Tag Archives: loretta

Ración! It’s almost here!!

21 Feb

Many of you know that I have worked with my friend Loretta now more than once. We opened up the Pasadena Le Pain Quotidien together, and also the Border Grill Truck. I met Teresa while working for BGT. I know them and love them both, and think they are amazingly talented. So when they partnered up and said they were going to open a new restaurant together, I immediately jumped on board. (Translation: I kept insisting I would work for them, and they just had to deal with it.) 

While I have helped out with a gig here and there while they were garnering interest from investors, I hadn’t really had a lot to do until the past couple weeks. Since my role will be one more of front of house leadership , they had me come in and help conduct interviews. I’ve been putting together manuals and forms. And oh, yeah. I’ve been tasting wine!

I am so excited about the restaurant – it’s going to be a fresh and amazing place, and we open so soon! So I want everyone else to get excited too. The concept, straight from their investor book: 

“Ración seeks to combine the dining traditions and flavors of the Basque region of Spain and France with the consciousness of a modern Californian dining experience. Ración will evoke the traditional flavors of the Basque region, including paprika, sweet and hot peppers, saffron, bacalao, semi-cured chorizo Bilbao or the dry Pamplona chorizo, squid ink, and Idiazábal cheese. The dishes produced incorporate fresh seafood preparations, marinades, cured meats, hearty stews, game, and breads. Ración will creatively interpret traditional Basque dishes while drawing on the abundance of fresh meats and produce from California in order to reduce environmental impact and support the local economy.”

And if that doesn’t sound amazing enough, here are some pictures of some of their culinary creations. They catered my birthday party last year at Vanessa’s request and it was some of the best food I’ve ever had – prepare to salivate:

 

Homemade Charcuterie:

 

Duck Liver Pate:

 

Duck Prosciutto:

 

Salami and Fried Capers:

 

Homemade Pickled Veggies:

 

Kolhrabi, Fennel, and Orange Salad with Dried Olives and Sherry Vinaigrette:

 

Salt Cod Fritters with a beautiful Lemon Aioli:

 

Egg and Salami Flatbread:

 

Ham and Chicken Croquettas with Membrillo Honey:

 

Egg and Bacon Flan:

 

If you liked this be sure to check out more photos of their food from this post. The location had changed and they’re now opening up in Pasadena in about 2 weeks! Stay tuned.

For more info, you can follow Racion by liking their Facebook page

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Sunday Funday – Ración

12 Apr

So I’ve talked about Loretta and Teresa on this blog before. I’ll refer you again to the world famous Penis Story. Tee hee.

However, aside from being my co-stars in that amazing story, they are also amazing people. I’ve known Loretta for about 5 years now. She took a chance on me and gave me my very first EVER real restaurant job. She’s passionate about food, an amazing manager, well organized, and driven. She’s got an amazing head for business and numbers as well, and I owe her a lot – including getting me the job at Border Grill. She and I work well together. Although she likes to tell people that at that first job I mentioned, she almost fired me after my 3 month review, because I was surly and was getting customer complaints. She DOES complete the story by explaining however, that I totally took their advice and ran with it, and became one of the most valuable employees as well as a friend. What *I* would like to mention is I’m still surly and I have the worst possible bitch-face. I’m just better at faking being nice. :)

Teresa I haven’t known as long, but I feel like I’ve known her forever now. I met Teresa when Loretta offered me the job on the BG Truck. Teresa was our sous-chef, and I don’t know what she thought about me (I’ve never asked) but I liked her a lot right away. She’s an amazing chef. She’s warm, friendly, and gives these GREAT bear hugs :) , and I feel that comes across in her food. She’s thoughtful, creative and caring. I really enjoyed working for her.

SO, when they told me secretly a few months ago that they were thinking about starting a restaurant, I was overjoyed. I’m a terrible secret keeper, but I kept my mouth shut until they were ready to make their announcement. Once they incorporated, then came the search for investors, so the cat was DEFINITELY out of the bag. They started holding what they were calling “Sunday Supper” to showcase their potential menu items to friends and potential investors looking for both money and feedback on their ideas.

Vanessa (the girlfriend) and I were invited to one such supper, and we had a wonderful time, and stuffed ourselves silly!

The Location
Racíon, LLC has taken space at 9th and Broadway in a beautiful historic building in what is the “Old Downtown.” However, the city has taken a lot of interest in this area and will be investing money in restoring the area, and several well known food establishments are rumored to be moving into the area.

The Concept
Well no one could describe their concept better than the owners, so I’m stealing this part straight from their business plan: “Ración seeks to combine the dining traditions and flavors of Spain with the consciousness of a modern Californian dining experience.” They will be keeping in mind sustainability and one of the ways that they showcased this idea at the particular Sunday Supper I was at, was by purchasing several whole ducks and creatively incorporating almost every part of the duck into the meal.

The Food
Well I said it already, but I’ll say it again, the food was delicious. They have a great concept going so far. We started off with pinxtos which went so fast with all the people there I wasn’t able to even get a picture!! There was a duck liver pate with fresh orange and chives and also a white bean puree, duck confit, and confit mushrooms. Let me just say, the girlfriend LOVED the liver. In fact she loved it so much, she at one point later in the meal, snuck into the kitchen to get more so she could smear it on more stuff. Weirdo.

Our first course was a duck consomme with preserved lemon, fennel, and crispy juniper bacon. Consomme was made with stock from leftover duck bits of course. It also featured a crispy piece of house cured bacon which Teresa was very proud of. And it was bomb. Yeah. I said bomb.

The next course was a flatbread that Loretta made. Loretta seems to have taken over the baking portion of everything. They want to serve housemade breads and she had been perfecting recipes, which keep popping up in beautiful photos on Facebook. Anyway, it was an olive flatbread with pan seared duck breast, caramelized onion, apple, and manchego cheese. If I haven’t mentioned before, I love duck (about as much as I love lamb, which I KNOW I’ve mentioned before) so this was a real winner with me. The duck was perfectly cooked and the sweetness of the caramelized onion and apple really went well with it.

The third course was Relleno de Calamari, squid stuffed with homemade duck sausage and potatoes with salsa brava and mache salad. ¡Buenísimo! Every component of this dish complemented every other.

Dessert was a crema catalana ice cream with olive oil cake. I enjoyed it, but Loretta and Teresa were disappointed by their own performance on this dish. However, they readily admit that neither of them are pastry people but are giving a lot of thought into how they can strengthen this area of their business.

How You Can Help
So the reason I’m posting this now, is 1) I love being around on the ground floor of something like this, and I’m super proud of my friends. 2) They’re approaching the end of their fundraising goals, and just need a little more help. They’ve now created a Kickstarter project which I will very modestly take all credit for having turned them on to, and they need backers. Even if everyone only backed a few dollars they could easily hit their goals.

If you are not convinced I’ll tell you a little more from a personal standpoint. I don’t think there’s anyone more deserving of achieving their dreams than these ladies. They are smart, beautiful women for whom the sky is the limit. Please take a moment to at least check out their Kickstarter Page and at least admire their really cool video.

They also have a blog where they’ve been talking about their opening process which you can find at Lolo and Tere’s Blog and more specifically, chef notes on the particular meal I’ve talked about in this post at the permalink Sunday Supper #2 Quack, Quack!

They also catered my birthday lunch, so be on the look out for that post!! (I’ll be sure to come back and edit this post to link to it later on….)

And as if you needed more proof, check out all the panzas llenas, almas contentas!

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WHAT THE HELL?!! BG Truck madness….

9 Jul

Okay, I’ve got a small back log of things going that I have to write about, including a couple HPM in the kitchen type things, and a couple reviews, but those things will all have to wait, because what I’m about to say…well it cannot.

So today, the BG Truck catered a private event out in Palmdale. That is, we drove 100 miles out to the desert to cater for the film crew of a new Sophia Coppola project. (Don’t know what it is, in anticipation of any questions…but yes I did see Sophia!) We were having a good time, and had a fairly normal morning outside of thinking the truck was going to explode trying to go through those “mountains” (we called them that) to Palmdale on the 14 because the truck just simply didn’t have the power. Loretta was driving pedal to the metal and we were going…insert dramatic drum roll here…25mph! Yeah! We handled the event the best we could and then headed on our way home. There were a couple things that I COULD tell you about, but it simply will pale in comparison to what I’m about to tell you.

We were driving back from Palmdale and just coming into Los Angeles. We’re on the ramp coming onto the 110 from the 5 just nearing the Stadium Way exit when Loretta starts screaming bloody murder. She swerves a little and is screaming, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” over and over again. So of course Theresa and I start yelling, and I turn in the passenger seat to face Loretta trying to figure out what happened! She’s still screaming! And then…I see it…

The penis.

Yes. I said penis. As I’m facing Loretta, I look past her briefly and see that she has been screaming because she has seen the middle aged man in his car alongside the truck, keeping pace with us, fully erect penis exposed. He is grinning at us creepily, as I am sure his intent was the reaction. Loretta is trying to speed up to get over and in front of him, and he speeds up. She slows down to get behind him, and he slows down. Penis still waving.

I thought I was going to throw up. Loretta was on the verge of tears. We need to change lanes and he wont let us over. He’s still grinning lecherously. I didn’t want to look back at the car, but I was trying to get a license plate number to call the cops for his lewd behavior. Just my luck, the asshole doesn’t have plates. Theresa wanted to know if she could throw taco meat at his car. We decided that was a bad idea.

After nearly killing us because he won’t let us over, he hits some traffic and we go past, as our lane is still moving. We assume that’s the end of it and try and catch our breath and assess what the HELL just happened…and then his lane catches up to where we are, and when he reaches us he slows down to pace the truck and he does it ALL OVER AGAIN!

We don’t know what to do because we can’t really drive away since we’re sitting in LA traffic, so basically we’re just trying not to look because obviously that’s what he wanted. Finally we get moving and he stays behind and that’s the last we see of him. Of course we’re totally traumatized and can’t stop the flashbacks the whole way back to the commissary to drop me off.

I think I can fairly speak for all of us when I say, we the ladies of the Border Grill truck are here to serve. We like what we do, we enjoy food, and we love interacting with people. We are more than happy to sling some tacos your way, and fill up your tummies with yummy latin inspired noms. We don’t ask for much. However, we have just two favors to ask:

1) For your own saftey (and to keep us from having as many heart attacks), please do not cut off the truck. The truck is big and takes a little longer than your average car to slow down. We are big and if you don’t give us space in front and we have to stop suddenly, I don’t think it will happen in time. We don’t get cut off often, but when it does happen it’s a little scary.

2) Please, for the love of God, and all that is holy, and any other way I can say please….do NOT, I repeat, do NOT flash us any of your sexual organs. Thank you.

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