Ready for the Chocolate Contest of a Lifetime?
Spoiler: you are not!
California Eating x Charles Chocolates’ A Bar Is Born collaboration at Disco Dining Club’s The Dreamery in West Hollywood, 2019/Photo by Sean Vahey
Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter for California Eating, a project that first launched as a website in 2017 and a print zine in 2019. I have been really enjoying producing the Creative Jobs and Music Book Club newsletters (since July and January, respectively) and I think this is an ideal format to create a weekly cadence for alllllllll of the content that I have been working on for California Eating since the zine took a nap back in January 2020. Thank you for being here and please share this letter with anyone you think might appreciate it!
Let’s begin with the ultimate contest ever, and I really don’t think I am exaggerating?!
Sponsored Contest: Design Your Own Custom Bar by Charles Chocolates!
California Eating is thrilled to partner with Charles Chocolates for an incredible contest.
Here’s your once in a lifetime chance to design your own custom chocolate bar with Chuck Siegel of Charles Chocolates, which will include 100 of the custom bars to share with friends and family (or not).
Charles Chocolates was recently named Best Chocolatier by San Francisco Magazine and has been a personal favorite bordering on obsession for years. I was first introduced to Chuck Siegel’s bars at San Francisco’s leading chocolate boutique, Chocolate Covered, in 2006. (That’s a must-stop in SF if you love and want to learn about chocolate.)
My curiosity about what it was like for independent confectioners during a time of corporate takeovers led me to interview Chuck for SF Weekly soon after, and that story helped me to pursue food writing in earnest. For the second print issue of California Eating in 2019, we collaborated on A Bar Is Born, a limited edition and promo-only bittersweet bar with black and white sesame brittle, and it was the best experience ever.
The above video was taken this morning.We experimented with 18 different flavor combinations in bittersweet chocolate, including genmaicha with candied almonds, dried strawberries with cacao nibs, and Biscoff cookies with chocolate almond Pocky. I’ll go back to the factory tomorrow to taste and rate the results in order to give the future winner (which could be YOU) some advice on the types of inclusions work well as well as some that do not!
Sign up for the Charles Chocolates mailing list for a chance to design a chocolate bar featuring your own favorite flavor combinations — the winner will be selected at random to receive 100 candy bars.
(Yeah, we said 100!)
Entries are due by midnight PT on July 4 — use this link to enter and good luck!
Contest Rules
Sign up for the contest by joining the Charles Chocolates mailing list by midnight Pacific Time on July 4, 2024. One email per person only.
No purchase is necessary to enter or win. The contest is open to residents of the United States aged 18 and over.
Winner will be selected at random by Charles Chocolates, notified by email and invited to a Zoom call with founder Chuck Siegel to determine the inclusions that will go into the winning flavor combination, which must adhere to the facility’s food safety and kosher requirements. 100 finished bars will be mailed to the recipient in one package.
California Eating’s Comeback Zine
Danny Trejo & I at Trejo’s Cantina in Hollywood in May 2023, the day after his birthday/Photo by Cynthia Cherish Malaran/Cake by Bottega Louie
The long-promised comeback issue of California Eating’s print zine with our patron saint and now two-time cover star Danny Trejo will be released this summer! Thank you to everyone who supported this effort on Kickstarter and who is supporting it here with a yearly or founding membership. I appreciate your patience and hope it’ll be worth the wait. There are also some IRL parties in the works to celebrate; stay tuned for more info as we confirm it.
It’s Not About the Pasta! Inside Opening Day at Something About Her
Something About Her in West Hollywood
After two years in the making, Vanderpump Rules stars Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix opened their highly-anticipated West Hollywood sandwich shop Something About Her on May 22 and California Eating was there!
Some of you may know that I used to write daily for BravoTV.com from late 2015 until early pandemic 2020, when they said goodbye to the last of their freelancers. I wrote about fabulous “Bravoleb” minutiae, including a deep dive into Lisa’s chandeliers, and it was one of my favorite outlets. I later got to spend a summer creating Bravo content for PEOPLE. It’s a beat I like to stay on whenever possible, so I knew I had to be at this opening.
Katie and Ariana have a huge fanbase of Vanderpump Rules fans who, like me, have been waiting a long time for their shop to debut in order to support them for being general badasses who have not been properly respected by their exes. I arrived at 9:30 a.m., which was half an hour before they opened, and there were at least 30 people ahead of me in line, but most of them were in a group of some sort. Talking to people about their love of the show and these two women in particular made the time go by really quickly.
Vanderpump Rules stars and Something About Her owners Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix
No sooner did the doors open that the main point of sale system crashed. Luckily, they had some handheld units that worked, but they apologized to everyone in line and let us know that ordering would probably take longer than expected. Katie and Ariana showed their appreciation for everyone by working down the by then very long line to take selfies, which were the overheard goals of so many people in line anyway (“Let’s get our sandwiches and our selfies and split!”). I couldn’t resist participating.
Katie, me, Ariana/Photo by Ariana Madix
Ariana selfies with a baby, awww!
Something About Her is located on Robertson, just a few doors down from SUR, which is Lisa Vanderpump’s bar. When SUR manager Peter Madrigal, who appeared on the series for years but was not on Season 11, stopped by to congratulate them, the TMZ cameraman nearly knocked me over since I was finally at the front of the line after more than two hours of waiting. (I would later find out that I was caught and used in a picture in SFGate’s article on the opening, too, which was funny.)
I bought three sandwiches for my friend and I to try once I got back to her house. For me, two of them worked (a burrata and mozzarella on ciabatta called the Kate and the Drew, which has whipped chive goat cheese, mango jalapeño jam, pink lady apple, cucumber, arugula, mint and balsamic glaze on a baguette). One of them, a Sicilian-style tuna sandwich named the Diane that was pretty dry, didn’t.
The Drew, my favorite so far
I’ve seen opening week critiques of some of their bread choices, and I agree that the baguettes we tried were tougher than they should have been. That’s likely been remedied by now. I’ll swing by next time I’m in the area to order the sandwich I should have tried on the first day, which is Ariana’s favorite: The Cameron (rustic ciabatta, pesto garlic aioli, Genoa salami, sopressata, mortadella, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoncinis, red onion, smoked provolone, homemade balsamic onion marmalade, fresh basil, zesty lemon-dressed arugula and salt & pepper). My new friends in front of me in line got one, and it looked good.
By the way, there’s no Ariana on the menu, and she told me that the Kate isn’t named after Katie. I asked her why that is, and she said that they may do it in the future. I suggested a contest to decide what’s in the sandwich.
“I don’t know what I’d put on myself!” she laughed.
Guest Recipe: Mayak Gyeranbap by Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard
I’m excited to share approachable and intriguing guest chef recipes in this newsletter, beginning with this, ahem, super addictive recipe by Bay Area chef Deuki Hong and author Matt Rodbard from their stunning new Koreaworld: A Cookbook (Clarkson Potter)!
MAYAK GYERANBAP
EXTREMELY ADDICTING SOY SAUCE–MARINATED EGGS WITH RICE
마약 계란밥
These sweet, garlicky, soy-infused eggs can be loosely translated as “drug eggs,” so named because of their magnetic craveability, a quality they share with their spiritual brethren, Taiwanese tea eggs. The eggs are cooked to a soft and yolky consistency and served over rice as a full meal (as suggested here) or by themselves for a robust snack.
Note: To make the eggs easier to peel, add a couple of spoonfuls of vinegar (any kind) and pinches of kosher salt to the boiling water before adding the eggs
SERVES 4
8 eggs
MARINADE
1 cup soy sauce
¼ cup water
⅓ cup loosely packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
6 garlic cloves, minced
1-inch knob fresh ginger, peeled and minced
4 scallions, green part only, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 red or green Korean chile, thinly sliced, with seeds
1 tablespoon sesame oil
½ cup crushed roasted nori seaweed (kim)
4 cups cooked rice
Sesame oil, for drizzling
4 snack-pack- size sheets roasted
nori seaweed (kim), crumbled
1 Have ready a large bowl of ice water. Fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the eggs and cook for exactly 6 minutes. Scoop the eggs out of the pan and shock them in the ice water. When the eggs are cool, remove them from the bowl, discard the water, and dry the bowl. Peel the eggs and return them to the bowl.
2 Make the marinade: In a medium bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, water, both sugars, garlic, ginger, scallions, sesame seeds, chile, oil, and seaweed until the sugars dissolve and all the ingredients are well mixed. Pour the marinade over the eggs, cover the bowl, and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.
3 Divide the rice among four bowls. Cut the marinated eggs in half and add two halves to each bowl of rice. Spoon one-fourth of the marinade over the eggs and rice, then drizzle with the oil and sprinkle with the seaweed.
Recipe is from Koreaworld: A Cookbook by Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard (Clarkson Potter) — please support this book!
Happy 50th Birthday to Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop
I was tickled to see my old clip about the coffee crunch cake still sitting on the counter at Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop in San Francisco in this sweet 50th birthday tribute to the Japantown bakery that aired on KPIX. Please watch this and then give this multi-generational family business all the love when you’re in the area.
More from Tamara Palmer
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Congrats, T$!