It’s been two years since we first opened our doors.

The floors have been mopped seven hundred twenty-six times.

Tableside guacamoles have been ordered over eleven thousand times.

We have made an estimated one hundred seventy-five thousand corn tortillas.

And we’ve loved every minute of it.

Happy Birthday to us.

The first bean breakfast I had in Oaxaca was in the home of a family I didn’t know too well, but they were to be my guides around the area. I was hungry and they were gracious enough to serve me. It was a nice family in a nice neighborhood called Xoxo Nazerena. I was served first and the family stood around and watched me eat. I watched them back. Breakfast consisted of a bowl of black beans in broth, a plate of roasted green chiles, another plate with strips of white Oaxacan cheese, another plate over there with a fat stack of freshly made corn tortillas, and a two-liter plastic bottle of pineapple soda.

I may as well have been on Mars.

The family couldn’t have been nicer; they were very hospitable and were considered well off by local standards. I didn’t think they were holding out on me. I guess I was just expecting an omelet and a cup of coffee.

It was springtime in this lush farming community just on the edge of the city; the whole place was strung with electric wires and TV wires. Wires littered the sky. It was just a couple blocks away from the local farming university, El ITAO: the Instituto Tecnologico Agropecuario de Oaxaca. After coming off a plane from Los Angeles, it struck me as being a very rural location. The grass was green and the soil was wet and black. The dirt looked as rich as wet coffee grounds. It was really quite lovely. There was no shortage of arable land.

The bean breakfast was considered normal. It was what they always ate for breakfast, and it was delicious. It just wasn’t the kind of food I was used to eating for breakfast. Eleven people stood across the long table and looked at me. They watched me stuffing myself with unbelievably delicious black bean/chile/cheese tacos and drinking artificially flavored pineapple soda pop. I didn’t feel quite at home yet. I hadn’t really decompressed from L.A. and I stared back at them, watching to see what they were going to do after I ate everything on the table.

White-Hot Indie Folk

Tuesday, March 30

7:30 pm

Jefferson Hall (607 27th Street)

For more information, click here.

Have you been to SpeedStreet in Layton?

If you have a lead foot (and have been caught) it looks like you can go for free!

What a deal.

It was hot. It was the middle of the day, middle of the week, middle of summer. K and I were sitting in a cool underground Tijuana restaurant and bar drinking Corona beer from out of longneck bottles packed in ice inside these little galvanized steel buckets they’d brought to the table. We sat and drank our cold Coronas and waited for our food amid the sounds of drunken laughter and screams and tequila shooter girls blowing whistles echoing through this cold, dark cave. We were happy to be out of the heat. I had already secretly ordered a tequila shooter for K.

The tequila shooter girl approached our table from behind, and I gave her the sign. She had a bottle of no name brand gold tequila in her left hand and a plastic whistle between her lips. She grabbed K by the hair and gently pulled her head back, causing K’s mouth to open. The tequila shooter girl began to blow through the whistle whilst free-pouring a shot of tequila into K’s mouth. Well, probably more than a shot, really. The surrounding tables watched. People cheered and laughed. This is a Tijuana tradition, by the way. The first time you see it can be a little shocking but after a few times, it’s quite funny. The tequila shooter girl put down the bottle and shut K’s mouth with a hand to the chin and she shook K’s head like she was a bartender shaking a margarita. Only she blew this screaming plastic whistle in K’s ear the whole time. When she let go, my traveling companion K looked dazed and confused, but she was still smiling. It’s a gamble. They might get mad. You can’t tell.

I paid the tequila shooter girl way too much money and then she split. She took her bottle of tequila with her. She went to give some other customer a tequila shooter. A waitress brought our food.

Very traditional style rolled cheese enchiladas and chile rellenos fried in egg batter and bathed in hot red chile arbol sauce.
Corn tortillas, pickled jalapenos, onions and carrots…escabeche, refried beans and tortilla chips were in bowls placed all over the table. This was not the finest food I would ever eat in my life, but if my memory serves me well, it was pretty delicious. Some foods are supposed to be eaten in their natural environment.

We were just under Avenida Revolution down the street a couple kilos from the Jai Alai stadium. I was in love with Tijuana and walking down the street looking at gaudy handicrafts such as bullwhips, boots and Mexican silver-plated costume spurs. Pharmacies filled with cheap illicit pills and bottled water, liquor stores, watches, switchblade knives, the smell of greasy animal fat dripping and oozing around in smoking taco stands. I loved tongue tacos, shredded goat birria, lamb chunks in barbacoa sauce with dripping greasy decadent and mouthwatering droolage of the carne de rez. Of course, always keeping your eyes open for barbequed iguana…maybe one day I’ll find it. Ah, good old Tijuana.

Happy Anniversary to Little Cherry Blossoms!

As the Executive Chef of Sonora Grill, I have been very fortunate to have the great honor of simultaneously working as the Executive Chef at Rickenbacker’s restaurant at the Ogden Airport. In between dining trips to Sonora Grill, I strongly suggest you go try us out at Rickenbackers. It’s very good. We’re very proud of it.

We have a very talented assistant at Rickenbacker’s, Chef Ryan Sleeter, and I have another young talent, Chef Courtney Larsen, doing the good work at Sonora Grill. My heart really goes out to these poor guys…it’s great to be number one, but it’s tough to be number two.

People have often asked, “How can you just cook, mix up all these ingredients and just come up with dishes of food and be confident enough to serve it?”
I guess there are about a million answers to that question. But if you open up your refrigerator and you happen to have… let’s say, a bag of lettuce mix, some blue cheese, a can of olives, roasted red peppers, grilled yellow zucchini, sunflower sprouts, grilled radicchio, shaved fennel, sherry vinegar/extra virgin olive oil dressing… that’s got springtime salad written all over it… I can recognize any type of dish just from a few ingredients. Why? Because when I was young, it was drilled into my head by an unrelentingly meticulous chef who spared no insult to get me to make nice salads. I had to do it well or lose my job. Eat or die, right?

Know what I really like on a salad? For lack of a better title lets call it:

Pink Peppercorn Salad Sprinkle

2 Tbsp. pink peppercorns
2 Tbsp. sesame seeds
1 tsp. Kosher salt

Put all of these ingredients in a dry saute pan over medium low heat, toast them for 5 minutes, shaking the pan periodically.
Remove it from the heat. When the ingredients have cooled down, put them in your spice grinder. Grind it. Sprinkle on your salad. It’s delicious.

Now, what’s up with pink peppercorns? Look online, you can probably find everything you really need to know on wikipedia. You should be able to purchase them at Sur La Table in the mall or ordering online.

As for a spice grinder? Get a coffee grinder, Braun, Krups, Cuisinart, whichever brand; you can get them for $19.99 at any department store. Go to Ross Dress for Less and you can get a strange colored one from last season for even less.

Then go home and cook. Get a slice of nice bread to go with your salad, put olive oil on it, rub it with a bit of minced fresh garlic and grill it over a wood fire and turn it over… lots of nice kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper… I never got by on my good looks. I had to work hard… I’m not really elitist. I was simply hungry, you know, literally and figuratively. And the bread with the garlic… it’s pretty tasty too…

Thanks, Ogden

Well, we’re all quite happy to receive the Salt Lake Magazine 12th annual dining award for the best Mexican restaurant in the state of Utah. That’s a big honor. Courtney and I were down at the Fine Art Museum on the U of U campus last Tuesday to receive the Big Red Plate and try to come up with something to say. I found it difficult to say a lot at the time. Maybe it was speaking into the microphone that had me feeling like being quiet. So I said a few words and then I stopped talking. All the other cool, independent, creative restaurant chefs were there in attendance. They each had to say something.

Sitting here at the end of another busy day in the restaurant, it’s occurred to me that I have a lot to be thankful for. Since 1985, I have cooked in 6 major west coast cities, plus over 5 years as the Executive Chef of a very large, very busy award-winning Mexican restaurant on the
Las Vegas strip. Now that Sonora Grill is on the culinary map, we’re all stoked to be considered as part of the SLC dining scene.

I guess I just want to say thanks to everyone who has come down to Sonora Grill and eaten with us since we opened way back in 2008. We’ve grown and changed and improved so many things about what we do. I know we’re not the first Ogden restaurant to win an award, but it feels good to be recognized.

Thanks again.