This weekend a reader informed me that my cooking video featured at Unzipped Blog had been pulled from You Tube for violating of their terms of service. Just when you thought Google could make everything better this had to go and happen. Thankfully I own my own web site and don’t require the convenience of You Tube. Enjoy!

The boys over at Unzipped Blog went nuts when I told them I was going to start a series of cooking videos. In honor of their enthusiasm I gave them the first webisode to premiere on their blog. Go have a look for yourself.

My last meal of 2007 was shrimp tempura and it was amazing, but it was my second to last meal of 2007 that deserves mention.

Having missed every blessed holiday of the season due to a job that ended up in the crapper I thought it only fair to surprise Ma Hazzard on her birthday. This meant an ungodly early flight out of LAX on January 1. Thankfully, my webmaster lives in close proximity to the airport and had no conflicting plans to prevent me from crashing at his place and begging a lift.

Boy Wonder suggested we visit a spot he found called “Raw” in Santa Monica. It’s not sushi, but raw cuisine, living foods that are not cooked above a certain temperature and are considered “alive”. I was torn. I had “living food” once before in San Francisco and it did not agree with me or anybody in my party. I suspect it was the coconut soup. I did enjoy the rest of the lunch though and figured what the hell, I will try it again this time avoiding coconut milk or anything that billed itself as a living soup.

The menu was sent to me via e-mail by Boy Wonder due to the extensive list of items. It was a thoughtful and efficient idea, but I wish he had not because we waited for ages to be noticed at our table and I would have liked to have spent that time looking at the menu instead of wondering where the hell our server was. I had to get up twice before we got our first course. This food had better sing and dance because I was hungry and getting annoyed. In my opinion, being a high standing member of the service industry, the first couple of minutes before you approach a table are very important. Chances are the guests are hungry and a minute or 30 seconds to you can and does usually seem like an eternity.

Eventually she came around and we began our experience of the living dinner.

The menu is set up in a suggested order of courses; one of the ideas behind this sort of thing is to eat things in an order that maximizes efficient digestion. This meant dessert first!

First course, THE ORGAZMATRON, a rustic parfait of sorts with a buckwheat crust and creamy avocado finished with nuts, ginger and mint. We were in heaven. Amidst the exhaust fumes of passing vehicles and a seemingly endless onslaught of construction noise there was a party going on in our mouths – and everybody was invited. The Orgazmatron truly lived up to its name!

I had THE SEA WITCH for my mid course and Boy Wonder had the MAKI S&M SPECIAL. I said I was going to avoid living soups, but I love seaweed soup and I saw no mention of coconut milk or anything else ominous. The MAKI S&M SPECIAL was an interesting take on sushi with a Pumpkin Seaweed Walnut Pâté rolled with Avocado, Cucumber, Purple Cabbage & Tomatoes served with a spicy mustard & Nama Shoyu.

My soup was perfect, warm and loaded with ten varieties of seaweed. Meanwhile the “sushi” was really something; the thought and energy that goes into a production like that is worthy of high praise and hard not to enjoy.

We finished with what we thought to be the most intriguing items, the PESTO PIZZA, a deep dish warm “pizza” and a BACON WESTERN DOUBLE “cheeseburger”. The pizza was made with a buckwheat crust topped with a walnut pesto, tomato, Italian herbs, olives, marinated onions & mushrooms. That was mine and let me tell you it was amazing.

Boy Wonder’s “burger”, a Mushroom Nut Burger with Macadamia “Chez”, heirloom ketchup, Fig Mustard and Zucchini fries was arranged open faced and we ate it in pieces with this on that and that on this. So good, the “cheese” was nothing short of a culinary masterpiece.

Dinner was the perfect amount of food, any more would have been gluttonous and uncomfortable. Not a bad price point for what was a creative and difficult dinner to prepare. In my opinion, not cuisine for the every day, but perfect for those special occasions when Pumpkin Ravioli, Cornish Hens and Flourless Chocolate Torte don’t float your boat.

Thanksgiving at work had been a real joy so far. Bad manners, cheap guests and disappointment abounded and it was far from over. The owner of the hotel came in with a party of six. The staff were nervous right away because he can be very demanding and a bit rude. I had no fear and welcomed the challenge. It didn’t matter that half of his party, on arrival of the first course, demanded something else. Why should it irk me that the menu was ignored and the food rejected after it had been prepped and served? It was my job to serve and I was determined to do so, and well.

Worry not, we can stop everything. Ignore the other 200 patrons enjoying their fixed menu fare so we can make YOU your fucking iceberg wedge you ungrateful, tacky, prick! The owner requested that his favorite wines be served, a 1986 Chateau Haut Brion; a top of the line Bordeaux that we sell for the modest price of $540. The white was a Louis Latour Montrachet; one of the finest white Burgundies ever for the same price. It kills me when someone with good taste has no manners to match. It has been told to me by several upper management persons that this restaurant is nothing to him except a place for his ungrateful, demanding tennis club friends to hang out and belittle the staff. How nice for them that they have a place to go to feel good. So glad we are here for them.

There was some controversy over the location of the second bottle of Bordeaux when the bill came. The owner had been knocking them back like Pellegrino.

I calmly explained that the first bottle had finished well before the second course and since both were on the table I saw no need to interrupt him with a useless question like “Shall I open the second bottle?” when it was clearly there for consumption not decoration. He spoke to me like I was the first participant in an underprivileged youth work exchange program. Let me just say that condescension from such a pretentious dolt is a real boost. It very nearly made up for missing the holiday with my mom.

The bill came to a little over two large. He left me two Ben Franklins and change. The staff were pooling our tips that day so he didn’t just fuck me – he fucked his entire team. People that gave up their holiday to serve sub par food to a bunch of arrogant, entitled, thankless bastards and for what? Ten percent? A party of six at IHOP has 18% added to the bill.

I was a little bummed, but glad to see early on what kind of man I was working for. I was also very glad that while I was decanting the bottle of Bordeaux I saved enough for a huge glass that I shared with the servers through the night. Now that’s what I call holiday spirit!

A friend of mine, Dave, recently treated me to dinner at an oyster house called Pacifica Del Mar. El Paseo is the Rodeo Drive of Palm Springs, but at this time of year the sounds and sights of credit card swipes and 3 Series are replaced with the dull click of traffic lights changing.

With this in mind the restaurant was surprisingly busy. We walked upstairs where the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains at bar level so perfectly that the glasses of wine and colored martinis sparkled on the bar like pieces of beach glass. I started with a glass of Pinot from Carneros while I studied and weighed the many options. The menu was packed with interesting and creative items such as Fanny Bay oysters Rockafeller and seared Sea Bass with a Miso Orange Marmalade. When Dave asked me if I liked oysters I was shocked to realize that I had never had any.

As the comment resonated I thought how absurd it was since I have spent every summer since I left home on the shores of Cape Cod. I could not believe it and asked him to order a dozen of his favorite; he chose Fanny Bays hold the Rockefeller which were baked with spinach (hence, not true Rockefeller anyway). I wanted to try them with no bells or whistles since it was my first time. So the first course was on, a dozen oysters and a seared salmon ceviche, which seemed rather appealing.

While we waited for the first tastes of Pacifica to arrive I scanned the room in my customary inspection of the clientèle. Everybody and when I say everybody, I mean with an exception of maybe 20 people out of more than 300, had on a color that matched the banquettes or a pattern resembling that of the carpet. There is a uniform of sorts that you see with the 50 to 80 something crowd of Palm Springs. When the first course arrived and the dishes were placed in front of us I gave this crowd a name, The Desert WASPS; I already started to design the logo in my head.

Something that I did pick up from living among the fisherman and having served quite a few oysters myself is that the experience is mostly the result of mixing together in one bite the shellfish and the mignonette, a flavorful little array of accoutrement like capers and fresh horseradish that accompany the gelatinous alleged aphrodisiac. I dressed my oyster and slid it into my mouth, gave it two light chews to mingle the flavors and swallowed it. I liked it, a lot.

The ceviche was a bit disappointing, not in quality but execution. Ceviche should be a light and tantalizing mixture of tomato, onion, avocado and cilantro presented cleanly and diced just at the right size where a spoon might be needed. Although this dish seemed to contain those ingredients they were very coarse making it more difficult to manage. Lastly, the salmon was cooked to about a medium rare. Hello? Ceviche is not seared! The point is the citric acid “cooks” the fish by denaturing the proteins. It would have been more accurately described as “Country Style Seared Salmon Ceviche” – but that’s just me.

For the big choice of dinner I vacillated between the Whitefish with parsnip puree and julienne veggies or the Sea Bass with the miso and orange marmalade. Dave was a bit bummed that there was no Surf and Turf. When our server began to clear the plates from course one he asked her why was there no Surf and Turf. He was hanging on the verge of sobbing. She happily put Dave back in happy land when she said that they did offer it in its traditional presentation of Fillet and Lobster Tail with drawn butter and mashed potatoes. I then thought to myself as I watched Dave’s eyes glimmer that the last time I had lobster was when I was at about 12; I ordered the Surf and Turf just for that reason. I was happy. I did although come to the conclusion that I find lobster to be quite boring and probably will not order it again in that way.

One detail I found to be quite amusing about our evening happened when Dave was on the phone making our reservation. The full extent on the humor was not fully experienced until I sat down.

Dave’s parents know the proprietor so when he called he said, “……and I am a friend of Dick’s”. I immediately thought of all those times I would take a reservation and the party on the other end would include at the end of our conversation “….and I know ____.” “Sure ya do pal, everybody does!” is the immediate response in my head and on two occasions seemed to vocalize itself.

When we arrived at the top of the stairs the man at the front asked our name and then turned to his Micros screen to look us up. He turned around almost immediately and said to us “Who’s Dave? I’m Dick’s partner Mitch.”

The way he said it, based on my years in the restaurant biz, led me to believe that this might not have been received well. Dave then explained that it was not him but his parents that had the friendship with his partner. Mitch shook his hand and said condescendingly “Here. Right here you see?….pointing at the screen, VIP” – not the best sign.

We were led to the main dining room to a two top. I took the inside seat and sat down on what seemed to be a large crack that aligned perfectly with my own. We had been seated where two banquettes merged together creating a rather uncomfortable gap of space. I began to move the table to the right when I bumped into something. It was a party of two sitting next to us; their outfits camouflaged so well that I was not able to distinguish them from the floor or upholstery. I only had to hang my crack above the crack for about 20 minutes until the party to the left departed and gave me the chance to realign my gluteus maximus. It’s good to be a VIP!