Podcasts
Segment One: Customer Service and Speculoos Cookie Butter
Segment Two: B. Toffee’s Betsy Thagard
Segment Three: Celebrity Chef and Cookbook Author, Tal Ronnen
Segment Four: Sang Yoon, Executive Chef & Proprietor of Father’s Office and Lukshon
Segment Five: Tom Gordon, co-creator of The Pepper Project
Segment Six: Michael Rossi, Executive Chef of The Ranch Restaurant and Saloon
Food rumblings…
Producer Andy sounds off about a less than satisfactory customer service story at his neighborhood chain grocery store. Is it acceptable customer service for an employee to shrug off a simple customer request when you don’t know where a common item is in a department that you stock? Shouldn’t a store employee have enough training and basic initiative to then go ask someone who knows instead of giving up?
Next we’re jumping into the Speculoos Cookie Butter craze playing out at a Trader Joe’s near you.
Speculoos Cookie Butter is made by a small Danish company and is a Trader Joe’s exclusive in the U.S. It comes in both a smooth and crunchy version. It tastes like the best fresh ginger bread you ever had with a kick. It’s incredible, melted, over ice cream when used like a fudge sauce. People use it like peanut butter but it has a much richer flavor profile.
Surprisingly it’s the number one selling product in all Trader Joe’s right now, and they can’t keep it on the shelf. The crunch variety is presently out of stock and they aren’t sure when it will be back. Apparently the manufacturer makes one version at a time. The smooth, when you can find it, is limited to the purchase of two jars per customer.
Crazy but absolutely delicious …!
B. toffee is an OC success story. Proprietress Betsy Thagard, a Newport Beach resident, perfected the ultimate toffee recipe after much trail-and-error and B. toffee was introduced in 2009. B. toffee’s original recipe features savory butters, fine domestic sugars, premium Guittard and Callebaut chocolates, and quality pecans.
It’s National Ice Cream Month! On July 27th from 2 to 5:00 p.m. B. toffee will join forces with Whole Foods Market in Newport Beach to host their Summer Ice Cream Social. All the tastes are complimentary.
Guests will enjoy an ice cream sundae topped with B. toffee’s signature B. bits. Thagard will also be making samples of her B. Frosty shake and providing recipe cards so guests can make the B. toffee creations at home.
We met Chef Tal Ronnen on the show last month. He creates tasty plant-based fare. His newest restaurant is the fine-dining Crossroads in West Hollywood. He’s also the author of the New York Times’-bestseller, The Conscious Cook: Delicious Meatless Recipes That Will Change the Way You Eat.
A few years back casino mogul Steve Wynn brought Tal in to Wynn Las Vegas and Encore at Wynn Las Vegas to create vegetarian items for all his restaurants. Tal discusses that highly unusual experience and what it was like to work with highly demanding celebrity chefs who were responsible for those signature restaurants.
Sang Yoon is the chef/proprietor of Father’s Office (Santa Monica and Los Angeles) and Lukshon in Culver City at the Helms Bakery complex. You’ll also see him competing on the upcoming season of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters.
The Luckyrice night market and spirits tasting returns to Los Angeles on Saturday, July 27th from 7 to 10:00 p.m. at the Bookbindery in Culver City. Sang Yoon hosts and will be providing us with a preview of the 2nd Annual event.
Tom Gordon and his wife, Cris, are Orange County-based journalists by day but they are also the creators of The Pepper Project benefiting struggling Cambodian farmers who grow Kampot peppers.
During the days of French Indochina, most Kampot pepper was exported to the finest restaurants in France. In the 1970s, the farmers were relocated and the farms withered under the brutal reign of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.
Today Kampot pepper is making a comeback. It is organically grown by 130 families, using traditional methods that go back centuries.
Podcasts
Segment One: Customer Service and Speculoos Cookie Butter
Segment Two: B. Toffee’s Betsy Thagard
Segment Three: Celebrity Chef and Cookbook Author, Tal Ronnen
Segment Four: Sang Yoon, Executive Chef & Proprietor of Father’s Office and Lukshon
Segment Five: Tom Gordon, co-creator of The Pepper Project
Segment Six: Michael Rossi, Executive Chef of The Ranch Restaurant and Saloon
