“Carmel Melrose in Los Angeles transports the energy, culture, and flavor of the renowned outdoor marketplace “Shuk HaCarmel” to Melrose Avenue, in the heart of L.A.’s food scene. Using some of the oldest techniques in the world— a wood-burning oven, an open flame grill— chef Asaf Maoz interprets ancient Levantine cooking traditions through a modern lens. Dishes showcase the best of the season: farmer’s market produce, sustainably-sourced meats and seafood, all prepared with the global culinary influence of the Tel Aviv shuk. Breads are baked in-house, including a 72-hour fermented Moroccan frena, baked to order in the wood-fire oven.” Partner/Founder Ronnie Benarie joins us with the enticing overview of the delights of Carmel Melrose.
“The California Restaurant Foundation (CRF), a nonprofit that invests in and empowers California restaurants and their workforce, has awarded 278 independent restaurants with $5,000 grants as part of its fourth consecutive Restaurants Care® Resilience Fund. The grants were made possible via thoughtful donations from SoCalGas, The PG&E Corporation Foundation (PG&E Foundation) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), which have contributed to the fund since 2021. Recipients can use the $5,000 assistance for equipment and technology upgrades, unforeseen hardships, employee retention bonuses and employee training, all of which allow California’s independent restaurant owners and caterers to invest in the longevity of their business and employees.” The CRF’s Alycia Harshfield (Executive Director) is our guest to more fully explain this year’s results.
Christina Hong of Seoulmates in Los Angeles (W. Third St.) and Santa Monica is one of the fortunate recipients of a $5,000, 2024 California Restaurant Foundation Restaurants Care Resilience Fund Grant. We’ll meet her and learn her story.
“Welcome to TheOrenco, Hillsboro, Oregon’s 10-room boutique luxury hotel. TheOrenco is ideally situated within the vibrant and growing work-live-play community of Orenco Station in Hillsboro, OR. They offer guests calm, comfortable, and privacy-oriented accommodations not found at the typical corporate chains. Guests appreciate their nontraditional European lodging format, their brownstone architecture and the wide variety of unique restaurants, breweries and shops available within a short walking distance of their front door. The included morning breakfast is at the nearby Tous Les Jours (French-Asian artisan bakery), a local institution where all the tempting pastries and breads are baked fresh, daily.” The hospitality-oriented owners of TheOrenco, Margie Waltz and Richard Lyons, join us with all the accommodating details.
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. Chef Andrew is an authority on Lobster Rolls. He’s served them by the 100s over the years. Besides the familiar Maine-style there is also the equally delicious Connecticut-style roll. Chef Andrew has the enticing overview.
All of this and heaping helpings of extra deliciousness on this week’s not-to-miss show!
(upbeat music) - 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 is the Labor Day Holiday weekend version of the SoCal Restaurant Show. Can you believe it? And 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 30 Angels app. And would you believe it? Last night at Angel Stadium was the start of a three game set with the Seattle Mariners. And it was AM830K LAA day here in Angel Stadium. How about that? And Roger Lodge was the ringleader for all of the ceremonies. So definitely kind of fun. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show. Welcome again. And we really appreciate you spending part of your holiday weekend with us. We hope to entertain you for the next two hours and also hopefully make you a little hungry. We will endeavor to do our best. And happy to say we have Chuck with us this morning in technical excellence, welcome Chuck. And thanks for staying over. We do appreciate it. My colleague, Chef Andrew Grool, who boy, he's got a busy weekend in front of him at the Calico Fish House on Pacific Coast Highway in the Sunset Beach area of Huntington Beach. We'll be joining us a little later in the show with his usual Ask the Chef segment. And the topic of conversation this morning, and I think it's very appropriate to the season, is lobster rolls, very popular at this time of year. And the intrigue there is, is most of you are familiar with the cold version of the lobster roll with Mayo on the split top bun, frequently called in the Northeast, the main style lobster roll. But to add to the controversy, there is also a hot version of the lobster roll, sometimes called the Connecticut version. And aficionados of either style are very passionate about why their version of the lobster roll is the absolute best. Hey, from my point of view, lobster is to be enjoyed, however you want to enjoy it. So we'll get into that with Chef Andrew a little later in the show with his Ask the Chef segment. We do ask you to keep up with us on social media. It definitely is out there for you to use as a tool and an entertainment device. What we try to do is connect Saturdays by giving you a lot of additional information. So particularly when we have a restaurant that's on the show or talking about a gourmet specialty food product, if you look at either our Facebook or Instagram feed, you will get the visual of that and it just adds to the word commentary that we do here on the show. So something to keep in mind. Also when we have a cookbook author on the show, what we try to do is have a recipe or two from their new cookbook posted in the recipes area of the website to give you the listener just a little bit more information about that cookbook and see if it's something you might want to pursue further. So again, just something else to keep in mind. Website is easy. It's SoCalRestaurantShow.com. Facebook is SoCalRestaurantShow. Send us a Twitter and X if you like and many of you still do at SoCalRestaurant. But as we love to say and never get fond of mentioning it, Instagram to @SoCalRestaurantShow and we're enthusiastically presented to you each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Prime Meats. Some of my colleagues may be taking the weekend off but on the SoCalRestaurant Show, holiday weekends, we are here to give you a live and a new show. So of course, we have a lot on the plate for this morning. Middle Eastern restaurants in LA with some style and ambiance, just not fast places are really coming into Vogue and a new one in the Melrose District of Los Angeles is Carmel Melrose. Now, Southern Californians, when they hear Carmel, they're thinking of the city up north, that charming little hamlet. But Carmel is actually an area in Israel. It's an outdoor marketplace and we will talk about that with the owners and the culinary team of Carmel Melrose which is new on Melrose and what used to be the village idiot space that was their British theme pub, was there for years and years and was a great place. Totally new concept. This is Mediterranean and really doing some interesting and very tasty food. So we'll get into that. We often talk about the good work that the California Restaurant Foundation does on the SoCalRestaurant Show. They have many programs to benefit restaurants and caters that are in need, but also food service worker employees that need a helping hand and they do a lot of good work. And this is the time of the year that for the fourth year in a row, their restaurants care effort provides awards, cash awards through their grants, through what they call the Resilience Fund. And this is funded by the three major utilities in Southern California, which is quite nice. And what these are are $5,000 grants that can be used for a lot of different things, employer retention bonuses being one of them, but also for technology and equipment upgrades, unforeseen hardships, really a wonderful program. So the results, the grant recipients for the California Restaurant Foundation's Restaurants Care Resilience Fund program have been announced and we will be talking with the executive director of the California Restaurant Foundation about this year's program, Alicia Harshfield, but 278 grants were given out. Very exciting and definitely as we talk about on the SoCalRestaurant Show, a time of need for all restaurants, but particularly small independent restaurants, bouncing back from the pandemic, nobody really is back 100% yet. So it's great to have a program like that that can give deserving restaurants a helping hand. And we will also talk with one of the grant recipients, a little mini empire called Solmates with their original restaurant in the Third Street area of Los Angeles, kind of a fun little concept and we will be speaking with their proprietress. Then we're up in Hillsborough, Oregon, where I was earlier in the summer, doing some winery tours and research for the show. And I love non-corporate hotels that have a personality. And in Hillsborough, Oregon, where which was my base of operations when I was up in the Willamette Valley area, is the Orinoco, which is a 10-room boutique luxury hotel that's a lot of fun. We'll be talking about their proprietors and what they're doing that really is special. You are listening to the SoCalRestaurant Show. When we return, it's Carmel Melrose. We're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Proters. And give us a minute, we'll be back. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
