Cart for a Cause - from Animal to Chef Greenspan

Last week was Animal chefs Jon Shook & Vinny Dotolo's second and final week of manning Cart for a Cause. They put out my favorite of the charitable Tuesday lunches to date, an amazing fried chicken sandwich with corn on the cob. The sandwich was served with a slaw on a bun and the chicken breast was juicy and flavorful and the crispy breading stayed on the breast and didn't come apart. I could eat that sandwich on a weekly basis and be a happy man.



This week, Shook and Dotolo have passed the baton to Eric Greenspan, of the Foundry on Melrose and soon to be proprietor of his own grilled cheese mecca. He will be serving a choice of either a Greenspan Grilled Cheese Sandwich or a Salad of Ablacore Tartare. Each lunch costs $10 and includes a beverage as well.

Tomorrow Tuesday May 4th, the Cart for a Cause truck will be at 11766 Wilshire Blvd, at Granville, 2 blocks west of Barrington Ave in Brentwood/West LA between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm.


Each Tuesday a different chef prepares a gourmet meal in the Cart for a Cause cart, for sale at $10 each, and the proceeds benefit St. Vincent's Meals on Wheels.

To learn more follow Cart for a Cause on Facebook & Twitter

The recipe for Eric's Albacore Salad is below:

Albacore Tartare with Carrots, Garlic, and Pomegranate

FOR THE TARTARE:
1 oz extra virgin olive oil in fused with garlic
1 oz sashimi grade Monterrey Albacore,chopped into a near paste
Salt and pepper
6 oz carrot juice, reduced to ½ oz
6 oz orange juice, reduced to ½ oz

Mix all ingredients.

FOR THE CARROT AND GARLIC SALAD:
1 baby yellow carrot, shaved on a Japanese mandoline
1 baby red carrot, shaved on a Japanese mandoline
10-15 pomegranate seeds
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced

Place the garlic in a small saucepot of cold water. Bring to a
boil. Strain. Repeat 2 more times, then fry the garlic. Mix with
other ingredients and arrange on top of the albacore tartare.

FOR THE POMENGRANATE PONZU:
6 oz Pom brand 100% Pomengranate Juice, reduced to ½ oz.
1/2 oz soy sauce
1/2 oz garlic oil

Mix all ingredients and drizzle liberally on the plate.

FOR THE CARROT PUREE:
1 large carrot, peeled
4 oz carrot juice

Simmer the carrot in juice until soft, then place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth.

Animal Restaurant - Cart for a Cause

Animal Restaurant has been all over the news & blogosphere this week. The New Yorker magazine profiled Animal chefs/owners Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo in a four page article by Dana Goodyear. (you have to be a subscriber to read the article online). It was also announced that ex-Ubuntu chef Jeremy Fox will be doing a one week residency in May at Animal, serving vegetarian food in the house of meat and bacon. Lastly the Animal partners-in-crime were the chefs for the weekly Cart for a Cause, to benefit St. Vincent's Meals on Wheels, today outside the Roll International bldg on Olympic Blvd in West LA.

Today's Cart for a Cause menu had a choice of Hamachi Tostada or Chorizo Frita. The truck was running ~30 minutes late and when it arrived there was a long line of hungry folks. I did not sample the chorizo but the hamachi was good with fresh fish on top of avocado puree (some might call this guacamole). Chefs Jon & Vinny were in the cart-mobile dishing out their food to happy folks. "Fire one hamachi and one chorizo" could be heard as I approached to order my lunch.

If you are interested in the Jeremy Fox week (May 17 - 23) at Animal, call for a reservation at 323.782.9225 after 2 pm. More info at their website here. The cost is $70 per person prix fixe with the option of wine pairings for an additional charge of $35 or $70 depending on the level of grape juice you care to drink with your veggies. There have not been any announcements of V8 juice pairings, but anything is possible at Animal Restaurant.

Follow Cart for a Cause on Facebook & Twitter to learn about the chef creating the dishes available for $10 each Tuesday.

Learn more about chefs Jon & Vinny in their profile in Food & Wine when they won Best New Chefs last year (2009). Both photos are of Vinny in the Cause-mobile today. The other picture is of the hamachi tostada.

Cart for a Cause: Nobu Edition

Tuesday March 23rd was the first day of operation of Cart for a Cause. This is a temporary gourmet truck that will operate on Tuesdays and serve gourmet lunches from shnazzy chefs for $10. The beneficiary of the cause is St. Vincent's Meals on Wheels, a Catholic charity based in downtown LA which brings meals to the housebound. According to LA Weekly's SquidInk Blog, $6.50 of each meal goes to the charity.

Nobu Los Angeles was the first restaurant/chef up and they will be returning this coming Tuesday as well. The location was behind the UTA building on Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills, the same building as the Niketown, just off Rodeo Drive.

There were three options: sushi with black cod, sushi with chicken skewers, and a field green salad with shrimp. All the lunches also came with a drink, either bottled water or one of the pomegranate beverages from Pom, who is one of the sponsors. (Pom corporate sibling Fiji Water and Lexus are also sponsors). I opted for the sushi with chicken skewers. The skewers came with two types of sauce, a red sauce that was mildly spicy and a darker one that reminded me of teriyaki sauce.

It was incongrous to see a nun hanging out at a food truck. But she was there to represent the cause. A reasonably sized line had developed by the 12:30 launch time and after a suitable number of photo ops, the food distribution began. They only had 150 portions and sold out within an hour. I was told by a friend who went by too late that by the time he got there only the shrimp salad was left.

The sushi was 3 pieces of spicy tuna roll and 3 pieces of salmon and avocado maki. According to the Cart for a Cause facebook page, the two sauces/skewers were anticucho & kushiyaki.

After next week's Nobu round 2, other chefs will be taking weekly turns. They will apparently be using other locations to park the cart in future weeks as well. Note: the best parking option is to park in Via Rodeo's underground valet parking lot. They have 2 hour free parking, no validation required, and the only cost is the valet tip. It is less than a 5 minute walk to the UTA driveway from there.