This is what happens when you let the chef behind the bar...

It's really hard to go a summer day with our awesome patio at the Lobby without a drink special.

I had some fresh strawberries and jalapenos on hand, and was already making a batch of sweet and sour for the bar, so I whipped this delicious little guy up, and decided to throw out a little how-to for you all so you can make one of these this summer!

 I present to you: the Strawberry Jalapeno Margarita!

Now, there are a lot of available shortcuts to this drink, you can use one, you can use all, but believe me when I tell you that every shortcut you use, you're only depriving yourself of the freshest, easiest drink you can make this summer! Let's begin!
What you will need:
8 strawberries
2 fresh jalapenos
1.5 qt sugar
(the following are the easiest to cheat on, but will affect your drink the most. Put in the time, it's worth it to juice your own fruit if possible!)
3 c lime juice
3 c lemon juice
1 c orange juice
3 sprigs thyme

For the sweet and sour:
Put all juices, thyme,  and sugar together ver very low heat for about 20 min. DO NOT boil. Just let it steep.
Viola, you've just made sweet and sour!
(pictured left, it also has orange rinds in it)







 After making your sweet and sour syrup, you can half and add the strawberries. Let it steep again without boiling. You can see the color (and flavor) come out of the strawberries!





(Left, begining of syrup, below, notice the color change at end of cooking)

 Cool down your syrup in an ice bath

Put in a rocks glass with a thick slice of jalapeno

Using a muddler (or back of a butterknife if you don't have one at home), squeeze out the deeeelicious jalapeno oils!

Add ice

Don't forget the tequila! Silver is my personal preference. After topping it off, put in a shaker. Rim the small glass with sugar, and pour the shaken drink back into the small glass.

Garnish with a fresh slice of strawberry speared with a thyme sprig, Drink, repeat.

There you have it folks!! This our special tonight so come in and grab one, or enjoy your own at home!

Cheers!

It's not you, Pork, it's me.

In my last post, I jokingly stated that I wouldn't update until April. And here it is... April.  I had every intention of doing a post about my 1 year as chef, about how excited I am for the upcoming summer, posting a little more about past events, and even getting some recipes and videos up. Unfortunately, writing hasn't only taken a back seat to everything, I think it jumped out of the car about 50 miles back. This is a bad thing, because if you knew me before I was professionally cooking, you know that I really love to write and actually planned on building a career around that! Nothing made me happier than slapping on some headphones and sitting on the floor or at a desk or on a picnic table and writing. It's a very anti-social hobby, and currently life doesn't leave me with much alone time to write. Except right now, so on with the show!

Last month I celebrated my first year as an executive chef. On my 25th birthday I celebrated my first executive chef position, and a year later I'm still loving it, though I have plucked a grey hair or 2...

I"m very excited to have finally come into my own. I feel like for my first 4 or 5 months I was just repeating things I had made with or under other chefs, and started to get bored with it.

The downside to earning my position so early is there is a lot more I probably should have learned before taking the helm, however, I feel I've always been good at searching for fun new things to do and just figuring out how to do them myself, and have honestly had a pretty high success rate! Here I am now, with my last menu release being described as "the best menu to be served at the Lobby, and the one to finally push us to exactly where we've wanted to be all along," and I've realized that I just needed to make food that I loved and not worry about making something that was better on a camera than a palate.

While I dabbled with foams and caviars and other simple molecular gastronomy, I figured out that my real niche is making simple food very well.

You can drop 5 different crazy sauces, foams, and caviar balls until the plate is overflowing, and it can be amazing and delicious, but at the same time so can a perfectly cooked pork chop with a perfectly al dente risotto and a basic grilled vegetable ragu.

I use this analogy because my pork dish on my menu has been my worst enemy through all my menu changes. I am a man who LOVES his pork, especially a good tenderloin or chop. I tried to make a real stand-out item with my pork dish on each of my menu changes, but 2 or 3 weeks in I was so unhappy with it I got angry every time one was ordered. I tried making an apple cider caviar with fried cranberry risotto, and the plate looked damn cool, and individually everything tasted great, but with everything being it's own little part none of it blended together.

As of now we have an orange glazed pork belly with BBQ lentils and bleu cheese creamed spinach, my own take on a simple "BBQ pork plate." Pork belly is SOOO good! I love it as a special, but I think it has lost its novelty now that it's on the menu.

I'm not mad that I ran any of these dishes, I think I just veered away from my own standards of keeping it simple and delicious and tried to go over the top with them. People loved them, I got plenty of compliments on the pork chop especially, but I think I can do it better next time with just a simple perfectly marinated and cooked chop with a simple sauce, starch, and some fresh vegetables. That is exactly what you can look forward to at the next menu change. Simple and perfectly delicious.

I look forward to summer, a new menu, offsites, and hopefully more than 1 or 2 posts...

Febu-already?!

Where the hell does the time go!?? My last post was in September?!? I should try to work on that. It is currently February of 2012 and I am still waiting for things to slow down!! I recently released a winter menu, and although it was about a month later than I was hoping to have it out, I think it's one of the best menus to date! Valentine's day was 2 days ago and we had a sold out service on a Tuesday night, not bad at all! Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the food, which bums me out because it was a good looking menu!

Amuse Bouche:

Serrano-Asparagus Mousse

Course 1: choose 2/couple

Ahi-poke / spicy coconut shrimp ceviche / banana-almond mascarpone crustinis / bleu cheese and candied walnut stuffed bacon-wrapped dates

Course 2: choose 1

Basil-carrot soup

Cupid's salad   -   mix greens, pomegranite seeds, sliced almonds, asparagus spears, strawberry-yogurt dressing

Course 3: choose 1

Fresh Watermelon martini / Fresh Watermelon sparking cider

Course 4:

Grilled Ono, wasabi mashed potatoes, ginger soubise, crispy spinach

Pesto seared chicken breast, red pepper and tomato risotto, white asparagus, italian sausage "bisque"

Sliced tenderloin, poblano roasted potatoes, pineapple-chipotle salsa

Truffle infused Red Pepper risotto with grilled vegetables, white asparagus

course 5:

Champagne toast with Grilled shortcake and chocolate dipped strawberries

Up next is our February wine dinner on Tuesday:

Viva Italy!

First Course

Benvolio Pinot Grigio

Marsala-mushroom duxelle flatbread

Second Course

Degani Valpolicella

Basil-Prosciutto pasta e fagioli

Third Course

Tenuta Prima Voce

Merlot braised chicken over lemon-pepper portobello risotto, truffle oil drizzle

Fourth Course

Tenuta Chianti Classico

Berry and clove mascarpone tart

FOllowing the wine dinner is Restaurant week!!! We will unfortunately be closed for the first 2 nights due to a wedding buy out on that Saturday as well as being closed at 3 on Sundays.

Poblano Shrimp Croquettes

Chorizo Kolsch Mussels w/ sourdough

Mushroom and mozzarella risotto balls

Andoullie and shrimp Bisque

Thai salad with roasted chicken

Mojito Salad

Boneless fried chicken

Espresso encrusted Manhattan filet, candied walnut mashed potatoes, spiced rum buerr blanc, grilled squash

Grilled ono, portabellos, white truffle creme sauce linguini

Pistachio canolis

Berry Yoirkshire Empenadas

IN the middle of Restaurant Week I will be celebrating my 26th birthday (Holy OLD, Batman!) 

So, judging by the schedule ahead, this post won't be updated til April. :) Hopefully I'll have some photos of food to accompany the menus, but if you happened to have eaten at the Lobby and taken a photo of anything, I'd love to see it! Send it my way!!

Til next time, cheers!

September!

September was one hell of a month!! Events, offsite, weddings, rehearsal dinners, buyouts... Is't September a slow month in the restaurant industry!?!
My 3 favorite moments of September:
Suburban Home Records Sweet 16 Brunch (since I couldn't make the actual shows, ha!)
Flavors of Denver
9News Saucy Affair

First was the Hangover brunch. You can read about that in my previous post. :)

Flavors of Denver was an absolute blast! The event had 20(?) of Denver's chefs cooking a four-course dinner paired with wine tableside for 10 people, each paying $400 a seat to raise money for the American Liver Foundation. We all made a passed appetizer for 100 people as well.

Schmoozin' my table

My menu was as follows:

Passed appetizer: Wonton chip topped with avocado goat cheese and pickled corn salsa

First course: California caesar with fresh berries tossed in plum aioli, served in romaine leaves with mandrin oranges.

Second course: Poblano crab bisque

Third course: Soy marinated portobellos, wasabi hummus, sweet ginger bechemel

Fourth course: Sake-cilantro marinated beef tenderloin, seared sweet potatoes and onions, jalapeno soubise

It was a very hectic day, but so much fun!







Two days later I participated in the 9News Saucey Affair. 15 Chefs come up with an appetizer and, most importantly, a sauce to top it off with. I did root-beer braised ribs with a sweet poblano BBQ sauce. After setting up and getting rolling, Andrew Lubatty, executive chef of the Avenue Grill, came over to my table. His stove burned out and  asked if I could spare one of my burners. I use Coleman camping stoves for offsites rather than the single german stoves, so I cleared my burner and hung out with him for the remainder of the event talking about food, offsites, the Denver scene... it was great!! The night couldn't have gotten better...


til the head judge approached our table. "excuse me, how do we spell your last name?" I had won the judges choice for the event!

So what do you do when you win a bowl with a golden whisk trophy?

You take a shot out of it!

I'm not going to say I'm going to miss this crazy ass September, but man was it a fun one!!!

Suburban Home's Sweet 16

Sitting at home on this fine Sunday afternoon and trying to get over the flu, I realized I have had a couple of posts I've been meaning to write but haven't had the time, especially this month! It's been a crazy month with a lot of events, but one of them was especially important to me.

Growing up in Blackhawk as a little punk rocker was a very lonely time. In my K-12 school of 500 students, there was plenty of rap and rock fans, but for someone who could care less about the new Nelly or Nickleback album, there wasn't a lot of musical camaraderie to be found. I carried my discman with me between every class and had my headphones around my neck from 8-4 every schoolday, which was fine with me, but finding new music proved difficult when it was just me.

Keep in mind, this was back when chat rooms were still the thing to do... well... were they ever really "the thing to do?" Anyways, nights at home would often be spent watching Adult Swim back to back to back and sitting in AOL's Denver chat rooms. I was like the coolest kid I know...

I happened to start talking to an individual who was a huge Snapcase and Zao fan from Denver. I don't remember his name, but I'll never forget the website he recommended to me:

www.suburbanhomerecords.com

This was back when the entire website was black and white and Virgil went through the trouble of posting damn near every show that came through Denver on it. Had it not been for finding that website, I can't imagine how many of the shows that I attended that made my entire adolescence tolerable I would have missed. The only contact I had with Virgil at that time was when I was trying to get our medicore-yet-best-times-of-my-life band signed to SHR, ha! I think I checked that website more at that age than anyone now checks their facebook...

Fast forward a few years. A few of the local bands that I grew up to and loved were all part of the Denver scene that, high times and low times, has always seemed to be kept breathing by the hard work Virgil has put into it. I ended up, mostly through Andy Thomas, meeting Virgil, as well as and Scooter and countless other people who played in bands I listened to in rotation with Strung Out and A.F.I., making me view them in that little-kid-meeting-a-rockstar fashion. It was amazing hanging with friends and end up talking over drinks with the same people that I listened to over and over while walking up and down the halls through highschool.

Forward more to this September. Virgil had contacted me about holding a hangover brunch at the Lobby for the Suburban Home Records Sweet 16 Weekend. I can't tell any of you how proud I was he contacted me and excited I was to finally be able to put something together to show my thanks for all the hard work Virgil has put into Suburban Home Records and the Denver scene.

September 10th definitely went down as a great day in my book. While I was too busy to get upstairs and really enjoy it, I am so stoked that I got to be a part of that weekend. Thank you Virgil and everyone that is, and was ever part of Suburban Home Records, be it an employee, a band, or even just part of the scene.

If you’ve got the stamina, Virgil invites one and all to the Hangover Brunch, which starts at The Lobby at 11am on Saturday, September 10th. Head Chef Nate Gravina will be whipping up some Bananas Foster French Toast, Bacon, 2 Eggs, and a special cocktail (all for $12). “It's exactly what you will need after the first night of the Anniversary weekend,” says Virgil.

Cooking is the easy part.

I'm sad I haven't saved more of my past wine dinner menus or specials... It's pretty crazy the things you were once so excited about and completely forget in a few months time. wether it's 30 or 500 covers, there's one thing that stands true about being a chef. The cooking is the easy part. I can promise you that when I was the FNG grumbling about portioning about how my kitchen manager just sat on his ass all day and had it way too easy, I was absolutely unaware of all the things that he had to keep track of in his head at all times. I used to lose sleep before dinners and menu changes because I was worried something wasn't right and I dropped an important detail with all the different stuff swirling through my mind. This week I lost sleep because with a lack of events for the week I panicked, wondering what I was forgetting because I had nothing on my mind for the first few days since I took this position. Last Friday I prepped for a rehersal dinner, to release a new brunch menu, a new dinner menu, and a wine dinner menu on each of the following 4 days. This last week was regular business, with nothing special and just being on cruise control getting my kitchen back into shape, I felt my need to juggle menus and thoughts come to an abrupt halt and then I merely spent time trying to think about what I was forgetting to think about! I have constantly been telling Michelle, night after night, that I want to write something... and can never think about what because I feel like I have so many other things occupying my mind (Dinner here, menu there, order there, cover a shift here...) that I can't ever activate my creativity to write... so I figured I'd write about why I can't seem to write. Until next time!

Blogging Regular!

Hello readers! I figured it was time to post my once-every-3-months post, heh.

Where do I begin? When I left off, I was the Sous Chef at the Lobby restaurant in Denver and I lived in a lonely box on 18th and Williams. 

On February 15th, Michelle and I moved into a fantastic 8th floor apartment in Denver. It's just far enough west to be able to skip back to Golden or Lakewood, but also a short walk, drive or taxi ride to anywhere in Denver.

My 25th birthday was on March 3rd, 2010. It was on this same day, at my birthday dinner, that I had the honor of announcing that I had officially become the executive chef of the Lobby American Grille. Charley had acquired a new position at another restaurant, and the owners approached me about being the new executive chef. I accepted, without any hesitation.

Today, March 23rd, was my first day off since my birthday. Well, I actually took in a Depot order, so it wasn't even a full day off :) 

I had worked 12 days straight when Charley went to Burning Man, and it was exhausting. I knew taking this position would mean about a month without any days off, but hey, it's the perks of the job and the industry! 

There's a huge difference between working long weeks for someone else, and doing it for yourself. I mean, I don't own the restaurant and still have owners to answer to, but it's finally my chance to make a name for myself, and because of this, 20 days actually flew by! With training new people and deciding my courses of action to get the restaurant running how I chose, I had plenty on my plate! 

Going into it, I thought adding my own creations to the menu would be the very first thing I would do. Not the case at all! I hired on two new cooks, and worked on training. Unfortunately, one of my two new hires (the one that seemed most promising, actually) didn't work out so well. Two steps forward, but thanks to my awesome crew, it was hardly any sort of step back! After some slight rearranging, we covered all of our bases without having to hire and train yet again. 

With training done, it was time to figure out our food situation. Charley and I took turns doing Depot food runs with minimal ordering from Sysco, but after about 2 weeks of daily Depot runs in my car, it was time to try and figure something else out! I got together with my food rep and we are in the process of figuring out what else we can order without spending too much more. Turns out the Depot really is a helluva lot cheaper than delivery...

However, it's definitely not all work and no play! I had my first wine dinner as Executive Chef on March 15, and it was an absolute blast! California vs Italy was the theme, and I had a lot of fun with it! I took typical italian dishes, and for the first two wines from Santa Barbara, I added my own "California" flair to them.

For the first course, I made a California "Caesar" salad. Romaine tossed in an aioli made with plums and peaches, rather than cheese and anchovies. Mandrine oranges rather than crutons, and lemon and orange zest instead of parmesan cheese.

Second course was a Strawberry-basil bruschetta atop a crustini. Diced strawberries, fresh basil, a little diced onion, and plum vinegar. Finish with just enough salt, and you have the best summer bruschetta ever!

Third and fourth courses were paired with the italian wines, so I went more traditional. The morning of the event, I chopped up fresh sage and put it in a pan with red wine and sirloin steak. Adding a splash of red wine vinegar to help tenderize the meat, the pan went into the cooler for 8 hours. A quick sear and finish in the oven, the steak as sliced and put over basil mashed potatoes and drizzled with an au jus made from the red wine marinade, garlic and onions.

Fourth course was a fried italian dessert. Plain and simple, it was an easy vanilla dough, twisted into bowties and served with hibiscus simple syrup over a hibiscus whipped cream. The flavor of the syrup and whipped cream were not as strong as I had hoped, but it came out delicious nonetheless!

I digress. This has become more of a ramble than a blog post :)

Baseball season is a week away. Summer is right around the corner. The future is bright, friends! I look forward to seeing you all in at the Lobby to come say hi, and look for my new menu to be out mid April!

Stay hungry!