We go through 40 gallons of our red smoky morita salsa and 40 gallons of our green tomatillo salsa every week!

And there are plenty of our customers who like it HOT! We use 10 gallons of habanero salsa per week.

Any guesses how many chips are needed for all of that salsa? 44,000 per week!

During the month of May, tomatoes were priced incredibly high due to weather and demand. We spent over $20,000 to provide our customers free chips and salsa.

Sonora Grill used 10,000 pounds of chicken last year. Our numbers will probably exceed 16,000 pounds this year!

We use an average of 1000 avocados per week.

Our tortilla lady makes about 1000 tortillas, by hand, every day. On weekends, the number goes up to almost 1800!

Laura Benson! Congratulations! Make us proud!

Sending you an email with more details.

The 12 Days of Christmas, Sonora Grill style is coming, and you don’t want to miss it. Because we don’t have calling birds, milking maids, or pipers piping here. But we do have delicious salads, desserts, tableside guacamole, and fajitas. And you won’t believe the deals we’re going to offer on them! Be sure to check our facebook page to find out about the incredible specials.

Check it out. American Express is giving registered Cardmembers a $25 statement credit when they shop at small businesses on Small Business Saturday! See their facebook event for more information.

These are couple holiday shots of Steve and Chris. It was at exactly this week 3 years ago…seems like it was only 2

Chef Courtney was putting up some very good looking and delicious plates at the American Red Cross Autumn Gourmet Gala. Mahi mahi ceviche, shrimp tamale and chicken breast with mole colorado.

At times you might work from 6am to 2am, but only at rare times and always with some serious negative repercussions visited upon your health. You gotta take care of yourself…No one can live like that for very long. It’s tough. At times…like once or twice in your entire career.
As the Exec. of a popular restaurant on the strip, you have to expect some students of the discipline or, if you like, art of becoming a restaurant ‘chef’ and they do come to you…the students, they sent resumes by e-mail, called constantly. Hi my name is Don/Bette’/Jean Paul/Dusty/Rusty/Justy/Sue and I want to grow up to be a chef and I heard you’re a good teacher and I gotta do my externship in order to graduate from the California Culinary Academy or Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, or Greystone in Napa…Johnson and Wales in Rhode Island or wherever that joint is…or the French Culinary in NY…whatever…Le Cordon Bleu franchise…gotta have some type of kitchen experience before they hand you the sheepskin…
A business-wise Executive chef will take em under his/her wing, put em in the kitchen and work em to death.
The young kids that go to school, they have strange ideas. You can’t unconfuse someone that deluded. You just have to help em out if you can. Some of them have been told they’ll have a 40 hours a week type job with a steady schedule, with decent pay and awesome ‘co-workers’…but you need to get that idea out of their minds…food is imaginative, creative, vibrant, alive and fun. What’s not fun is: 40 hours a week, good pay, behind the same desk all your life…that’s the opposite of kitchen life.
Then there’s the martyr type who you can’t get to leave the kitchen until you literally have to fire em. He maybe wasn’t the best when you hired him, but after several months of volunteering to do everything everyday, he’ll never take a day off. He never goes away. Works for free. A complete butt kiss…Won’t even punch in…his mediocre work gradually becomes worse…next thing you know, resentment, termination…involuntary, voluntary…what’s the difference…kid can’t cook his way out of a paper bag…too tired to notice he messed up. Or worse, he can’t admit he cut off half his finger when you can see the blood streaming off his chef’s knife…Young extern so tired she just stands there leaning over a puddle of her own drool…I mean cooks that burn the soup and try and pretend they didn’t…serve it when it’s plainly scorched…no one’s fooled…soup comes right back. Waiter what’s this fly doing in my soup? The backstroke, Sir…
Chef’s hours are long, sure. Some people are gonna give you no respect. Certainly. Just be intelligent. Some cooks are so ignorant they couldn’t hammer a nail into snow…it’s just food…you want to make it wholesome, delicious, in a timely manner…I mean, you got guests out in your dining room and you really want them to be happy, so if you have to throw down a few more hours, burn a little midnight oil…you know, you got to do it. Of course, you will realize when you are honestly doing all you can, fast as you can, precisely as you can, with the kind of expertise that only you possess…there’s no one who could do it any better than it’s being done…but really, be happy about it…chill out… it’s just food.

MSM…relatively famous American celebrity chef. One half of the Too Hot Tamales of Food Network lore…Mary Sue, takes her turn. At first a bit unsure..
Do I really wanna do this? I was after all, just laughing at the nice man, O heck the other ladies won’t laugh at me. And what if they do? The whole world will end? I think not…and anyway my knees are already dirty. I’m a million miles from Culver City, and these chicks are cooking us dinner tonight…O I hope the man eats the volcano rock tamale…I’m certainly going to be dissapointed if they try and serve it to me…BTW, where’s the brewskies? I’m sure a saw a ‘tienda’ on the ride over…

in San Sebastian Abasolo, a nice man grinds white corn to coarse masa, the kind one might use for tamales. Nice ladies stand by and laugh as he grates the volcanic rock from the metate with overpowering force and lack of subtlety. The nice man says…what? What’s so funny?
You are supposed to grind the corn, not the rock. Would you like to quit pretending that you know what you are doing, get up off your knees and let us do it…?
I would. the man says. who’s next.

There’s no telling how we scored the lodgings because the apartment was killer…came with a pitcher of fresh water and a large clean porcelain bowl on the nightstand…this was not like the first trip…O this is going in style…this is nice accommodations, clean water to wash your face, nice bedroom…traveling with Susan and Mary Sue, well, now, the secret’s out. Clean cool sheets, beautiful cloudy sky…probably they bought the weather too. Everyone has her/his own room. Mine is above the street. Directly across the street is the governor’s compound…gives it some cache. The traffic sounds…the cars…it’s comforting…the girls are amazing though as much as we love Mexico we can’t wait to get back to L.A./L.V. and take a shower with our water…Only in America…late at night, we hit some secret food spots, side streets, eat charred and aciento laden empanadas with chunks of cerdo in mole colorado…and sleep for a couple a hours in the early morning. This shot might be at sundown or sunup…can’t remember…too much food…far, far too much greasy foreign food…all top notch stuff, eaten in the middle of the street and/or crouched up against a set a stairs with 3 dozen of men near a raging fire…me, 5 ladies and this young man with the glasses from Los Angeles…in the dark of the dark