Recipes

I was thinking about ways to drive business to our website and came up with one that I think just might do it. It's not the world's most innovative idea, but a good one nonetheless 'cause if it works for that tool Rocco DiSpirito, then it's gotta work. Period. "Recipes": simple, tried and true how-to's that showcase Syrian food at its finest. I just added my first one: Samake Harra (for all you Westerners, it's pronounced seh-meh-keh JJarah). This is one of our favorite recipes from my mother-in-law. A true American, I get grossed out by things on the bone, with skin, with EYES.... oh the humanity! Ok, maybe I'm a little pickier than your average bear but this dish is truly succulent and you'll want to suck the meat right off those pointy little bones (at least I did).... plus, if you love spicy food like us, it's a sure to please. I thought a fish dish was appropriate because I think a lot of people eat fish over the Holidays (we always ate ham) and you might want to undertake this one. It's super simple and takes about 1 1/2 hours. Check the website for all the details and more pictures!

On a semi-related topic, we are beginning to pick up some catering accounts and it's so great. The word is officially out. So now the recipes will take up - yet another - new page on the ever-expanding website. The site gets bigger and bigger as the word gets out about the Genie. Some pictures I wanted to share of some catering gigs we did have been added to the site too.

Happy Holidays!

Craft Services

The other day the Gourmet Genie was selected from among hundreds of other food trucks to be on the set of a TV show at Paramount Studios. In my humble opinion, they had all the best trucks: Barbie's Q (and John's a super guy), Grilled Cheese and Dogtown.

The trucks served as background on the set of a "Happy Endings" which will be a mid-season replacement on ABC. I could tell you which shows on channel 7 need to go but that's a whole other blog. The plot dictated that one of the main characters dreamt of owning a food truck and won a food competition. While we took some pictures, they didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. It was a still lot of fun (and a long day of sitting around).

Being there I realized that was another angle we hadn't given much thought to: craft services. I think as food truck operators we are in a unique position to capitalize on this because we could drop off catering/craft services and still roll out for the day and do our regular route. I am beginning to get excited about this new prospect.

We've actually already had a few inquiries for commercial catering and, out of lack of experience I think, we might have come in too high. We were also approached by a craft services person working on the set of another TV show while at Paramount who inquired about pricing. He seemed to think our quote was WAY too high which was puzzling to both of us. Of course I know it's his job to do everything on a budget and maybe he was playing hardball, but it's a complete mystery to me how to set up the pricing for this kind of thing and still turn a profit. The one person we know who does craft services isn't getting back to us about her pricing. I guess she doesn't want us to steal her customers or something.

Max asserts that we are doing something different, something very high end and specialized; he feels that if they don't like our prices they can go somewhere else (he might have put in a nicer way). I would never endeavor to contest his knowledge of food cost/labor. After all he has tons of experience in that regard and I'm just along trying to make sense of budgets, creating spreadsheets and forms. The challenge is just getting our foot in the door, not the actual work. I know no one would try harder to go above and beyond than we would and I know our food is a slam dunk. So what now? Can't just sit back and wait...

After many hours of research I think I have managed to pull together a pricing schema that should satisfy both parties. Just being there that one day was great because we did manage to make a few contacts and have already had a request come in through our (NEW AND IMPROVED) website. Could this be a coincidence? Maybe. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

In the meantime, look for our big red truck when "Happy Endings" airs in 2011 and if you know a location manager in need of craft services, now you know where to go.

Holiday Panic

Every year when November rolls around, I begin to feel just a little anxious about the Holidays. If I am hosting that year, it’s safe to say that the “little” part is multiplied by 10. I start cleaning, purging, and rearranging/ redecorating a month in advance. At the same time, I’m planning the menu in my head or collaborating with my mother on another continent at 50 RPM’s/second and I ALWAYS forget something.

Hosting, for me, kind of takes the fun out of hosting. If you’re organized like my husband, you can sit and enjoy a cocktail and a conversation with your loved ones. If you’re always running around, it isn’t quite so pretty. One of the easiest holiday celebrations I’ve ever hosted was when I had it catered. If you’re busy (and who isn’t?), I recommend you save yourself the agony of menu planning (and the defeat of a lackluster meal), a few hundred trips to the grocery store, the hassle of checking the turkey 80 times to see if it’s done and just hire a professional.

Whether you’d like a traditional holiday celebration with turkey, ham and all the trimmings, a delicious vegetarian alternative or dreaming of a Mediterranean-themed affair, the Gourmet Genie does it all in style, can offer budget-wise menu selections and can even clean up afterwards! How’s that for a reason to celebrate?

As for me, I have a lot to be thankful for. For one thing, our first quarterly newsletter is complete and not a moment too soon. You can sign up to join our mailing list on the website and have the next one delivered right to your inbox. Possibly more importantly, the Gourmet Genie IS catering all my celebrations this year, leaving me more time to work on things like NEXT quarter's newsletter.

Cheers! and here's hoping the Holidays don't drive you mad.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul

So I was up at the crack of dawn today tweeting and DM'ing my little heart out. I'm sure some people consider it spamming at this point and have blacklisted me.

Today is the day of SVdP's Giant Sale and I'm a little apprehensive about it. This could go either way and me up at the crack of dawn, wringing my hands is one of the recurring themes in doing these events. We're not the "biggest" name out there so we don't have a lot of pull yet. It's not like we can just tweet coordinates in the Mojave desert and have people just show up like Kogi can. I'm wondering how it will go for us because:
A) I'm not sure what our fan base is in East Los
B) I'm not sure how many people will show to a sale on a Thursday (day time)
C) If they're looking for a sale, will they want to spend $$ on Genie goodies??

(... ??)

Max is a sucker for a good cause and really, I guess I am too. We wanted to do our part, to pitch in, ya know? The economy is in the toilet, I lost my job, everyone is hurting. We decided we'd donate 10% of our sales to the Society and hope that is a good incentive for people to come out and spend.

We shall see how it goes. Maybe (hopefully) we'll be grossly understaffed with our team of four. Maybe, just maybe, there are so many taco-eaters in East Los that my tweets went viral and the event is trending right now! Maybe not.

If you're readying this and feel like easin' on down the road to a HUUUUGGGGEEEE sale, well hey, you're in luck. The Thrift Store has been named Best Large Thriftstore in Los Angeles by LA Weekly. They're selling lots of Halloween stuff in case you don't have a costume yet. It's located at 210 N. Avenue 21, Los Angeles 90031. If it's better then Out of the Closet on San Fernando then I'm a happy girl.

Wish us luck and check out the website for the Society too: http://www.svdpla.org/

Twitter Contest

Ah, summer. That time of year when it's beaches, bikinis and BBQ's all the way. Well, maybe not this year in SoCal... but summer is still pretty great. Know what else is great even when the marine layer's so thick you need a Ginzu knife to cut through it? My new brainchild, the Gourmet Genie's contest! I'm VERY excited and yes, I can really be a crafty marketing genius when left to my own devices.

Here's the dilly-o: beginning today and through August 31, 2010, show the Genie some (creative) love to be entered for a chance to win 2 free lunches! I love's me a contest and love to tweet so I devised this contest that I believe will be of value to our business. Flattery will get you everywhere with the Genie. The person with the most original tweets (plural), using hashtag #GGLP and directing said tweets to @gourmetgenie2go wins. It's not easy. You're going to have to put a weensy bit of effort in. That's why it's a contest.

Fans only using Facebook will be exempted from the contest so really people, time to get off the fence and join the year 2010. Go ahead. Sign up for a Twitter account. It's easy and it's free.

For everyone already living in 2010, let's move on. Tweet something you love about us, something about your last meal with us, about how you love us so much you want to marry us. You get the picture. Make it as creative as possible (but true).

All the details and the stuff our lawyers made us put in can be veiwed right here on our website: http://www.gourmetgenietogo.com.

I look forward to reading all those inventive compliments, the staff looks forward to serving you and enjoy the rest of your summer!

My friends went to Belize and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

I overheard Max saying the other day that he was still pinching himself, that he was actually making Middle-Eastern food and I couldn't help but smile. It must be incredibly, unspeakably stressful for a Chef to endeavor to prepare his own culture's food for (gulp) the general public. I mean, what if you fail? I smiled because I was never worried that his skills would be up to par. He was, after all, quite versed in a little thing we like to call Cal-Med cuisine. But still, this was his first try at selling falafel, which can make you or break you as I understand it. So when I tell you the Gourmet Genie was a leap of faith, it was... it really took off though - the falafel did - so light and airy one could say it almost had wings!

We're still in the very beginning stages of this business and although gratifying (I love to see his food so well-received) I don't know how much longer we can keep up this pace of working seven days apeice. If it's not slinging grape leaves on the truck, then on my Memorial Day, instead of barbecueing, I'm catching up with everything else that didn't get done during the week.

Oftentimes I'll sit on our moonlit Koreatown terrace answering the Genie's many emails. I can't help but fantasize about our business becoming wildly successful, and then again, thinking that I will probably always feel a twinge of guilt for not supporting the Gourmet Genie concept wholeheartedly from the get-go. This is probably more of an internal struggle between my feminist leanings and the role traditional women play: that of life-partner with a where-you-go-I-will-follow outlook. Call it Catholic, er, gourmet guilt. Whatever the reason, now that I've confessed this in a public forum, I think we can move forward and become wildly successful. Now if I could just find time to actually promote our business...

Luckily for the Gourmet Genie in a lot of senses, pioneers like Kogi paved the way for us, but there is still a lot of work to be done. I get a little over-anxious at times because while I'm up to my eyebrows in inboxes and iPhones, I feel that there are still big picture "fights" to be fought. For instance, all of 3 months ago, I told myself that if we were going to do this then it was my dharma to elevate the popular perception of trucks like ours from that of "roach coach" to Restaurant on Wheels status. I was fortunate to have a fabulous co-missionary bringing the tweeps the good word (and the good food!). Lately though, I'm thinking the "fight" is elsewhere because just last night I heard someone on line say, "Any truck with a website is not a roach coach." So the word is out, I can rest easy, right? Well... the fight, I'm now certain, is how do we draw more business?? Love for his art aside, the reason we got into this to begin with was obviously to make money.

Twitter still perplexes me and I'm not sure I should even keep thinking of quirkly little things to say on there. Perhaps it's best to tweet exact coordinates and call it a day. I find that a funny li'l ditty is better received on Facebook anyway. The way I see it, Twitter is an "add-on" albeit a necessity in this industry: a nice little gauge of how many souls you've touched, whether it be heartstrings or stomach tissue. I hope the Twittergods will forgive my saying so. It's more manageable in my pretty little head this way. Max says he feels like Twitter is like that door in that cartoon; you open it and it's the door to the cosmos. You can say anything out into the blackness from the safety of your haven, inside, but when you do it's just out there. Couldn'ta put it better myself.

I will say there are some really nice, interesting people out there - and a lot of them own food trucks! We are fortunate to be rolling with the likes of these characters. I think this is the aspect I like most - the camraderie between truck owners, bartering for food, tweets back and forth about said food, it's just good fun. The foodbloggers we meet really want to help and the tweeps I actually get to make a connection with are very, very cool. They are at the forefront of this foodtruck craze and excited to try us.

So yeah, it would have been nice to go off galavanting into the tropics with my friends but there's still just too much to be done here. Things I won't accept as a given are parking issues and just plain ignorance. For now I think I will leave it to the association to work on issues with the city. I will try to chip away at the ignorant - one falafel at a time.

In the Beginning

Hello, and Welcome. This blog will be a work in progress about the trials and travails of starting and operating a Gourmet Food Mobile (a term of my own coining now catching on) and random rants that may or may not be associated with the Gourmet Genie.

By way of introduction, I am the "Genie" half of the Gourmet Genie. Mine is a thankless job. I do it all, the marketing, PR, bookings, tweeting, web updates, you name it. Now I do the blogging too. I also keep the Gourmet in stitches, which is why I decided to write down some of my observations in this format. Hopefully you will find it at least somewhat amusing.

Max is the Gourmet in the family, no quotes necessary there. Ever since I met him, it has always been true that anyone who tried his food loved it, and anyone who met him loved him or his way of thinking.

So here we were, the two of us, thinking. We knew we wanted to do something with his culinary skills but weren't so keen on a bricks-and-mortar restaurant. Hmmm, but what? After some time, his homework yeilded this idea and initially, some of our friends and family balked. He was unwavering in his vision however. He knew what he was doing from the start and the idea has taken flight and grown to something greater than him or I.

The Gourmet Genie concept, the followers, the response, it's all truly the product of synergy: the very best of two individuals. We are both amazed and exhausted. There is so much to do everywhere we turn. While neither of us is a perfectionist, I must admit I am a little type A, and like to have a hand in controlling things, even when they're out of my control. And complicated is the very least of what I am, so go figure.

It seems to be going well but we aren't counting our chickens just yet. Although outwardly it would seem that we are a hit with the public (can I type that without jinxing it?), it's only been three weeks. All in all, our only regret is not having gotten into this business sooner. It has completely changed our lives... he is LOVING what he's doing and that's the most important thing. Me? I'm busier than ever... but in a good way.

Cue the soap opera music. What will happen? Will they live happily ever after? Will the Magic Carpet blow a gasket? Will the Wild Thyme Pita Chips be delicious? I can only say about the pita chips for sure (yes). Stay tuned until next time...