#Orange County mushroom delivery | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lasvegaslynn · 4 years ago

Text

Thirty Three Years (and a Day) Gone

On May 4th, 1988, a loud explosion rocked the entire Southern Nevada Valley. The ground rumbled, windows shook and, in many places, shattered completely. Residents at first thought it was an earthquake. Others who saw a mushroom cloud rising over Henderson thought a nuclear nightmare might be unfolding in the industrial city.

In reality, it was an industrial disaster that occurred at the Pacific Engineering Production Company of Nevada which was commonly referred to as PEPCON. The plant, located in Henderson, was one of two American producers of ammonium perchlorate which is an oxidizer in solid rocket fuel boosters for the Space Shuttle and the military's Titan Missile program.

The other American manufacturer, Kerr-McGee, was located less than five miles away from the PEPCON plant and well with-in the area that suffered blast damage.

A little background information: After the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in January, 1986, the United States government continued their contract with PEPCON for ammonium perchlorate. Despite the freeze on the Space Program, the company continued to manufacture the product at the same rate as before the Shuttle disaster. Since there was no delivery of the product going on due to the freeze and no guidance from the government as to where to ship it to, the company stored the compound on site in plastic drums. These drums were housed on the parking lots around the plant. The Las Vegas Review Journalreported in the aftermath that "nearly 9 million (yeah, you read that right) pounds of the chemical was consumed by the flames or explosions."

According to Wikipedia, a fire started by "a cigarette that had been discarded into a barrel of scrap ammonium perchlorate." Nearby, workers were repairing a steel frame with fiberglass walls that had suffered damage in a recent windstorm. They were using a welding torch. The fire spread quickly once it reached the fiberglass material. This led, according to the Las Vegas Mercury account by Gregory Crosby, to the first small explosion:

This small explosion raised the alarm "that enabled most workers to escape before a second larger explosion occurred on the heels of the first."

Company comptroller Roy Westerfield "was on the phone reporting the emergency, explaining the urgency of the situation, "We've had an explosion and everything's on fire" he told a dispatcher. (Las Vegas Review Journal)

The Henderson Fire Department responded to the fire. When the Fire Chief arrived he saw a massive white and orange fireball and dozens of people running across the desert towards him. The second explosion happened at 11:54 and the shock wave shattered the windows in the Chief's car. A heavily damaged vehicle approached and its driver advised the chief that the danger was growing. The Chief turned around and headed towards safety.

Inside the plant, Roy Westerfield was still trying to herd people to safety. He was talking by phone to a dispatcher when few seconds later he said "Get 'em all out of here". These were quite possibly his last words.

It was the third massive explosion that sent Henderson and Las Vegas residents running for their windows, radios and television news. Local Channel 3 anchor Gwen Castaldi went on the air and began letting Valley residents know what was happening. "It was a real moment of urgency and tragedy in the community." (Personal interview with Castaldi, 2005).

It was the third blast, according to Gregory Crosby, "that sealed the plant's fate when that 9 million pounds of chemical literally went up in smoke."

The blast was so forceful that it knocked an arriving fire engine over two lanes. Another arriving fire truck had its windows shattered. Cars were overturned. The explosion created a visible shock wave. This explosion almost destroyed the Fire Chief's car but he was able to drive to a nearby hospital to seek treatment for his passenger and himself.

Inside the plant, Roy Westerfield and Bruce Halker, two employees who were shepherding people out of danger were killed. More than 300 people were injured.

The marshmallow factory next door, Kidd and Co., suffered the brunt of the explosion. Due to faulty equipment there were fewer employees working that day. Those employees who were there evacuated at the first sign of trouble. The marshmallow factory was destroyed.

"The final explosion went off and PEPCON basically disappeared. Boulder Highway looked like a war zone. There was glass everywhere.." Eyewitness and PEPCON employee Joe Hedrick.

The last explosion registered 3.5 on the Richter scale by the National Earthquake Information Center 600 miles away in Colorado. A crater estimated at 15 feet deep and 200 feet wide was left in the storage area.

A 747 on approach to McCarran Airport was reportedly buffeted by the shock wave. The Airport, 11 miles away from the blast, suffered cracked windows. An analysis later estimated the blast damage the equivalent of 250 tons of TNT.

Nearby Basic High School suffered serious damage and damage was reported at McDoniel Elementary, Burkholder Middle School and Southern Nevada Vocational-Technical Center. The last blast blew out the windows at Basic High School.

"We thought someone was out there with a shotgun" remembered teacher Michael Neighbors, "Like fools, we went right for the windows. We literally pushed the kids out of the building. It was like an air pocket. The back of my hair parted." (Las Vegas Review Journal).

The large plume of smoke could be seen around the valley and residents throughout the valley worried about chemical fall-out. Luckily, the wind that day was only 20 to 25 mph and kept much of the chemical from settling in the valley. Local health officials predicted that lives were saved because of the winds.

Damage was estimated at $74 million dollars. The nearby Fire Station was heavily damaged and there was structural damage to a nearby warehouse.

PEPCON, renamed Western Electrochemical Company, relocated to Iron County, Utah. Now some 14 miles northwest of St. George, they began the relocation a mere three months after the devastating explosion at the Henderson plant. Kerr-McGee moved their plant 17 miles northeast of Las Vegas to Apex. For awhile Kerr-McGee continued to manufacture the more stable liquid form of the chemical on site. But in 1998, ten years after the disaster, the parent company of PEPCON/Western Electrochemical Company bought out the remaining ammonium perchlorate contracts and moved all production to Utah.

Senior Company official, Fred Gibson, Jr tried to shift blame from PEPCON to Southwest Gas by saying that a ruptured gas line caused the fire. However, this conflicted with eyewitness testimony by employees. PEPCON attorney told the Las Vegas Review Journal, three days after the disaster, "Nothing ignites ammonium perchlorate. It does not burn. It is not flammable." Chemists from around the world immediately disputed the attorney and called the product "unstable and highly flammable."

After the explosion it came out that the facility had been cited numerous times since 1974 for safety violations. There had been a small explosion in 1980 that had injured a worker.

More than 50 law firms represented dozens of insurance companies and corporations in lawsuits. The case ran up tens of millions of dollars in attorneys fees and produced 1 million pages of depositions.

The case wound its way through the judicial system from 1989 to 1992 when a $171 million settlement was reached before going to a jury trial. Insurance companies that had reimbursed some 17,000 claimants received almost 100 cents on the dollar.

Clark County agreed to pay $3.8 million to insurance companies as a result of shoddy inspections that had taken place at the plant over the years.

Southwest Gas also agreed to settle because according to their attorney "it was a practical decision made because of the uncertainty of what a jury might do at trial." (Las Vegas Review Journal).

Southwest Gas later found out what a jury would do. In a trial that lasted a little over a month, PEPCON's insurance company argued that gas, which is lighter than air, had leaked from a pipe then moved horizontally underground toward the plant 670 feet away. The gas was then to make a 90-degree turn upward and ignited with an unknown source. (Emphasis added)

Following final arguments, the attorneys hadn't even gotten back to their offices before the call came from the court house that a jury had reached a verdict. It took less than a half hour for the jury to laugh that idea out of court.

The disaster was a turning point for the development of Henderson. The city began to shift from being the "City of Industry" (its slogan) to a bedroom community of Las Vegas. A few years after the disaster, Green Valley subdivision, a master planned community, took off with home buyers and changed the dynamics of Henderson forever.

Though many industries remain in Henderson, the city is now a growing hub of suburban dwellers looking to escape Las Vegas.

#llas vegas history

0 notes

igrublocal · 4 years ago

Text

9 best Mexican food restaurants in the San Fernando Valley for takeout, delivery – Daily News

One of the family activities that has helped pass the days during the forced quarantining of the pandemic has been taking field trips with my daughter, every couple of weeks, to the Me Gusta Gourmet Tamales factory in the north San Fernando Valley. (Located at 13754 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima, 818-896-8789, www.megustagourmettamales.com, for those who might be curious.)

We go there because my daughter lives for tamales, maybe her favorite food in the world aside from Carmela Chocolate Sorbet. We regularly buy a bagful of tamales, always chicken, and always pineapple. They freeze very nicely. And along with the quesadillas we make at home, my fine chicken mole, and my tasty guacamole, they give us a taste of the Mexican cooking we crave as Southern Californians. More than hamburgers and hot dogs, this is the cuisine of our part of the world. And very reassuring and soul-satisfying it is too.

Like many of the best Mexican food experiences, tamales are easy, casual, just plain tasty and they don’t demand a great deal of formal consideration. They bring back so many memories: There were the elote corn cakes, for instance, which women sell from baskets they carry on top of their heads in towns way down south on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. There were the quickly grilled steaks which I’d eat in the marketplace just off the Plaza de Garibaldi — mariachi square — in Mexico City, which come with quickly braised green onions called cebollitas. There was a red snapper, pulled fresh from the Sea of Cortez, rushed to a pan, and then to my table, on a small peninsula called Isla de las Piedras, just off Mazatlán. And then there were the grasshoppers — chapulines — I became so fond of munching on as I’d stroll around the Mercado de los Indios in Oaxaca.

I’d be less than honest not to admit that the grasshoppers I’d munch on down in Oaxaca were really very good. They were sold from large baskets by women who’d hunker down near entranceways to the market. People would buy a small paper package of grasshoppers to eat as a snack as they shopped, or to take home as a treat for the kids. The grasshoppers were relatively small, not much larger than M&Ms, and sprinkled with salt, chili powder and a bit of lime juice.

I remember feeling very brave and adventurous when I bought my first package of grasshoppers. I also remember taking a tentative nibble on a leg and finding it edible, before moving on to more significant parts of the insect. They reminded me of croutons in their taste and texture, and although they haven’t become a mainstay of my diet, for me eating grasshoppers is a socially acceptable practice.

Grasshoppers are found in the Mexican restaurants of Los Angeles, but not in many of them. Many of our local restaurants do carry dishes that break away from the litany of tacos, enchiladas and burritos. Not that there’s anything wrong with tacos, enchiladas and burritos. Or tamales either. This is comfort food at its finest.

And, as with Me Gusta, the food travels very well. While there is some getting out and about these days, we may be mostly stuck at home a bit longer. Use some salsa to give your life the spice it desperately needs. A face full of hot peppers does wonders to distract you from bingeing on the news. Too much CNN can be toxic. Too much salsa — not so much. And it’s good for you too!

For this carefully curated list, let us begin with a taste of the past:

Carne asada and chorizo tacos make up a colorful Mexican food entree. (File photo by Brad A. Johnson, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Burrito Guadalajara with slow-cooked carnitas and a side of rice and beans is a delicious, filling meal for lunch or dinner. (File photo by Cindy Yamanaka/Orange County Register/SCNG)

The gallery will resume inseconds

Combination plates are a staple of Mexican food dining. This one features a pork chile verde burrito and two beef and potato taquitos. (File photo by Nick Agro)

A chile relleno stuffed with white fish is a must-try Mexican food option. (File photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

13301 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; 818-788-4868, www.casavega.com

Here’s an homage to a restaurant that’s been serving tacos and enchiladas to a loyal following for more than six decades. As it says on the website: “Casa Vega is…one of the longest continuously family owned restaurants in all of greater Los Angeles. Casa Vega’s roots go back to famous Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles. Rafael “Ray” Vega opened Casa Vega in 1956 after being inspired by the success of his parents’ earlier restaurant, Café Caliente, which was on Olvera Street and operated throughout the 1930s.”

This is — much like Lawry’s, Musso & Frank, El Cholo, Phillipe the Original and many other local legends — a restaurant that, sooner or later, we all go to. It’s part of our culinary heritage, the thread that runs through life in Southern California for longer even than the freeways.

Casa Vega remains a fine place to go for the Mexican dishes so many of us grew up with. And what I grew up with was the notion that Mexican food existed almost solely as a combination plate. There’s much more here, of course. In the middle of the menu, there it is — the #1 House Combination and the #2 House Specialty Combination. Both include Spanish rice and refried beans (and the inevitable chips and salsa as well), and a choice of two dishes for #1, or three dishes for #2, selected from a greatest hits list of enchiladas, tacos, tamales and rellenos.

The sweet corn tamale is always a good choice; ditto the grilled chile relleno. One bite and the years fade away. The guacamole is good, freshly made, not chopped too much — and chopped less in the hand-chopped option.

I have a closet love of queso fundido, which does little to help my diet, but does much to sooth my soul. It’s basically a plate of melted cheeses, with sour cream added on for good measure, and beef chorizo.

There are two appetizer combos — enough chow for a light meal shared by two, with a margie or two added on for good measure. Those in need of something more serious might head for the pollo en mole — with a choice of red or green mole. Or maybe the seafood enchiladas, filled variously with crab, shrimp and lobster. There’s no ceviche on the menu. But there is a shrimp cocktail that comes close.

Casa Vega opened in 1956, and the Ventura Freeway followed in 1960. To pre-date the 101 is an amazing accomplishment. It’s a great thing.

10717 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake; 818-927-4210, www.cascabelrestaurant.com

This is not the Tex-Mex, enchilada-and-taco, rice-and-beans chow from back in the day. This is Mexican cooking with an edge, with style, with panache — drawn from a menu that will make you want to order everything you can, at prices that (like the shots of tequila) can add up if you go hog wild.

And speaking of hogs, the most excellent guacamole comes three ways — classic style, topped with slices of radish and mixed with smoked bacon, which adds both flavor (lots of flavor, both bacon makes everything taste better!) and texture. Crunchy guacamole is a fun concept — more restaurants should give it a try.

Ditto the scallop agua chile, a very tasty variation on the much more common shrimp agua chile, which is essentially a dish of crudo marinated in a sauce that’s both acidic (to “cook” the seafood) and potentially very spicy. Though my sense here is that the kitchen’s opted to turn down the fire a notch or two — which is wise; the delicate flavor of good quality scallops would be overwhelmed by too much pepper.

The scallops sit on the section of the menu dedicated to ceviches, five of them, though only the albacore ceviche tostaditas are from the usual school of ceviches. The rest run to a lobster and beet ceviche, and a dish of marinated white anchovies with avocado and lime. There’s a shrimp cocktail too, only in this case, made with a charred tomato sauce. Small touches like that — culinary trim tabs that are small, yet change the whole dish — are everywhere: in the jicama and pepitas in the burrata salad, the lemon-goat cheese cream with the beet salad, the maitake mushrooms used in the tostadas, the chile honey sauce with the fried chicken, the roasted radishes (yes, radishes again!) with the braised pork carnitas, the tangy cotija cheese in both the roasted cauliflower and the sautéed string beans.

There’s a taste for the many peppers of Mexico here — you’ll find morita chiles on the menu, along with chile verde, guajillo, chile arbol, serrano and the namesake cascabel chile.

If there are dishes I dream of, along with the room itself, they would be the Mexican corn bread topped with melt-in-your-mouth short ribs, pico de gallo and salsa verde. And the Mazatlán bouillabaisse of mussels, shrimp, scalper and scallops with white beans — sort of a south of the border take on what you’d get if you combined bouillabaisse with cassoulet.

14902 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys; 818-786-0328

Have you ever had a cemita? There are cemitas to be found all over Los Angeles. But as a rule, you have to go to a cemitas shop, a cemitas stand or a cemitas truck to find one. It’s a bit like a hot dog — though it may appear on a restaurant menu, it probably won’t. And, indeed, most of the places that offer cemitas, offer mostly cemitas, perhaps with a smattering of tacos. But mostly, this is not a dish buried among a multitude of other dishes. It’s a cemita — and those who hunger for a cemita want only a cemita, want only a cemita.

And what is this wondrous dish, for which fans have an obsessive need that has them waiting on long lines for their culinary object of desire? It’s…a sandwich. A torta. A dish eaten by hand — though it will very possibly fall apart, and crumble into the basket in which it’s served, for the cemita is not a simple sandwich.

This is not a slice of ham and a slice of cheese on white bread. This is a dish much beloved in the city of Pueblo, which is why it’s known as a cemita Poblana. The bread is a softish roll, made with egg, which gives it a brioche-like texture. The roll is often seeded. But mostly, the roll is filled, packed, stuffed, jammed with…stuff. Almost certainly there’s avocado, onion and chiles (either jalapeños or chipotle). It may have cilantro and radish.

If in season, it will have an arugula like herb called papalo. And, of course, it will have meat and cheese, a world of meat and cheese. Though on the menu at the Cemitas Poblanas Don Adrian on Victory Boulevard, there’s the option of getting your cemita “traditional” style, with no meat — sin carne. Where should the cemita novice begin? Well, the pollo adobado cemita is a wonderful starter — a marinated chicken sandwich with all the fixin’s.

There’s a breaded chicken (Milanesa de polo) as well. And the lamb barbacoa is a thing of wonder — so moist, so well spiced, so substantial.

You’ll notice many of the cemitas are made with head cheese, which is a bit of an acquired taste, a bit like Spam — you love it…or you don’t. If you feel like The Big Cemita, get the “La de 100 Percent,” made with five meats!

16856 Sherman Way, Van Nuys; 818-988-2700

The menu, extensive as it is, inspires a fair amount of over-ordering. Did I need both a ceviche and a seafood cocktail? Not really, since they’re close culinary cousins. But the prices are so good, I couldn’t resist. You can get raw oysters, along with pata de mula, which translates as “mule’s foot,” and is also known as a “blood clam,” because of the red color of its liquor — a shellfish not often found in LA. But here it is. You can get it in a cocktail as well as raw on the half shell. For those of us who like our seafood uncooked, this is a bit of heaven.

And for those who need a modicum of heat, no worries. The fish tacos served here, utterly greaseless and very tender, make me wonder what I’ve been eating in the multitude of “I Heart Fish Tacos” joints out there. Ditto the tostadas, topped here with shrimp, octopus and a mix of fish and shellfish. The experience is one of eating the real deal, the food found at a really good casual fish house way south of the border, that gives you an idea of how unfortunately Americanized so much of what we eat can be.

Though it’s easy, and tempting, to eat small dishes here, there are 18 plates as well, all served with rice, French fries and salad, built around a nicely cooked bit of seafood — lots of shrimp dishes (the shrimp in garlic sauce is about as good as it gets, the grilled shrimp blessedly undercooked), up to big combos like the shrimp, octopus, abalone and clams.

And if you have a yearning, do get one of the big caldos, soup-stews packed with much of the menu, from a simple fish soup, up to a Seven Seas Soup that covers all bases. Do be careful with the crab legs, which can splatter, and leave stains that don’t wash out with ease, if at all.

As at Café Vega, Melody’s Mexican admirably clings to its roots in the past. This is a restaurant that does most everything it does the old way — a way that brings back wonderful memories of big plates of rice, beans, guacamole and tortillas, with endless amounts of sundry salsas and condiments from a convenient self-service bar, and substantial portions of just about every dish found in the Northern Mexican canon of dishes.

I guess you can order light at Melody’s — though it isn’t easy. There are 10 platos fuertes, and about the same number of combinaciones — dishes that will leave you well-filled even hours later. Consider the retro pleasures of the enchilada and hard shell taco combo, for instance, with a choice of meats in the taco, made using that eternally crunchy taco shell we all grew up with, that’s been replaced for so many with a soft taco shell. It tastes, simply speaking, of history. And it falls apart when you bite into it. Just like it did back in the day.

If you want to further experience the ability of the kitchen at Melody’s to maximize any of the dishes, try one of the seven tortas — tasty Mexican sandwiches on crunchy French rolls — the biggest of which is the Reseda Special, a gut-buster of a sandwich packed with chopped steak, grilled onions, mushrooms, Monterey Jack and mayonnaise, with an accompaniment of beans, sour cream, tomatoes, onions, jalapeños and avocado. It costs all of $6.85. Finishing it all can be serious labor.

The menu rambles from soft shell tacos to hard shells, from quesadillas (try the model with poblano chiles, very tasty) to tostadas — one of which, the salpicon tostada, is described as “Our Known Specialty.” The tostada verde offers the annotation, “This Will Become a Favorite.” This is the sort of pleasantly naïve menu writing that warms the cockles of the old heart.

If there’s a single dish that dominates the menu, it would be the burritos, which approach the size of the fabled Hollenbeck Burrito served at Manuel’s Original El Tepeyac Café in East LA, which isn’t so much a dish as it is a construction project. There are burritos served dry, and burritos served wet (topped with cheese and salsa), though in all cases, they’re far too big, and too messy, to actually pick up and eat like a sandwich.

A burrito mojado de pollo pretty much took up the whole plate — and it wasn’t a small plate. There was a considerable topping of mild ranchero sauce, and stretchy melted jack, covering a softish tortilla, inside of which was what seemed to be at least half a chicken breast, cut up, and waiting for salsa and cilantro and chopped onions from the salsa bar.

The presence of rice and beans is ubiquitous. And the beans are honest and thick — these aren’t nouvelle beans, but the sort of beans you might find at a stand in a Mexican market. Which is to say, rich with flavor and texture, beans in excelsis.

Rosarito Fish Market Deli

1534 San Fernando Road, San Fernando, 818-361-7227, https://easystoremanager.com/flashmobile/productdisplay.aspx?loc=1382

The much loved — and for good reason — Rosarito is less a market, and less a deli, than it is a hugely popular, noisy, cheerful, joyous fish house. It’s a restaurant that wouldn’t be out of place on the beach in Mazatlán, or near the bars in Cabo. Coming upon it in a San Fernando mini-mall would be a surprise — were it not that so many great restaurants in the Valley are found in mini-malls.

If you crave simplicity, and a sort of culinary purity, you’ll do well going for the seafood cocteles — big ice cream sundae glass, packed with fish stuff, onions, lime and sauce. There are eight of them, all of them giving you a lot of fish for the money, all coming in two sizes: medium and large. (There is not a small. Kind of like olives.)

Most of the cocteles include camarones — shrimp — perfectly textured, fully flavored, nothing bland here. You can get the camarones all by themselves if you wish. Or mixed with octopus, oysters and abalone. Adding oysters makes for a fun mix of textures. Adding octopus and especially abalone makes for a chewy experience. Not a bad one. But the abalone in particular tends to need some masticating. It always does.

There are lime slices on the plates, along with a tostada, and some little plastic packages of crackers. You get crackers with pretty much every dish on the menu. I guess it’s just a tradition. And indeed, those tostadas can also be found as a dish on the menu, topped with a dozen different seafood options — including imitation crab (I don’t love surimi, but I guess it’s how it is goes these days; real crab is becoming a serious luxury item, and faux keeps getting more real) and my favorite Mexican seafood dish, aguachile, which I’ve loved since I first encountered it lo’ these many years ago.

In case you haven’t encountered the wonders of aguachile, in its original form it was just camarones (of course!) flavored with chile peppers, lime juice, salt, cilantro, cucumber and onion. It’s essentially ceviche, but with a lot more heat — it can be downright combustible in terms of peppery goodness. At Rosarito, it comes six ways — traditional camarones, camarones with octopus, camarones with scallops (*callo de hacha”), camarones with octopus and abalone and so forth. It’s one of those dishes that seems too hot to eat on first bite. But then, your mouth settles in for the ride. And it’s a good one.

For a restaurant that only dates back to 2004, it has the look of a venerable culinary institution that’s been around for decades, centuries even. It’s a classic Mexican restaurant, a restaurant of the old school, with a many-paged menu of small dishes (“botanas” — not all of which are especially small), ensaladas y tostadas, sopas, platos fuertes, Molcajete Sol y Luna, seafood, platos populares, burritos, rolled specialties, a la carta, seasonal, side orders, desserts and of course, a full line of margaritas, and tequila-based drinks.

There are, as is often the case, easy ways to deal with the sprawl of the menu. For openers (and perhaps for the whole meal), get the appetizer platter (“serves 2 to 4,” it says) of quesadilla, sopes with carnitas, mini potato and chorizo tacos, chicken wings, nachos, taquitos dorados, flautas, beans, sour cream, guacamole, cotija cheese and pico de gallo. Plus the requisite chips and salsa. Which is a pretty big feed.

Of course there’s an oversized order of nachos — that pretty well goes without saying, for Mexican restaurants of the old school love to create nachos mountains that tower over the table. In this case, the corn chips are topped with refried beans and melted cheese, ranchera sauce and guacamole, sour cream and pico de gallo — with the option of tricking the whole thing up with steak, shredded beef, carnitas, chicken or shrimp. Once again, it could be a meal in itself. But for most, it’s just the beginning.

If you want to stay on the lighter side of the menu (where the options are a bit limited), try the large bowl of ceviche, made with either shrimp or fish. The grilled halibut salad is a lighter option as well. And obviously, so is the “Light & Delicious Fish Mexican Salad” — the fish is grilled, but the salad is made with jack and cotija cheese as well. Let’s just say, it’s lighter than most. But then, this isn’t a restaurant built around culinary denial.

This is where you go for abundance. Which is defined by the Molcajete Sol y Luna — a dish for two, or three, served on a hot stone — steak and chicken, shrimp, cactus leaves and panela cheese, scallions and peppers, rice and a choice of three beans, and of course tortillas. It’s not so much a dish as it is a show.

And though it’s the biggest dish on the menu, it’s not the only major plate. I like the pescado a la parrilla — a whole grilled trout, served with veggies cooked in garlic butter. The camarones a la diabla are properly spicy. And the dozen or so burritos fill up the plates upon which they arrive.

If you have room, the flan is just fine. And the crème brulee — called “jericalla” — is a treat. There’s Jell-O under the desserts as well. Like I said, old school. Much older than 2004.

The Village at Westfield Topanga, 6316 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Woodland Hills; 818-992-7930, www.xoctequilagrill.com

Along with “tequila,” the restaurant’s name includes the word “grill.” And “grill” is the dominant theme here, for the menu is long and complex, almost encyclopedic in its depth.

There’s an opening page that describes (in very small type) the roots of Mexican cooking in Mayan cuisine, which gave us maize, tomatoes, tomatillos, cocoa, beans, avocados, chiles and more. We’re told XOC was a Mayan queen. And the décor of the restaurant echoes the Mayan pyramids and open-air markets.

The menu says, “Dare to explore.” And so, we do. What we come up with is a nifty platter of crispy tostaditos the size of Ritz crackers, topped with ceviche, shrimp and ahi, with guacamole on the side. There’s a Caesar salad prepared tableside, in the style of Caesar Cardini of Tijuana. There’s a fine mole poblano from Oaxaca, a dish with deep Mayan roots, and a platter of cochinita pork from the Yucatan.

There’s a whole section of ceviches — and yes, I know they come from Peru, but it’s good to have them anyway. And along with the ceviches, there’s an unexpectedly large assortment of seafood dishes, though I’m not at all sure that either salmon or mahi-mahi were known to the Mayans. The dishes are well-crafted — even the complimentary chips are extra crunchy, and come in a brown paper bag, with a big bowl of hard-to-resist salsa.

0 notes

un-enfant-immature · 6 years ago

Text

GrubMarket gobbles up $32M led by GGV for its healthy grocery ordering and delivery service

As consumers become more discerning about the food that they are eating, a wave of startups has emerged that are catering to that demand with convenient alternatives to the more ubiquitous options that are available today. One of these, GrubMarket — which sources organic and healthy food directly from producers and then and delivers it to other businesses (Whole Foods is a customer) as well as consumers at a discount of 20-60 percent over other channels — is today announcing a $32 million round to grow its already-profitable business, including making acquisitions and expanding on its own steam as it eyes up a public listing.

“We are looking to buy companies to make more revenues ahead of an upcoming IPO,” said Mike Xu, the founder and CEO. He said GrubMarket is “in proactive steps” to expand from its home base in California to the East Coast, starting in New York and New Jersey, by October this year. The plan, he said, will be to file with the SEC sometime between the end of this year and early 2019, with the IPO taking place in the second half of 2019.

E-commerce, and in particular food-related businesses with perishable items and associated waste, can be tricky when it comes to margins, and indeed, there have been many casualties in the world of food startups. Xu said in an interview that GrubMarket is already profitable and working at a $100 million run rate.

One of the reasons it’s profitable may also be the same reason you may have never heard of GrubMarket. Currently, between 60 percent and 70 percent of its business is in the B2B space. Xu says that customers number in the thousands and include offices, grocery stores and restaurants across the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

And so, if you don’t know GrubMarket, you might know some of its customers, which include all WeWorks between San Diego and San Francisco; Whole Foods; Blue Apron, Hello Fresh and Chipotle. GrubMarket has also cornered some very specific niches: it has become the biggest mushroom supplier in all of Northern California, and it’s the biggest supplier of Hawaiian farm produce in the Bay Area.

Another point in the company’s favor is the technology it uses. Working directly with farmers and other producers, GrubMarket has built apps that allow it and its partners to manage the logistics of the business in an efficient way. The idea will be to bring more AI to the platform over time: for example, to be able to run better modelling to figure out how much fruit and veg might sell during a given season, and how to price items.

GrubMarket is also dabbling in areas that you might not normally associate with a grocery-on-demand delivery company: it built an educational app called Farmbox, which — when you play it — can be used to collect points to spend on GrubMarket; and it’s also exploring how blockchain technology can be used in a “next-generation open platform for direct farm-to-table.”

Xu says that as the company continues to grow, it will shift more into direct-to-consumer deliveries to complement its wholesale business.

This latest round is a mixture of equity and debt and is being led by GGV with other previous investors Fusion Fund (formerly New Gen Capital) and Great Oaks Venture Capital participating, along with new investors Max Ventures, Castor Ventures, Bascom Ventures, Millennium Technology Value Partner, Trinity Capital Investment, Investwide Capital, and others. The company is not publicly disclosing its valuation; it has raised around $64 million to date.

Many eyes are on Amazon these days, and what moves it might make next in groceries after acquiring Whole Foods, ramping up its own Pantry offerings, courting restaurants for delivery and making its own meal kits. This is not a question that keeps up Xu at night, however.

“Food is the largest and biggest opportunity in e-commerce,” he said, estimating that today the total value for the global food and agricultural industry is around $9 trillion (versus $8 trillion in 2017), with only about one percent of buying done online. “That’s a big enough opportunity to have a few giant companies, and not just Amazon.”

It’s also an opportunity that could sustain some slightly smaller companies, too: one of my favorite e-commerce businesses in England is a service that I’ve been using for years, an organic grocery deliver called Abel & Cole that brings us a box of organic fruit and vegetables (and whatever else I order on top of that) each week. Like GrubMarket, it’s working directly with smaller producers who might have otherwise found it hard-going to find a way of selling their produce directly to buyers (and buyers would have found it hard-going to ever buy directly from these producers. Unlike GrubMarket, it takes a more modest approach that doesn’t involve eventually becoming a leviathan itself. May they all be around for years to come.

#TechCrunch

0 notes

gyanpoint · 6 years ago

Text

GrubMarket gobbles up $32M led by GGV for its healthy grocery ordering and delivery service

As consumers become more discerning about the food they eat, a wave of startups has emerged that is catering to that demand with convenient alternatives to the more ubiquitous options that are available today. One of these, GrubMarket — which sources organic and healthy food directly from producers and then delivers it to other businesses (Whole Foods is a customer) as well as consumers at a discount of 20-60 percent over other channels — is today announcing a $32 million round to grow its already profitable business, including making acquisitions and expanding on its own steam as it eyes a public listing.

One of the reasons it’s profitable may also be the same reason you may have never heard of GrubMarket. Currently, between 60 and 70 percent of its business is in the B2B space. Xu says that customers number in the thousands and include offices, grocery stores and restaurants across the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

And so, if you don’t know GrubMarket, you might know some of its customers, which include all WeWorks between San Diego and San Francisco, Whole Foods, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh and Chipotle. GrubMarket has also cornered some very specific niches: It has become the biggest mushroom supplier in all of Northern California, and it’s the biggest supplier of Hawaiian farm produce in the Bay Area.

GrubMarket also is dabbling in areas that you might not normally associate with a grocery-on-demand delivery company: it built an educational app called Farmbox, which — when you play it — can be used to collect points to spend on GrubMarket; and it’s also exploring how blockchain technology can be used in a “next-generation open platform for direct farm-to-table.”

Xu says that as the company continues to grow, it will shift more into direct-to-consumer deliveries to complement its wholesale business.

This latest round is a mixture of equity and debt and is being led by GGV with other previous investors Fusion Fund (formerly New Gen Capital) and Great Oaks Venture Capital participating, along with new investors Max Ventures, Castor Ventures, Bascom Ventures, Millennium Technology Value Partner, Trinity Capital Investment, Investwide Capital and others. The company is not publicly disclosing its valuation; it has raised around $64 million to date.

It’s also an opportunity that could sustain some slightly smaller companies, too: One of my favorite e-commerce businesses in England is a service that I’ve been using for years, an organic grocery delivery called Abel & Cole that brings us a box of organic fruit and vegetables (and whatever else I order on top of that) each week. Like GrubMarket, it’s working directly with smaller producers who might have otherwise found it hard-going to find a way of selling their produce directly to buyers (and buyers would have found it hard-going to ever buy directly from these producers). Unlike GrubMarket, it takes a more modest approach that doesn’t involve eventually becoming a leviathan itself. May they all be around for years to come.

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2ui8Wpu from Blogger https://ift.tt/2KO14HG

#Blogger

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

Link

Xu says that as the company continues to grow, it will shift more into direct-to-consumer deliveries to complement its wholesale business.

This latest round is a mixture of equity and debt and is being led by GGV with other previous investors Fusion Fund (formerly New Gen Capital) and Great Oaks Venture Capital participating, along with new investors Max Ventures, Castor Ventures, Bascom Ventures, Millennium Technology Value Partner, Trinity Capital Investment, Investwide Capital and others. The company is not publicly disclosing its valuation; it has raised around $64 million to date.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes