Forget Taco Tuesday, It's Taco Weekend!

This weekend I definitely had my fill of taco. On Saturday, Kevin and I went to El Taquito Mexicano, aka "Taco Truck" for some killer street tacos. Seriously, they are the bomb and if you go on Yelp, it's on there. I like the carnitas the best, but they were out!!! Regardless, I had 7 tacos... which left me pretty full but they're so worth it.

Then last night, I went with my parents down to my aunt's house in Laguna Niguel for a Mother's Day dinner and because one of my cousin's from Australia was in town. There was SO MUCH food. Chinese rice noodles, oyster pancakes (a Taiwanese dish), potato salad, meatballs, cold Chinese beef (forgot what the actual name is), and as you can probably guess from the post title, tacos. Yes, a pretty interesting mix of food. There was grilled chicken and carnitas, with onions and cilantro, and guacamole that my aunt made. So needless to say, because I didn't get any carnitas at Taco Truck, I loaded up on the carnitas. I think I had another 7 or 8 tacos. Along with all the other food, I was stuffed. And then there was dessert. Fruit salad with whipped cream and from Trader Joe's, a flan and chocolate cake parfait. It was good. A layer of chocolate cake, then flan, then a thin layer of chocolate ganache and topped with whipped cream and caramel sauce. I think I had about 2 1/2 pieces of that. So I was full!!

Seriously though, if you have a chance, go check out Taco Truck. Everybody that's local to San Marino knows about it.

I Live To Eat

Question for everybody: Do you "eat to live" or do you "live to eat"?

The answer for me is pretty obvious. Look at this post title as well as the title of my blog: I live to eat. Food is my life. It's why I became a chef. The love of food is what drives me to further my career. Whenever I travel, all I really care to do is eat. Seriously, within an hour of landing in Chicago last year, I was at Portillo's for an authentic Chicago dog. When I go to San Antonio next month, that's all I'm looking to do is eat and get some good Tex-Mex and BBQ.

So again, my question is: do you "eat to live" or do you "live to eat?

Americana

So tonight I had dinner and saw a movie with one of my buddies from college, Jeff out in Glendale. We went to the new "mall" across the street from the Glendale Galleria called "Americana". When we pulled up into the parking structure, we both agreed it was a lot like the structure at The Venetian in Las Vegas, as we walked out of the structure, the place was more or less an exact replica of The Grove out in Los Angeles. Jeff went on to tell me that Americana was designed by the same people that did the Grove. And finally, they had a large moving fountain that seemed like a smaller version of the fountain at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. We didn't walk around the entire place but I saw Cheesecake Factory and Katsuya, as well as a Beard Papas stand and Wetzels Pretzels.

We ended up going around the corner to California Pizza Kitchen because Americana was infested with a huge crowd of people, just like the Grove usually is on a Sunday afternoon. CPK is nothing to rave about, but I like the food there and it's pretty consistent between locations. You can't go wrong with any of the pizzas. It better be that way because with pizza in the name, their pizzas should be their best dishes. I got the carne asada pizza, which is served with applewood smoked bacon (though I got maybe like 2 crumbles), onions, bell peppers, and diced tomatoes. Definitely one of my favorites there. I also tried the raspberry mojito. I didn't really taste much raspberry, but I like mojitos so I wasn't complaining.

I love going out to high end restaurants, but sometimes you just want to have a relaxed dinner at a more casual place.

Apologies

I just want to make things clear and apologize to a certain couple who I previously had a post up here about (indirectly) for what I thought was a neutral and professional opinion but ended up being tactless and offending.

I just hope you guys know I love you and want the very best for you. I sincerely regret my previous statements and I hope this hasn't been a hinderance to our friendship.

Austin

Shooting

So after a couple weeks of deliberation (because I'm a cheap Chinese man), I decided to just fork up the money and pay to get some headshots done for my website. I figured I might as well since I'm already paying a friend of mine to create all the graphics and do the layout for my site. I loosely tried several weeks ago to do a couple shots myself, but I didn't get anything I seriously would consider. Luckily I knew a great photographer who might've been willing. So I emailed her and asked her if she could do me the favor.

Her name is Sandra P. Her site is www.sandrapphotography.com. She is a really good and friendly professional wedding photographer and does engagement and lifestyle photos as well. I don't think I would have asked her if she strictly did weddings, which I'm under the impression that some photographers are. Plus I like her style and approach and it just so happened we also recently became friends. We brainstormed over email and got down a couple good ideas.

So today was the day. We met up in Oldtown Pasadena on what was a hotter than normal day. Of course being late April, Summer is just around the corner. We began taking some shots in front of the gate at Villa Sorriso, which is actually quite decorative. I just thought it was a plain iron gate. We then made a bold move and asked the 2 employees who were setting up for lunch service if we could use a table for some shots. It was actually her idea and while I normally wouldn't have thought about the idea, I figured at that time in the morning on a Sunday, they were still setting up and not even open. They were nice enough to let us. We got a ton of shots in there but we still tried to keep it short. They probably were wondering if I was someone famous or up and coming, me with my chef's coat on having photos taken. That reminds me, I need to get my own coat so I don't have to use my grad coat from CSCA (California School of Culinary Arts), which is still a very nice chef's jacket and I use that as my presentation jacket when I have gigs, but I think it'll be better for my reputation if people didn't see that.

We moved on to some more shots outside of the restaurant, then around the corner to DeLacey, in front of a soon to be open tea and herb boutique (already forgot the name) and the adjacent alley for some "brick wall" shots. All in all, I would say she probably took about 100 shots, so I have quite a few to choose from. I quickly changed and grabbing a lemonade at Le Pain Quotiodien (I think I spelled that wrong) turned into brunch. I got a cheese almond danish, which I originally had thought it meant cheddar cheese mixed throughout but ended up being a cream cheese filling, but it was just as satisfying. She got a bowl of gazpacho, which on a warm day like it was today, it was quite refreshing, especially with the cucumber garnish. She also got a bowl of fruit and we shared the curried chicken salad sandwich. LPQ (which she kept referring to the restaurant as and I found MUCH easier than attmepting to pronounce the long name) has always had good food, well at least the 2 times (including today) I've been there. She managed to take some more shots of me pouring and drinking my iced tea before we left.

From there we went to Starbucks for some more shots, which was one of her original ideas, but they kicked us out saying we couldn't take photos. We both found that strange, especially because it wasn't like we were taking photos of the product, but oh well. We tried Crate & Barrel but gave up finding it hard to take photos with the floating salespeople.

We agreed we believed we got some good shots as well as a decent variety. Now I just have to wait for the proofs.

Thanks again Sandy!!!!