Opening the show with a brief visit with James Beard Award-winning Chef Tim Hollingsworth of Otium in Downtown Los Angeles. Chef Tim is at the center of the documentary, “Chain Food : All-Star Dishes” released on the Roku Channel (and available to everyone at no charge) starting on July 12th. Chef Tim is also the co-founder of Chain with actor and comedian B.J. Novak, which reimagines familiar chain restaurant favorites.
“In the informative documentary Celebrity friends including Chrissy Teigen and John Legend gather at the inaugural Chain Fest bash last year in Los Angeles. It’s a party as acclaimed Chef Tim Hollingsworth puts a gourmet spin on eight beloved and iconic dishes from Chili’s, Red Robin, Panda Express, Jack in the Box, Sonic, Pizza Hut, Pepsi, and Dunkin’.” One creation of Chef Tim and his culinary team is the gourmet reimagining of the Panda Express signature Orange Chicken. https://www.roku.com/whats-on/featured-free
“Terranea Resort’s (Rancho Palos Verdes) inaugural Food and Wine Festival is being held on Sunday, July 21, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This oceanfront event, taking place at the scenic resort’s The Meadows, has been created to celebrate the culinary talents of some of Terranea’s talented chefs, as well as to host a glorious summer gourmet experience – showcasing local and regional eateries, craft breweries, wineries and fine beverage purveyors. Adding to the vibrant atmosphere, live music will be provided by Upstream, a leading Southern California reggae and Caribbean band, and the popular yacht rock band The AstroYachts.” Joining us with all the tasty Food & Wine Festival specifics is Andrew Vaughan, the Executive Chef of Terranea Resort.
The Bear (based in Chicago) is back on Hulu for Season 3 and already attracting a lot of attention and, of course, spirited controversy. Given that Chicago is a great food town it was only a matter of time before a savvy tour operator in the Windy City created a “The Bear” Chicago Food Tour. This has now happened with the launch of Chicago Food & City Tour’s “Yes, Chef! Chicago : A Bear – Inspired Food Tour.” Our own newly Chicago-based, informed foodie, Terri Henry, shares her recent adventure on this engaging Chicago tour which also included as guests a Staff Writer and Photographer for The Chicago Tribune.
“Jambalaya Girl (Kristen Preau Moore) by Cook Me Somethin’ Mister is a family and women owned business that brings an authentic taste of New Orleans to the world with easy to prepare food products, inspired by Jambalaya Girl's family recipes. Drawing from her family’s upbringing in the New Orleans cooking scene and her creation of a nationwide tailgating fundraiser following Hurricane Katrina, owner Kristen Preau “Jambalaya Girl” created Cook Me Somethin’ Mister initially from her Dad’s jambalaya recipe. All products are now proudly made in New Orleans with the finest ingredients and are specially blended by Chef Paul Prudhomme's Magic Seasoning Blends.” We’re joined by the Jambalaya Girl herself, Kristen Preau, to cook up all the good eating that is Jambalaya Girl New Orleans food products.
“Long Beach residents and visitors alike are in for a treat as dozens of local restaurants and pop-ups will offer unique over-the-top Burgers and value-priced Burger Offers when the 4th annual Long Beach Burger Week returns July 21-28, 2024. Organized by local non-profit Long Beach Food & Beverage, the organization felt that in addition to encouraging local and surrounding "foodies” to enjoy what the expanding Long Beach culinary community has to offer, events like Burger Week support the local economy and put “butts in seats” of our valued restaurants. One of the featured restaurants in LBBW is the new ISM Brewing located on The Promenade in Downtown Long Beach. Proprietor Ian McCall joins us to describe his salivating Burger Week creation, Mahalo Madness, which is a delicious, hand-held delight which takes inspiration from the ISM Culinary Team’s favorite Hawaiian / Japanese Burger spots.
Our own Chef Andrew Gruel, the menu-maker behind the full-service Calico Fish House (in the Sunset Beach area of Huntington Beach) provides another timely and informative “Ask the Chef” segment where he responds to listeners’ thoughtful inquiries. How does this new California legislation designed to eliminate “junk fees” impact restaurants that include a mandatory Service Charge? Some last-minute modifications were legislated and enacted right before July 1st. We’ll get the accurate story and an informed restaurateurs POV from Chef Andrew.
All of this and heaping helpings of extra deliciousness on this week’s not-to-miss show!
Good morning Southern California and welcome. If you're food obsessed you've come to the right place. Join us for the next two hours and you won't go away hungry. One of the first American culinary icons Julia Child said people who love to eat are always the best people. We agree. Live from the AMA 30K LAA studios at Angel Stadium and Anaheim, The SoCal Restaurant Show is on the air. And welcome back and it's good to be back. It is The SoCal Restaurant Show and happily we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon right here on AMA 30K LAA the home of Angels Baseball 2024 and you can also catch us on the AMA 30K LAA app. I'm Andy Harris the executive producer and co-host to the show. Happy to be here and thank you for being out there and sharing part of your Saturday morning with us. And as always we are enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats and happy to have Tony back with us in technical excellence this morning. We have a real special guest waiting in the wings so I don't want to delay in bringing him on at all and it is a pleasure to welcome Chef Tim Hollingsworth who in LA we know him most for ODM in downtown LA which is one of our best fine dining restaurants back to the show. Chef Tim good morning and welcome. Good morning how you doing today? Tim I am doing great and great to have you back. Is a lot of our listeners know Tim you have a very extensive fine dining background before ODM 13 years I believe at the French laundry and Tim can you believe the French laundry this month is celebrating their 30th anniversary that's pretty incredible. It really is you know I had the opportunity to go up there and celebrate for the big party and it was just amazing to see how many people that restaurant has influenced and just the years and the different the different eras that the restaurant has had through people walking through there just so many different talented people have come out of that restaurant it's really really a special place. Well Tim we're lucky that we got you down to Los Angeles from the French laundry and what some people may not know about you Chef Tim is you know you're a very serious fine dining chef but you have a family of four you like to have fun and you like the regional American classics you appreciate a good burger and a good hot dog and we love that and of course remember barrel and ashes fondly but a few years ago an actor and comedian by the name of BJ Novak that our listeners probably remember from the office came to you with a crazy idea and tell us about that because that crazy idea his manifested itself into what is a growing business enterprise but also a documentary that our listeners can catch. Yeah absolutely so this is you know this is back in maybe 2019-18-19. BJ came to me and he said hey I have this really I have this crazy idea I want to open up a restaurant and I want it to be a chain restaurant I want it to call a chain but not necessarily a chain but serve like chain style food at a you know at a Michelin or a highly elevated level and you know really like you know have that sort of feeling in an ambiance of like this Americana culture and you know I grew up going I grew up in Northern California in Placerville and I grew up with my mom you know making the majority of meals that I ate but special occasions you know it was a treat for us to be able to go out so my memories of these chain restaurants are are very very fun memories of celebration of you know getting together with family and just like you know this kind of amazing time so I love and I have this like you know really strong love for these types of restaurants and and so I was like I love this idea let's let's do it and we that pandemic happened and we ended up doing pop-ups and parking lots and then we had a house in West Hollywood where we threw different events and started to partner with these chains as well and then ultimately we were like you know we should do we should we should throw a festival and we threw this massive festival in LA back in December last year and it was called chain fest and it was just incredible I've been to a lot of food festivals I've been to you know participating in a lot of food festivals this one was it was by far the best and you can just see all of the guests there you know this this sort of just they're interacting they're fun everybody was talking to each other everybody had this shared love for a common cuisine that everybody's had before which is very unique at a festival a lot of times you're trying different foods and whatnot and you know everybody's had these dishes and you know we're doing our take on these dishes and we actually shot a documentary and it airs on Roku now and it is chain food it is like a documentary of the making of chain fest so it tells a little bit of story a background on chain and how we got started and then the process through chain fest so we actually invited a bunch of celebrities to come by the house Chris E. G. and John Legend Chris have been called like all you know a bunch of people coming and they you know people that had a love for what whether we pan express or whether it'd be Jack in the box and be like okay you know I'm gonna redo the Jack in the box taco please come try it tell me if I nailed it and you know we they came and they tried the food and we sort of you know did did a little tester with them the food that we were gonna be doing at chain fest and then you know we threw the the festival and it was just out of control so many people there was when when the doors were opened it was a line you know probably for an hour and a half before the doors open people just anxious to get up and Tim you should mention that all of that is in the documentary and what I particularly enjoyed about it in addition to all the celebrity friends that you hang out with apparently John Legend and Chrissy Teigen you use as taste testers and they have very definite opinions about quick service and fast food which is good to see but you also give the history of these companies that you partnered with to elevate one item from their menu and the backstories are incredible we really only have time to talk about one a lot of people don't realize that Panda Express is actually a private company that is still family owned that is huge very briefly tell us about the Panda dish that you put the chef Tim touch on because that one looked like it was a lot of fun yeah so that was a fun one so you know they're their iconic dish that they created was orange chicken and I forget how many like you know how many thousands like how many pounds despite of this orange chicken that they sell but it's you know it's a lot it's shattering you know yeah we had to you know we had to do orange chicken so we kind of are indeed a little bit we're like you know what let's do Roy G chicken so we did a red orange yellow and green chicken the orange was based off of the classic orange chicken the red one we use you know everything is natural in the coloring and whatnot but we used to sort of you know flavors of red deepening the deepening the the chicken the green had like this you know slight like Thai curry-esque to it and the yellow one had like a more of like a turmeric and a yellow curry but you have four of these different bites of orange chicken they were all of the bases were orange and then we developed flavors around those and topped it with this like nice sesame crispy topping over the top of it as well and so you eat you know off of the skewer four different bites all of it orange chicken all of them different colors and all of them different flavors it was you know it's fun to come up with stuff like that Tim it really looks like in the documentary which is very honestly presented that you are having a great time I can't recommend this enough to our listeners and understand however you access the Roku channel even on your PC you can just go to roku.com this does not cost to be able to view the documentary which is wonderful and it's fun and if you come away with this from this thing chef Tim and you're not hungry I don't know what to do with you now unfortunately chef Tim is we're running out of time here we do want to give another mention because unfortunately public television doesn't quite have the resources that the chain has and you are visible right now in the LA market on Monday nights on PBS SoCal at 9 p.m. for very fun competition series called the Great American Recipe it's about halfway through the season and what's wonderful is is you have serious home cooks from throughout the country with different backgrounds that are competing to get their recipe in the Great American Recipe Bork and it's not mean-spirited there's no yelling you're one of the three judges you look like you're really enjoying yourself and again public television merits our listeners support we highly recommend in addition to chain food all store dishes to enjoy the Great American Recipe and you look like you had a great time in Nashville Tim yeah it was really it was really great and you know I think you really nailed it you know it's a it's a it's a fun and friendly commerce competition that is is meant to celebrate home cooks and their heritage and passing down of generational recipes and that's something that you know I've been championing for many many years and just you know I love to go and cook with my mother-in-law my friends moms and like or dads and like you know really experience and understand you know how they cook in the recipe that they make and some of those have actually influenced the menu even at Odium so it's fun to actually be a part of a competition show that that focuses on that and really celebrates versus you know create some sort of drama around you know around the plot if you will absolutely ladies and gentlemen Chef Tim Hollingsworth Odium in downtown LA all over television right now but on the Roku channel chain food all store diners on Monday on PBS Southern California Great American Recipe thanks for the time Chef Tim you are listening to the SoCal restaurant show when to return we are down to the Terrainier Resort in Rancho Palace Verdes we're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime needs. We'll be right back.
