You know, back in high school I really didn’t grasp the challenge of earning a living. Let me tell you about this job I had during my junior year. I worked at an extremely posh decorative interior store with my friend Jamie Burgmeyer. What a job it was. We mostly did things like polish silver, master the art of measuring yards of fabric using only our bodies, shoot the breeze with our very colorful full-time co-workers, and learn how to tie fancy bows around things like pillows. Gee w(h)illikers, the things I wouldn’t know today if I hadn’t spent time at La Jolie Maison.

When we landed the job we weren’t even looking for it. We were standing on a downtown corner waiting for one of our parents to pick us up, because, what can I say, we were exceptionally cool high school students. The reason we were in my hometown’s shopping district was because we were reviewing pizza places for our student newspaper, “The Tower.” We, along with another friend, wrote a “regular” column called “The Food Forum.” I place “regular” in quotations because during my freshman year of high school, “The Tower” came out on a weekly basis. Between my sophomore and senior years the prolific editing team for this fine publication produced roughly four installments. In that time I think the Food Forum appeared three times.

So, all that is to say, it wasn’t everyday that I hung out on a street corner in downtown Summit, NJ. As we waited for our ride, we heard a drawling female voice behind us query “How would you boys like to work for me?”

To be continued…

It’s 2 am on Thanksgiving and I’ve just arrived in my native New Jersey. Oh to see the wonderfully lit, smoothly paved, four-lane highways of my youth once more! It’s a glorious thing.

So many memories. Gosh, when I’m not so tired I’m going to have to share some with you. Like the time my friend Jamie “left the oven on.”

Incidentally, I recently read that only 5% of the American population doesn’t eat red meat. If that’s the case I think I know every last one of these people. Surprisingly, we get along quite well. That’s probably because I’m willing to eat veggie dogs and tofurkey.

I’ll be back in Pittsburgh Sunday afternoon. Until then, to quote Murphy Dunne, “don’t you go changin’.”

I did. It’s true.

But, check out our events page… it’s actually been updated.

After a year of wondering if it would ever happen we finally had a food critic write an article about Hot D***a. We’ve been fortunate to be in the news quite a bit in our first year, but oddly enough no one seemed interested in reviewing our food. Until yesterday that is. The article, which was very positive, came out in Thursday’s Tribune-Review. Check it out.

Speaking of the media, a man from the New York Times called for me yesterday. He left a message, and for a while I was really excited that he wanted to write something about Hot D***a. My hometown newspaper in New Jersey had published an article about Hot D***a’s Food Network appearance a few days ago and I thought perhaps The New York Times had gotten wind of it. His message, left with my business partner, simply said that he was calling for me and the he was Michael Pruscheau from the New York Times.

Well, it turns out he was just a salesman.

I’ve just consumed a banana. Honestly it was one of the best bananas I’ve ever eaten. Ironically, this spectacular banana was a gift from Apple Computer.

Today is a very significant anniversary for me. It marks two years since my great aunt and uncle were found lying on the side of Route 80 in Ohio, 27 miles outside of Indiana. They’re from Toms River, New Jersey. It’s quite a story. Ask me about it sometime.

Bananas and hotdogs have a similar shape.

I haven’t been a freshman of any sort since 1999, but last night I felt like a tender academic spring chicken once again. I was playing frisbee over on the CMU field at the corner of Forbes and Maggie Mo, when I noticed a large number of students rallying together on the adjacent football field.

Soon it became apparent that these students were from the CMU orientation committee. Music began pulsating from the stadium and hundreds of these orientation folks lined up to form a human tunnel for incoming freshmen to run through.

Speaking of tunnels, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the owner of The @$#%$ Grill in Miami, Florida is named David Tunnell. You’re probably also unfamiliar with the fact that I grew up across the street from a guy named David Fay in Summit, New Jersey. Clearly, those names are confusingly similar. Perhaps Mr. Tunnell should resort to a law suit.

Sorry about that digression, anyway, what I meant to tell you is that two friends and I joined a herd of freshmen and ran through the tunnel of humanity, giving and receiving high fives all over the place. What a rush! I highly recommend the experience.

Well, I don’t have much to say specifically about Hot D***a today, other than that you should come and eat here. Just remember, we’re in Pittsburgh, not Miami.

Hello there everyone, I’m back from New Jersey. What a great place. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about the merits of the Garden State today. Instead, I want to talk about durians.

How many of you know what a durian is? Right, that’s what I thought. A durian is a very unique Asian fruit. Roughly the size of a small watermelon, it has a hard spiky outer shell and four globules that rest on a tough inner-membrane. After losing several quarts of blood while trying to open a durian, diners are expected to eat the aforementioned globules, which have a texture roughly equivalent to slightly frozen chunks of sour cream.

As the durian opens, an aroma fills the room that smells a lot like gasoline. In fact, I once accidentally evacuated the student union at my college with a durian because several people thought there was a natural gas leak. No joke. The firemen came. No one could figure out what “the problem” was.

All this said, people familiar with the durian love the durian. It’s considered a delicacy in many Asian countries. Who the first person ever to try a durian was, I’ll never know, but believe me it took some serious courage. Everything about the fruit, from the spiky shell to the hazardous material type odor, screams “Stay Away!”

So, that’s the story today, folks. Until YOU have enough courage to try a durian, I recommend sticking to a Hot D***a diet.

Well, the weather is cooling off. We’ve been spoiled by this warm stuff for so long. Nonetheless, I hops sunny days return to Pittsburgh soon! In the mean time let’s continue that story from last week…

One day in March Uno didn’t come into school and we had a substitute. She faxed in an assignment from our book, which of course we didn’t do. Before we knew it one day had become two weeks and we started wondering what was going on. After approaching our principal we learned that no one knew where Uno was. We also discovered that Uno had recently been informed that she would not be receiving her tenure. At that point we started to feel a touch guilty about our behavior over the past year and determined it wan necessary to take matters into our own hands.

For the duration of her absence Uno had continued to fax us assignments on a daily basis. As concerned students we took it upon ourselves to trace the location of her faxes using our only link to the outside world, the classroom telephone. After calling information we learned that all her faxes were coming from Cheryl’s Deli in neighboring Short Hills, NJ.

To be continued…