting complaints about an online forum on that same forum. But if enough people communicate their demands for change, change will happen.

Secondly, if you don't get the response immediately, be patient and stay constructive. Don't compound the problem by whining, ranting, and acting like a baby.

Friday was my last day at the magazine. They were nice enough to take me to Bong Su on 3rd and Folsom. We shared some dishes including the Duck Mustard Wraps, Da Nang Beef Roll, and a calamari salad from their Dine About Town menu. I also had a pretty standard Asian beef stew and a pear crepe wrapped like a beggar's purse in coffee anglaise. Overall, the only thing I would order again was the Beef Roll. It rice noodle wrapped around some lemongrass grilled beef and some herbs. Truly delicious and reminiscent of dim sum rice noodle crepes. The coffee anglaise with the crepe was pretty good too, but i was just expecting more I guess.

On Saturday, we used a Christmas present from my cousin to go to Palomino on the Embarcadero. Before going, I read so many negative things about this place on Chowhound - poor food, bad service, bla bla. Let me tell you, don't believe everything you read. The food is definately not Gary Danko, but Cindy and I had a great meal there. We saw they had an early bird menu for seatings between 4-6pm (3 courses for $20) so we decided to get a reservation at 5:45pm. I ordered a Caesar salad, Bistro Steak w chickpea fritters and balsamic ketchup, and a mango sorbet. The Caesar was dressed properly and I am glad to report they had bits of anchovy! Steak was cooked perfectly, chickpea fritters were like pureed chickpeas formed into batons, floured, and then fried. Pure deliciousness with the textures and the light seasoning. Even better when you paired it with the super sweet balsamic ketchup. The mango sorbet was just bleh. Cindy ordered the crab cake starter (1 crab cake) with a nice roasted pepper salad. It was solid, as it should have been. She also ordered a roasted mushroom and sausage pizza that was pretty delicious. The crust was sooooooo paper thin, and we love that. Next time, we would just get the margherita (tomato and basil) instead of the other toppings. She also ordered a strawberry lemonade which made her super happy - I got a sprite which was included with my meal. All in all, Caesar, Steak, Sorbet, Crab Cake, Pizza, Strawberry Lemonade, Sprite, total cost was $49! Awesome deal!

I start my new job today, can't wait to see what happens. I am actually excited to get back in the kitchen to start cooking again. Let's see how I feel in a week or so...

If anyone has Kenji's email address, please forward it to me so I can send him the invite here. For those who care, HTML tags are active so you can link and format your posts. If you want a different picture on the side, send me the pic or a link to the pic and I will change it for ya.

Finally, Top Chef Finale! Who else is watching? I hated this season so much, but there's nothing else that excites me on TV these days. I hope Marcel wins, but it doesn't sound likely since Ilan quit his job at Casa Mono last week. For the first time all season, I actually have to watch to find out who wins. No insider to tip me on who is getting kicked off anymore =(