New Chapter: Ellabess

I left Oceana for personal reasons but I can say I learned a lot there doing 300+ on a regular night handling a protein station. What's next? Ellabess with Chef Troy Unruh, Pastry Chef Carmine Arroyo and Executive Sous Chef Ty Kotz.  Ellabess It's going to be a seasonal American restaurant.  It's expected to open in July along with the Nolitan Hotel it's located in.  I hope you can join me in this journey because it'll be epic, legendary, okay I'll stop there but seriously it'll be a wild ride.

The first restaurant I stepped into as a cook

Ramen Setagaya

I spent over a year in this kitchen.  This is where it all started.  I miss it a lot and on a rainy day, I would go in for a bowl of shio ramen, cha shyu zara and a cold sapporo.  Hits the spot and brings back many memories.  It's not what it used to be.  The place changed, the owner changed.  Year 2007 was when this restaurant was at it's peak.  We won New York Magazine's Best Ramen award in NYC that year.  The original Setagaya spot was on 1st avenue between 8th and 9th street.  We would play rock, paper and scissors to see who buys coffee across from the corner deli owned by Korean man who was pissed off all the time.  I would sneak downstairs with the cooks and chug beers leftover from the New Years party we had.  We were so busy that year.  Customers were lining up around the block! I remember the ticket number 301.  That's probably 600 customers we served in one night in a 25 seat restaurant.  Best night ever, I felt like the ramen king, no seriously.

Street Festival: Fresh Maine Lobster Rolls.

April 30th, 2011.  65th street and Lexington Avenue.  12 pm-5 pm.

Menu
Classic Lobster Roll, Mayonnaise, Celery
Connecticut Style Lobster Roll, Butter
Bahn Mi Style Lobster Roll, Carrot, Daikon, Cucumber, Cilantro, Sweet Chili Sauce

All lobster rolls were $15

Memorable/funny quotes
Customer 1: "Oh my God, that's drenched in butter?"
Chef: "Yeah but it's low fat and low calorie."

Customer 2: "They all sound good, I don't know which lobster roll to get, which one do you recommend?"
Chef: "If you can't decide, just get all three of them."

Mad "props" to Anais for making my blog look so damn good.  Makes me wanna blog more, no doubt.

Preparing Refreshments for Remnant Church

Passion NYC Revival (April 7-9 2011)

Vegetable Crudite with Blue Cheese Dressing & Russian Dressing
Cheese Platter (Brie, Argentine Parmesan, French Chevre & Holland Smoked Gouda)
Crackers and Salami
Mini Open faced Sandwiches (Ham & Turkey with Cheddar Cheese and Piquillo Pepper Aioli)

Mark Burger

Mark Burger is known for their amazing sliders.  I decided to try it after all the hype and buzz.

original ($2) & with bacon ($2.75) & fries ($3)

Candied Bacon (that's right) Shake ($6)

The cook rocking a fitted worked right next to the bartender.  I could see this guy working the flat top, cooking more than 10 burgers at once accurately, I think the beer he was drinking helped with all of this  The burgers were cooked to order and were cooked to a perfect medium.  Quality was great and they even grind their own beef.  To end the meal, I ordered a bacon shake.  It was really unexpected.  It worked well but left a weird aftertaste.  The bacon added a smoky and salty touch to the sweet and rich shake.  4/5

Cook's Ink

Tattoos are not widely accepted in many professional fields and if you do have tattoos, the boss might encourage you to cover them at work.  But, in the kitchen, it's a different story.  For some odd reason, it's normal to see cooks with ink.  So if you have a lot of tattoos and can't find a job, start cooking, just kidding.

Quick story: When I was working at Tabla as a line cook, I remember I kept my sleeves down to hide my tattoo from Chef Floyd Cardoz.  I was cooking papadum in the salamander (I miss those crab cakes) and of course Chef saw it.  "AY! what's that?!"  I replied, "Chef, it's a tattoo" (I probably looked a little embarrassed) and I remember him saying, "this is why I shouldn't give you guys a day off, you always go off and do something crazy."  HAHAHA, well a couple of hours later he told me something in the lines of, "it's okay, it's how you express yourself, I'm not against it."  I was really relieved.

My tattoo started last year on September 1st, 2010.  It's still in progress and I'm guessing it'll be done by next month.  The parlor I go to is located in the Bronx, called Bronx Ink Tattoo & Piercing.  Hoga is my tattoo artist,  also one of my close hyungs.  He's a very talented man that specializes in Asian art.  I'll post up progress pictures I took in the course of 7 months to show you how it started and ended for those who are interested.  By the way, it's a full sleeve of koi fish.  I know my former senior cook Josh would hate me for posting these pictures up, he's one jealous dude, just kidding on that too.

Hoga working

Retouch

Common Injuries

It's very normal for cooks to get injured at work.  Minor injuries include cuts, burns and bruises.  Every once in a while a cook will be sent to the emergency room for cutting the tip of their finger off, I saw it happen twice already, and it's not pretty.  Well, today, I burned my hand and wrist during dinner service while cooking two orders of striped bass, salmon, pompano and a lobster if I remember correctly.  This is a pretty normal fire, but I was careless and the hot oil inside the cast iron pan spilled directly on my arm.  I was pulling the pan back to throw into the oven, but the angle of the pan and the speed of which it was pulled back made the oil spill right out towards the handle and onto my skin.  This all happened around 7:30 pm, when we were starting to get slammed.  So, I quickly ran my arm under cold water for about a minute or two and went straight back to work.  When you get a pretty severe burn, anytime that wound gets near heat it burns like crazy.  Almost like getting burned AGAIN.  I toughed it out and around 9:30 pm when things finally slowed down, I went to Roosevelt Hospital's ER, following the advice from Sous Chefs.  I waited around 2 hours and saw a doctor.   He rubbed Bacitracin Ointment on the wound and wrapped it with roll gauze, which can't be removed for 3 days since I had first and second degree burns.  The doctor prescribed ibuprofen and oxycodone, which I'm probably not going to take.  I also got a tetanus shot and he instructed me to take 3 days off from work.  I'm going in tomorrow, I'm gonna help the chef at the pass to plate food, that's the least I could do.

Some before and after pictures (it might be a lil nasty, sorry!)

 

Scars and wounds stay in our minds.  I will never forget what I ate this morning, what I wore, what the weather was like, who I spoke to, why I burned myself and the people I worked with.  This is the beauty of scars.  It's history and memory and I might sound like I love getting hurt but I really don't.  But I do appreciate battle scars cause the crew won the battle with a few nicks and brusies. Damn, I should have been a poet.