Category: Food and Drink

El Tumi Peruvian Restaurant – Reno

Saturday night Duke and I tried El Tumi Peruvian Restaurant at 585 E. Moana Lane in Reno. The waitress said they have been open since August. El Tumi has a very appealing menu with quite a variety of dishes and lots of pictures. It was very hard to chose what to try.

We finally decided on fried yucca with a tangy green sauce for dipping as as an appetizer. It was very good. For our main course Duke had the fried fish special and I had the broiled Camarones (shrimp). I really liked the Cusquena Peruvian beer. The food was good and the atmosphere was friendly. I think we'll have to go back a few more times and try a variety of dishes to decide whether El Tumi will go onto our list of regular restaurants.

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Todd Martin – Chief Chef, Owner and Founder of the Tucson Tamale Company – Episode 7 Marion Vermazen Podcast

Todd Martin, the founder, owner and chief chef of the Tucson Tamale Company is my guest for this episode of the Marion Vermazen Podcast. Todd started the Tucson Tamale Company in November of 2008. We talked about starting a business, about making tamales, about his plans to grow the company and much more.

To listen to the  podcast you can use the following link.

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A New Book and a Tamale contest

I see from the Tucson Tamale Company blog that they now ship tamales. I am ordering some today!!

And in  another post Todd has a very funny video about his friend's new book One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald with a contest for free tamales when you read the book. Watch the video here.

Todd is a friend. He was my boss at Intuit. I'll let you all know how the tamales are.

I’m passionate about using social networking to build your brand.

I follow Robert Scoble (scobelizer) on Twitter. I often learn new stuff or find new interesting people. At the Consumer Electronics Show Scoble was on a panel about blogging with Gary Vaynerchuk who does a really cool video blog called Wine Library TV and also has his own personal video blog. I love finding new people like this. If you want some great entertainment that will make you laugh watch the segment when Vaynerchuk was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien or if you want to branding and social media watch Gary's  latest segment on his personal website. The guy is just plain entertaining.

What Vaynerchuk does with WineLibraryTV is a great example of how to use social networking to help build your business. My friend Todd who just started The Tucson Tamale Company is in the early stages of doing the exact same thing. You can follow him on twitter (tucsontamales or cornartist) I haven't talked to him about this but I could see him doing tamaleTV.com 🙂 Todd is doing a great job of building the Tucson Tamale Company brand.

A side note: I haven't tried Tucson Tamale Company tamales yet but Todd says he is going to do mail order soon. I can't wait!

The River’s Edge

How many places are truly unique? So many restaurants, stores, homes and towns feel like they are just copies of one another. It is rare to find a place and a restaurant, especially in the San Francisco bay area that is not just like all the others. I think maybe homogenization comes with population density.

A few weeks ago Duke and I took a long weekend and went up to the California gold country. On our way we stopped for lunch in Isleton, a small town on the Sacramento river delta. Isleton feels unique. The shops and restaurants all have character. The restaurant we stopped at for lunch is well worth going out of your way to eat at. This trip was the third time we have eaten at the River’s edge. Every meal we have had there has been special. The cafe is in an old renovated building. The hardwood floors look original and are accented by purple tile. The eggplant green and purple walls are decorated  with geometric modern art. The result is a warm wonderful feeling before you even open the menu.

But the food…………  ah my mouth is watering just thinking about it.  All the sandwiches come with salads, mine had fresh, wonderful, room temperature greens with a tangy raspberry dressing. My sandwich was chicken meatloaf and Duke’s was the roast lamb. Both were on homemade facacia bread with homemade mayonnaise that brought out the flavor of the meat.

The breakfast menu had my mouth watering too. So last weekend we drove out to the River’s Edge for breakfast and then took tours of the Jelly Belly factory and the Budweiser factory which are in nearby Fairfield. With all the rain we have had and the concern about the integrity of California’s levees it was interesting to drive on top of one of the levee’s along the river. Isleton feels like it is way below the level of the river. Our breakfast at the River’s Edge didn’t disappoint me.

The River’s Edge is worth making a special trip to visit.  Next time you are driving down highway 80 from the Bay Area to Sacramento take a detour to Isleton and the River’s Edge. You won’t regret it.