Brian @ Wongside

Charlene and I have officially been married for 5 months. Incidentally, that also translates to 150 days. Funny how that works. I guess the 28 days of February combined with a few 31 day months means we’re at an average of 30 day/month exactly.

Anyways, congratulations, Char. We made it this far! Seems like yesterday we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner at the banquet, and dueling it out on the guest list.

Charlene took me out to Red Lobster in celebration of our milestone. It was very delicious. The service was a bit lacking, but I think the server was being overworked and had too many tables to focus on. He seemed like he was running in a thousand different directions at once.

I’m pretty sure I’ve officially decided that I don’t like eating crab from the shell. It’s too messy and time consuming. But I’ll take crab cakes any day. The shrimp, scallops, potatoes, rice, and broccoli were fabulous.

Oh, and those lobster tails they show in the commericals–it’s all marketing–pure and simple–well, maybe not pure but you know what I mean. The ones in the commercial are huge. The ones on the plate were tiny. They made crayfish tails look pretty sizable.

Thanks for dinner!  It was delicious.

I finally bought my grill yesterday. It’s a Master Forge, and it has four main burners with a side burner. Now I’m ready to Grill! It! Up!

Summer at the Wong household can finally commence.

Andy and I are going to assemble it this morning, and we’ll cook dinner on it tonight. I already went shopping at Costco and Safeway for our dinner. We’ve got to inaugurate the grill in style, so I’ll be cooking up the following:

• Grilled Butterflied Chicken
• Tri-tip
• Kielbasa
• Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Roasted Potatoes

The first five items will be on the grill. The last one will be in the oven, but if I get a little crazy and adventurous, I might try some on the grill as well.

Can’t wait!

Apparently, Yahoo! Finance picked up my steak story from the Wall Street Journal. Now you can read the article in more than one location. haha

Yesterday, I posted that there would be some exciting news coming out, and that it related directly to this blog.

Without further ado, I give you an article about Brian Wong and USDA Prime beef at Costco.

“How in the world!?!” you ask. Again, it all goes to this blog.

So here’s the story:
Read more…

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on the next big steak, here’s another article that details some currently lesser known cuts of beef. When prepared correctly, they can supposedly be quite delicious. I’ve yet to try any of them, but seems worth a try if nothing else.

Yesterday, I posted an article on how marketers are out to “create” the next big steak. But the thought about food marketing grabbed my attention.

I think the other case I’m specifically aware of where the marketers “created” a new food item was with the portobello mushroom. In reality, portobellos are just giant crimini mushrooms. The farmers had no idea what to do with them, so the marketers gave them a new name and sold them as portobellos. Odd, huh?

And in a twist of irony, the marketers did such a good job, and portobellos are so well known now that they must surpass criminis in consumer recongition because you can go into the grocery store today and find “baby bellas” which are supposed to be smaller, immature portobellos. In reality of course, they’re just standard size criminis. Hmm…the irony of it all.

The other interesting one I know of is the Patagonian toothfish. Say what? Likely, you’ve never heard of it, but what if I told you that was the real name of the Chilean Sea Bass?  Yup. Totally marketing. Chilean Sea Bass just sounds delicious and exotic, doesn’t it?

That’s marketing for you.

The Mercury News had a fascinating article on how marketers are in the process of “creating” the next big steak. I put that in quotes because they’re obviously not creating anything. Those cows have been the same for hundreds if not thousands of years, and they’re not growing any new musculature. The marketers are just figuring out new ways of slicing, dicing, and serving beef.

It’s an interesting read with insight into the marketing that goes into the food industry.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who was dissatisfied with the way the (not so) Great American Food and Music Festival went. John Orr of the San Jose Mercury News wrote about it in a blog post Saturday night and expressed great disappointment and frustration. John Birdsall of SF Weekly had similar sentiments. Loni Stark of StarkSilverCreek even has an interesting video detailing the ordeal along with some tasty looking photographs. Even the San Jose Mercury News picked up the story.

A couple of days ago, Ed Levine issued another “apology” on his blog. But I’d say it’s a half-hearted apology at best. The first paragraph gets right to it and apologizes. What he apologizes for isn’t really clear because he never states it. In fact, I’d argue that he has the audacity blame the massive failure of the event on others–most notably the attendees!

Frankly, people were so excited about the fest that they all showed up early, which doesn’t normally happen at an all-day festival. That compounded the logistical issues.

That might not be outright blame, but it certainly seems to me like he’s trying to pass the buck.  And speaking of bucks:

Our high-tech cashless wristband system, designed to be easy to use for serious eaters and purveyors alike, failed at the get-go.

Was it really his fault that technology failed? No certainly not. But it was his fault for not having a contingency plan and implementing it when things went awry.

The last part of his “apology” was a sob story about how things didn’t go as expected…uh…yeah. That’s the whole point:

This has been my dream for nearly two decades, I still believe in that dream. And the image I had in mind wasn’t what took place yesterday, but I won’t give up on the dream that I think a lot of you share with me. It was a pleasure to meet so many of you in person. We’ll let you know when we try again.

Ed, you can let me know when you try again, but you’re going to need a demonstrable improvement in logistics, entertainment, food, pricing, etc. before I consider attending again. In the meantime, I’d rather eat $1.50 Costco hot dogs with free soda and watch Bobby Flay on the Food Network.

Well, I might have to retract what I said a couple of days ago regarding the Great American Food and Music Festival. Charlene and I ended up giving it another opportunity to impress, and we returned to the Amphitheatre after church on Saturday night with our friends Mike and Lani. It wasn’t great, but it was acceptable.

We were actually quite surprised at how empty it was around 7:00pm. It was a stark contrast to the madness that greeted us around 2:00pm. A few of the vendors, notably Graeter’s Ice Cream, were out of food, which I thought was pretty lame.  But I guess if they were significantly unprepared for the masses of people, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Charlene and I got Pink’s hot dogs, and a pastrami sandwich from a New York deli. They were alright, but I certainly wouldn’t travel across the country just to eat them. The pricing was bordering on extortion. $6 for a 20oz soda, and $5 for a 20oz water. The pastrami sandwich was $12. For $12 I was expecting a footlong sandwich. Nope. We’re talking standard size sandwich bread. No more than 12 square inches of food. $2 for 4 slices of bacon. Hot wings were a $1 a wing. That’s right, 2 inches of chicken for a buck. $2 for a brownie bite. Even parking for the $20 event was $15. Extortion indeed!

I guess one redeeming quality was that Ed Levine, got up and issued an apology on stage. That made the angst mildly more palatable.

We did get to see Bobby Flay, which was somewhat of a highlight.  I’m not exactly sure what was wrong with him, but he certainly wasn’t the Bobby Flay I love to watch on the Food Network. Maybe he just had a really long day, but my real suspicion was that he was a bit drunk. We watched him make shrimp tamales and a pork tenderloin. He looked a bit lost on stage, and I don’t know where they got his assistant, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t one of the two ladies who normally help him on Throwdown. She looked lost too. By way of example, he asked her for heavy cream, and she offered him milk. Who in their right mind would try to substitute milk for heavy cream? Not on Bobby Flay’s stage. He called her out on it too. haha.

The other disappointment was that Bobby was supposed to present from 8:30-9:15. Twenty minutes into it, he must have had enough, so he finished his pork tenderloin, and said “Thanks everyone, I’m Bobby Flay” and then he walked off. Huh? No idea what that was all about. Maybe it was the alcohol.

So, all in all, the event was quite a disappointment. Way over priced; way too crowded; way too little food; way too little value. I only feel bad for the “poor” folks who paid $526 for VIP tickets, and faced the same problems the rest of us plebeians did. Long lines, no food, bad entertainment.

So we showed up to the Great American Food and Music Festival with great hope and expectations.

But things turned ugly rather quickly…

As we were walking into the Amphitheatre, we heard a lot of griping and complaining. A few people yelled, “Don’t do it, it’s not worth it.” Upon asking for further clarification, they told us that there were way too many people. Supposedly, they sold 50,000 tickets for a venue that only holds 10,000 people. The lines were upwards of one hour for food. I heard tales of waits as long as 4 hours for a sandwich, and 3 hours for buffalo wings. Pretty crazy.

So we gave up and headed out to lunch.