the tasting party we had was a blast! 

we should first like to start by thanking everyone who came out to help us taste the creations brian and i were inspired to cook from our recent san fran trip. we also are really appreciative of the feedback given, and truly take them seriously, and make recipe adjustments accordingly to make sure everything we cook is freakin' awesome. also, thanks for the smiles and the support during the bright lights shining and flashing in all of your pretty faces!

so, i recently have been reading and researching what other "underground" dinners are doing and how they are carving their niche. what i found to be so amazing is that the craze is not limited to only the east and west coast of america, it is also huge in cuba, united kingdom, australia, and hong kong! so, the question that came to my mind is the whole concept of "underground" and what it means to brian and i. we have been asked what that means a couple of times, and i find that there are so many different interpretations of this label. to help me answer that question i found a book called "secret suppers" by jenn garbee that i have recently ordered through amazon, and am waiting on pins and needles for it's arrival! while i wait, i read a quick synopsis, and in the book she interviews different "underground" dinner hosts and their reasoning behind their adventure in this "secret" world. there are chefs that work under cheflebrities that want to branch-out, executives who have found themselves unemployed and want to pursue a passion that always had laid dormant, and people who want to eventually open a restaurant (but are lacking the capital). we fall in the latter. we are not doing "underground" dinners because we want to be cool, or we want to only have people that can afford a $200 per person meal, or because we refuse to give out secret passwords to people to gain entry into our lives and our passion. we are doing it because we want a restaurant. and for these once a month dinners we are given a small glimpse into what it feels like. and we love it.

the seeds that planted this idea for us was the fact that for the past 6 years brian and i have been together, the tie that initially bound us was food. we both work in the restaurant industry, i started in high school at age 15, and we have a true love for the hospitality industry as a whole. we love the instantaneous joy and the bonds that happen over meals, the warmth you can feel and give by tasting and serving someone's food, and the comfort it can bring when you are low. so , i guess you can say that "underground" dining to us means all of the above, with the addition of it being done out of the pure love of cooking something from nothing, sharing it with people we care about, as well as people we have yet to meet, and doing so out of true hospitality, and offering it in an alternative dining situation. a table of people we know, who may not know each other, and end up leaving as friends with great memories is mainly what we do now.

i will now get off my my soapbox about "underground" dining and focus my energy on what we are going to do in 4 hours from now! we are off to shoot a segment on wciu's "you and me in the morning" about yo soy. we are excited to do so, and to see what people we may meet by doing this! we also want to make sure that people wanting to contact us do so via email from this website for further information on the next dinner we are hosting on the 29th. 

we need to go to bed now, or we will look like hell in the morning! 

til' then! lights! camera! acción!