Uncategorized

The new folks might not know this, because I’ve tried hard to keep it it under wraps, but I have a nickname. It’s “Bad Looker,” or Bill for short. Jeremiah made it up, and it’s not really that funny. But sometimes, it really fits. Sometimes, I just don’t look hard enough. Yesterday was one of those times.

We’ve been doing an afternoon special for the past two weeks. I love these specials. This week, fried plantains. At 3pm, it was time to start frying up the plantains. We ran through the few plantains left from yesterday, and then I started looking for the plantains that had been dropped off that afternoon in the resupply van. I looked everywhere. Kevin looked everywhere. There were no plantains on the truck.

I called Rolando, I called Chris, I even texted Enzo, suggesting that our truck had been sabotaged as part of the truck-to-truck competition.

Then, a customer came by, saying she’d been thinking about fried plantains all day. We had to tell her we were all sold out. I looked one more time. Right at the front of the truck, hidden under some crates, was a white plastic container, full of plantains. Kevin tried to call after the woman, but she was already gone. We didn’t get your name – but please come back tomorrow. Ask for Bill. I’ll fry you up some plantains.

Those of you who’ve been following us for a while know about the back door on the MIT truck. It is exactly the right height for banging your head when you’re stepping off the truck. Nearly everyone has fallen victim to it at one point or another.

Last week, LJ banged his head really hard and Chris Anderson (who’s just come on full time) decided it would be the last time.

That’s LJ in the foreground recovering, and Chris in the background, attaching foam and bright red tape to the ledge. It’s an ugly fix, but the alternative is worse. Sorry LJ. Thank you, Chris.

This is Antony. He was our last dinner customer of the night last night. And as far as I know, he is our most shining example of a successful pre-order.

Nearly every day, Antony comes by for breakfast, and while he’s at the truck, he pre-pays for his lunch order – one chickpea fritter and rosemary fries. He comes back at 1pm to pick it up.

The crew, and especially Brian, has gotten really good at having Antony’s chickpeas and fries coming right out of the fryer by the time we see him rounding the corner at 12:59.

Soon Antony won’t be at MIT every day. He promised us he’ll still come by on the days he’s on campus, but Antony, you’ve trained us well! – I think we’ll always have a chickpea and fries waiting at 1pm for you.

When I was working in Washington DC, I wanted to see Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. I tried to track it down, but ended up at a small garden outside the headquarters of the US Department of Agriculture right near the Smithsonian. There are a bunch of vegetable gardens the USDA has started to run this year. In May, chard and kale were growing.

I went inside the USDA headquarters to check out the visitors center. It was really strange. It had some of the nicest volunteers, who showed me a display of food the USDA has been involved in creating (like boxed mashed potatoes) and gave me a collection of pamphlets. Like this one, about attack worms.

Really cool gardens, kind of outdated visitors center.

It didn’t take too many evenings of unloading the Clover truck to realize that regular sneakers weren’t going to cut it. During the winter I wore some men’s boots, they were really comfortable and had great grip, but they were really ugly.

This week I decided to spring for kitchen clogs. There are a couple brands of clogs that you see in kitchens. Crocs (less expensive), and Danskos (expensive).

This is a picture of my new pair of Danskos, on the springy “turf” at the playground near our commissary. After a week of wearing them, I’m not so sure they were worth the money. They’re really supportive if you’re standing still, but as some of you may have witnessed, I’ve come really close to twisting my ankle. Somehow I don’t think it’s part of the breaking-in process…

Ladies and Gentlemen, those are compost barrels. I’ve been working at this for a year. Oh I’m so happy.

In the early days Rolando and I would haul the compost out ourselves, then wr got in trouble for holding it in the fridge. I asked 50 times for these bins and was told everything from “they’ll attract rodents” to “there’s nobody to service them” (I went and tracked down a company), to “there’s no time we can have them picke up…” and on and on and on. I tried to see if we could drop our compost at MIT (nogo), freeze it, everything I could think of.

But now they are here!!! Expect Clover to be composting once again starting immediately, I mean tonight!

Chris, Bonnibel and I were driving the truck back to the commissary Friday afternoon. We stopped to fill the truck with gas and propane. A huge moving truck was blocking the propane-filling station, and it wasn’t going to move for 45 minutes.

We were stranded at the gas station.

At least it was a beautiful day. A couple of people came by and asked what we were serving. We almost opened back up and started service again. Instead we ate ice cream from the gas station.

For the last two weeks I was working in Washington DC. Can’t say where I was working yet – but trust me, it was something good (and related to food). I have a bunch of posts from my trip but I thought I’d start with this one.

I met someone on the subway who told me about an Indian food truck called Fojol Brothers. Their Twitter post said the truck would be in a plaza near the Capitol at noon one Wednesday. I showed up a little early — no truck.

Read the rest of this entry »

We love getting our eggs from Chip-in Farm in Bedford, Mass. They’re really fresh, plus you can visit the chickens on the farm : )

We get our eggs in a sort of roundabout arrangement. We place our order with Russo’s, a big grocery store and distributor in Watertown. Russo’s delivers produce to Chip-in Farm for them to sell at their farm stand. When Russo’s delivers to Chip-in, they pick up eggs, then deliver those eggs to Clover. Like a lot of local supply chains, it doesn’t always work smoothly.

Sometimes (like during the days surrounding Easter) there were no eggs to be had. Sometimes we get our delivery and eggs are listed as “out of stock.” We have to go to the grocery store or get eggs from different suppliers.

We run through a lot of eggs every day (like 8 dozen). That number will grow as we scale up for the summer, so we’re hoping to find a more direct arrangement from Chip-in.

So when you are building a new restaurant you talk to your equipment supplier, and they help you design the kitchen. They charge you of course, but then you buy away the charge as you buy equipment from the supplier.

You can understand why restaurants go for this, it appears to reduce your cash outlay. And you can see why suppliers offer this service, this way they can lock in purchases before all of that price comparing goes on (the kitchen has not yet been specified and designed, so what are you going to compare at this stage?)

I interviewed TriMark, they may be the largest equipment supplier in North America. I also talked to Eastern (pictured above). They are a smaller local supplier and have helped me with the truck. Believe me, I have my complaints about Eastern. They’re a bit disorganized, and only recently have they started to treat me decently, before that it was very gruff. And I’ve seen them treat other customers in ways that cannot be excused.

That said, they have been helping me to date, and they are local. Very local. We decided to use them for the design phase. Didn’t hurt that they are faster and less expensive than TriMark for this stage, but whatever the reason the choice makes me feel good.

Yesterday our credit-card machine was down. We had just bought a new one, and when the company shipped it, they de-activated our current one. So we could only do cash. When you (customer in the picture on the left) found out, and didn’t have cash, you (customer on the right) offered to loan her $5. You guys had never met before! Leah and I were taking orders. It made us very happy.