Sonora Grill is now taking reservations for holiday parties. We have many different options to suit your needs. Our private party room in the back is perfect for a small gathering with friends and the private banquet room is great for larger family or business parties. We also host parties in the main dining room and in the bar and lounge area.

Special holiday menus are available, with prices starting at $9.99. Everything is fresh and made from scratch, so we can easily cater to your vegetarian and gluten-free needs. Call or email for more information.

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.

Want to learn a few new Mexican style desserts? Things you can easily whip out with not too much hassle, impress the friends, make the kids happy…Sure you do.

Join me at Sonora Grill tomorrow at 2pm and I’ll show you how to blast out a few simple but delicious desserts, for instance, Torre De Bunuelos, Tres Leches, Sopapillas…it may all be written in Spanish but in the universal language of Awesome Dessert…your mouth is gonna be like O heck yeah…

…A couple nights ago I was at a Red Cross charity event up in Snow Basin here in Utah, its a very large, very shee shee chi chi ski resort about 20 minutes drive from my house…we were there, my staff and I, to do a bunch of nice food, as well as were some other restaurants with ‘chefs’ as opposed to your average like McDonald’s which admittedly are more popular here, but the Salt Lake City crowd does have a few nice restaurant diners types…anyway…we’re just loading in all of our equipment at the event’s beginning and I was standing on the parking lot looking up at the mountain when my guys are moving a big ice thing inside the lodge and this guy walks up…this is a true story…completely…this guy walks up to me, he appears as if out of nowhere, I swear and he’s like 70ish with hiker’s clothes on and he has a big gold chain around his neck with a star of David on it, he is walking with a cane and he has these big sunglasses and he goes hey are you guys working hard? I could sense right away this guy was a spiritual being, a kind of guy that didn’t need me to be trying to be creative with him or anything…just real…so I go, no, we’re hardly working (which is the stock answer of course…working hard or hardly working? Yuk yuk) and he gets this look behind these huge glasses and he smiles and says with a hardcore NY accent ‘now that’s the answer. That’s what I’m talking about my man’ his spirit is smiling and laughing…and me too. We had an instant rapport…sometimes you get that from honest people…I said what are you doing out here?
He said, I’m from NY
I said I guessed that.
He said have you been there?
I said, oddly enough, I was just there in April. I was visiting a few people I know in Brooklyn and my uncle in Manhattan.
He said I’m from Queens. Did you get to Queens?
I said no I didn’t go to Queens when I was there.
You didn’t miss much.
We both laugh…he’s the only guy outside for a hundred miles…the guests haven’t arrived…it was weird…
He goes hey you know where I can get a coffee or tea?
I said I bet I can find someone with coffee so follow me and let’s get you one. What are you doing out here?
We go inside the gigantic lodge and there’s a hundred cooks/chefs and waiters in there preparing for the event but no one has coffee. I’m walking around asking everyone where’s the coffee. I’m doing all I can to be getting this guy a coffee…I eventually get someone in the main kitchen to get me a coffee in a paper cup and a sugar bowl and some half and halfs…then I started looking for the guy, the Snow Ghost…I called him that because he just disappeared. I was there in my capacity of Executive Chef Rickenbacker’s/Sonora Grill…doing my thing, leading cooks in the making of the fine foods and shmoozing guests…except my cooks are putting me on. Pretending they didn’t see the guy…

I don’t know, Chris. You’re finally slipping. I didn’t see no old man.

Yeah, sure Chef, right…little old man with a cane…riiight…

I’m 26 and Sous Chef at Café De Young in the De Young museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It’s a nice, small place, I’d made some connections, you know, said the right things to right people…really just got lucky to get the job in the first place. We had only 10 employees, we’re serving really nice soups and sandwiches, a couple hot lunch entrées everyday…whole mustard roasted pork tenderloin, baked sweet potato with pecans, sautéed organic Swiss chard…next day we do steak frittes… Natural chicken roasted in pesto with organic baby leeks, baby lettuce…we did a ton of catering out of there…Sunset magazine reviewed the Café and said it was the best museum café on the West Coast. My boss Chef Lanz felt I was bit uptight…Id’ been abused in other restaurants…by my previous chefs…they had spent several years breaking me down and building me back up in their own image…teaching me to slice and dice very, very fast and with great precision, and shut up Chris. Everything that comes out of your mouth makes you sound progressively more stupid…you’re worthless, Chris…never speak. Just put your head down and use that knife. Be silent, you slice and dice, you do not chop and cut, don’t play with your food…sauté and sauté perfectly, listen…give ‘call backs’, give ‘all days’…be technically proficient…otherwise, keep your mouth shut. There were 2 mean and evil old chefs in particular…they put the fear in me…yet by the same token, you really couldn’t ask for better teachers…People ask me now what school I attended…I always just say, well, you know, they didn’t really have cooking school back in the 80’s…they weren’t prevalent, it was too expensive, what was I gonna do, go to Paris? On my motorcycle or my skateboard? Regardless…I was just stoked to be employed, happy to be alive, having too much fun to care…enjoying the ride you know.

Chef Lanz told me to lighten up. Quit being so fast, accurate, precise, who cares about whether or not you can do perfect brunoise, fine dice, batonette, tournet cut freaking carrots…you can make better food if you put some love in it…chill out and relax, kid…and why don’t you ever say anything? I’ve already hired you…stop worrying so much…You know who makes the best food in the world Chris? Who’s the best chef you know? I said I really don’t know Chef. He said your grandma Chris. Your grandma makes the best food in the world right? From here on out, you are gonna start cooking like your grandma…only with knife skills…can you do that?
Okay Chef Lanz. Yeah I can do that.

And BTW Chef Lanz, who had real chops in the kitchen, my new boss, he actually had been to cooking school…in London. As I said before, I’ve had a charmed life…I’ve worked for some chefs who knew what they were doing…

In short time, he left to take the helm at the new Café at the re-opening of The Legion of Honor up at Lincoln Park. Leaving me in charge at the Café de Young…I’ve been indebted to his memory ever since…before he left, we started a tradition of having lunch together…nearly everyday…we had a lot of frittatas with salad. A lot of local greens he’d smother with a ton of handmade Caesar dressing.

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.

So, watching the fights on TV, eating a Sonora Grill burrito that I’d picked up to go…crunching on SG chips and salsa…I had an epiphany…a thought that came to me in an instant from nowhere…encapsulating my entire personal history in the Universe…I’d have liked to have been an MMA fighter, but these chips and this salsa…dang! That’s some pretty good food they gots down there at Sonora Grill. The ambience inside is amazing and you could probably convince the bartender to change the channel from football to MMA, but more people dig football…far and away, much more popular sport so it’s more likely to be played in most public establishments.

Anyway, I took it home, Mike Brown scored a knockout and then I watched Donald Cerrone destroy his opponent…definitely fight of the night…glad I don’t get punched out by one of these guys for money…for some people…like me, cooking and cheffing is natural, it’s safe…other guys are a little more dangerous. 

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.