B.I.G. T.I.M.E.

Finally, I've made it. Straight to the top. I got my own t.v. show. That's right my very own show.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel.
Maybe not my own show, but real close.

Check out this video clip from the local Atlanta t.v. station on the Local 3 Kitchen and Bar.
It shows really nice shots of the bar I made from a felled oak tree and my 3 pig paintings.

Ok, so it's not even close to a t.v. show, but it's kinda cool.

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/local-video/index.html?grabnetworks_video_id=4684353

GENKI

Just finished and hung the art for a new sushi joint in Virgina Highland. Genki is the name of the restaurant.
Here are some photos of the finished product from the Genki job. I had the pleasure of working with Peace Design. Hillary and Bill run an awesome business and were great.

The fans above are 6' in diameter. The painting below is a take off on a Japanese playing card.
It is 6' tall and 3.5' wide.
This was a really fun project. I was forced to work outside of my comfort zone. In a huge format.
Really, I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but everyone was very happy.

Next project is my first gallery show. This Saturday, the 7th, from 4 pm til 8 pm at the Serenbe Gallery. There will be cool art, cold beer and BBQ.
The art will be up for a month.
On Saturday the 14th there is a huge May Day Fest at Serenbe. There will be a lot of cool vendors and music and BBQ. The Gallery will be open as well. So go check it out if you get the chance. There are other galleries and shops and a couple of really good restaurants down at Serenbe. They also have a organic farm that has been in operation for 6 or 7 years so you know lot's of the food at the restaurants come from the farm. If you have never visited Serenbe and you like some of the above you need to go.
Alsoooooooooooooo. They have a farmers market every Saturday starting in May and running til December. It's a great day trip, I'm just saying.

SHOYA VS MISO

Shoya Izakaya is all the rage right now. A lot of my chef and foodie friends are crazy about it.
Stacey and I finally made it there last night. I can use one word for our visit.
Disappointed.
The way everyone has been raving I was looking for one of the best meals ever. Really, that's been the reaction of everyone. Well, no one has said it's the best meal they ever had, but everyone loves it. And these are food people, chefs mostly. Just goes to show ya. I don't know what it goes to show ya, but it goes to show ya.

We ate pork belly. It was on a skewer. That should be fine. Pork belly is so good just cook it and eat it right? Well this was lacking. Must have been the quality of the belly.

One buddy bragged about the fried chicken skin. Hell yes, best part of the chicken. It came on a salad. It didn't suck, but didn't blow me away either.

We had an assorted sausage plate. Again just didn't blow me away. Maybe it cause I been eating the awesome sausage Muss has been preparing at Local 3. Or maybe it's the wonderful meats Kevin makes at Spotted Trotter. Nothing special at Shoya.

We had Wasabi Shumai. A pork dumpling Dim Sum style that had been steamed in wasabi leaves. This was good, I thought real good. Stacey thought it was just ok.

Tako Wasabi. Raw octopus in a wasabi oil. This was ok, but a little went a long way and we didn't finish this plate.And besides that have you ever tried to eat raw octopus with chop sticks?
Could someone give me a spoon, please

Flounder Karaage. A small fried whole flounder. It was good. It seemed fresh. If the rest of the meal was a little better I might have enjoyed this plate more.

Scallop Butter Yaki? I can't even remember this dish.

So we tried and just didn't get what all the fuss is about. And it's not anywhere near our home.

Much closer to home is Miso Izakaya. Now this place rocks. We been eating here for about a year or so and I been telling people good things. We went the night after we ate at Shoya and could really tell the difference between the two. And Miso is a beautiful room. Shoys is nice, but someone put some thought in designing Miso.

We ate a duck bun and a pork belly bun. A Bao. These things are about the size of a Jamaican Meat Patty, but the are soft, really soft. A Bao is a steamed bun. the Japanese version are the softest and the lightest. Lot's of cultures enjoy the Bao in different fashions. The Chinese Bao
is something at Dim Sum. It has a heavier texture than other visions. Searching on the net I see there are many different versions. To me the Japanese version is a sandwich. Plain and simple. Miso's version is so, so good.

Avocado Tempura. Holy shit. It's just what it say's. Creamy crunch. Avocado, tempura fried. That's it. Dipping sauce is something soy and light like. This is a dish I will try to match up with something else on the menu. It will be even better with a seared tuna or something.

Shrimp Shumai. Again very Dim Sum, and very good. Made just like a pot sticker , but steamed in bamboo instead of pan fried in a skillet. These were nice and fresh tasting.

Hand Rolled Unagi. My favorite sushi. Grilled fresh water eel. We had a hand roll. It was perfect. A seaweed cone stuffed with rice and grilled unagi. Ya gota eat the hand rolled fast.

Grilled Ika. I love grilled octopus. Ecco here in Atlanta does it with crushed olives and olive oil. Very good. I must say I have never had octopus's tentacles as long as these. But that's the good part, the thin, seared by the grill parts. They need to be perfectly grilled and these were.

Our last request was for Karubi. Short ribs. This was our least favorite at Miso. They were actually like usual at other restaurants, which is not usual for Miso.

We are in love with Miso and just about to get in the car and head that way.

BENEFITS OF BIKING

Health you say? Maybe, but it's dangerous riding a bike around the Atlanta streets.
I keep it close to my hood so it's not to bad.
The best benefit as of late is this chair and this Donnie and Marie footlocker.



Found while riding bike on bulk trash pickup day in East Point.
I ran the chair photo through Photo Shop cause it was a bad photo and I couldn't fix it and didn't feel like taking another one.

FROM MOBILES LAGNIAPPE NEWSPAPER

"I’ve got no use for regret. One thing an ancient man like me can tell you is that it’s all part of life. You make mistakes, you learn. If you’re smart, you don’t make the same mistakes again. And if you’re me, you’ll make the same ones three or four times. But it’s all part of being human, and that’s a beautiful thing.” — Male, 79

my office

This is the front end of my work shop. Often folks pull up and ask if the restaurant is open? "No" I tell them "and get out of my backyard". I just happen to have a SPORTSMAN GRILL sign hanging in my back yard, right outside my work shop. Inside my shop I have a mess. I'm currently making 4 pieces of art for a new restaurant. It is a sushi restaurant so the paintings need to fit. I was given a crude xerox of a photo of a door at at Japanese restaurants that looked like an umbrella. You know like a huge version of the paper umbrellas in your foo foo drinks at the beach resorts. I was asked if I could do some kind of umbrella type thing around 6' in diameter. Sure I could. Could I give them an example of what I would do? Sure I could.
So I gave them this. By the way "them" is the architect firm Peace Designs. They are doing the design for this sushi restaurant.
Anyway I did this small sample of my idea for the umbrellas with different paints and papers for collage.


It is hard to see, but I have collaged different papers for the umbrella. Some of it is Japanese newspaper, some is silver leaf, some is different color tissue paper. I dripped paint for the seams of the umbrella.
These guys also wanted to have me reproduce the back side of a Japanese playing card. This is the image they gave me.



This is what I did. It was small about 2' square. They (peace design) liked it and wanted it to be 6ft X 3.5ft. No problem I told them.


So this is what the "office" is looking like right now. It's a mess.



I bought about 10 Japanese newspapers. I used those to collage two of the umbrellas. For the third umbrella I used the yellow paper with the red print from the sample above. I spent about six hours on each just applying the paper. Some of it I tore into pieces about 2 inches. Some I cut into pieces about twice that size. I then glued each piece down to plywood.

This is what they are looking like right now. Stand by for the finished product.

DON'T MESS WITH LIL' LADY aka STACEY

You can tell by the timing of my last two post Mardi Gras is long gone for 2011. It was a great year. All the right people came to town, except one Chef who was really missed. All went well, we had some folks march with the Fish for their first time, we had some guy from Hawaii show up with his dog. Everyone fell in love with Kola and his handler. Hope they come back next year.

Next year? It's gonna be our 20th parade. It's gonna be special and I'm sure painless. We expelled all the pain this year.

Expelling pain, that's the last thing I remember.

Last thing I remember Stacey was chasing some guy out the back door of our cottage.
The guy just walked in the back door looked around, called out "HELLO" and helped himself to my bottle of Ketel One. Stacey caught him on the back stoop and he was lucky I was there to stop her from beating his ass. She was mad. And scared. Don't mess with mad and scared.

That's the last thing I remember.

No wait, the last thing I remember is falling in my moms backyard and landing on my nose. Nothing but my face and the pea gravel walkway. That sucked. And it hurt. You don't want to mess with sucked and hurt.

That's the last thing I remember.

No wait, the last thing I remember is riding on a KOR float on Mardi Gras day wondering where the hell Jeff was.

That's the last thing I remember.