Cooking a Good Everything Else

Man I recently went on a whole tangent reading about the history of the song Black Betty. The whole time I thought about Yim and his awesome food pics.

https://www.loc.gov/item/lomaxbib000201/

Holy **** I’m so sorry about all the issues with Black Betty. I know little about cars or car rebuilds but this seems crazy. That said I’m wondering of going to these classic car build guys is the best route? I feel like a lot of these are as you said BS artists. I see these custom car and motorcycle shops or classic car shops and they seem shady.

Maybe trying to go to a highly rated transmission, engine shop, a good fab shop etc. Maybe go to a place with a bunch of cool food trucks. Find a classic one that looks good and ask if they have a good mechanic they’d recommend. **** I might be saying things you’ve already done.

Maybe Black Betty is truly cursed. Supposedly one of the possible origins of the name Black Betty was a penitentiary transfer wagon.

Hell yeah we want an update, are you kidding me?

Those tacos look awesome. How are you cooking the shells?

This may be a repost, I can't remember if I ever got around to posting it or not, but I took the picture because it made me wonder how you were doing:

Believe it or not, I thought I had checked out these mechanics, many were referred by people who they had used in restoring a similar old van (Divco milk truck) but for whatever reason every mechanic thus far has sucked!

I dont believe she's cursed plus Im in too deep to quit now, she's going to get a shot to prove herself or I'm gonna die trying

I skim some of the fat off the braising liquid onto a flat top and also brush the tortillas while flipping hem back and forth (I used a brush because I found if the braising liquid gets absorbed by the tortilla I cant get them crispy). as they start to stiffen up and get crispy, I add cheese and let the cheese start to melt and then flip it so the cheese is directly on the flat top but still clinging to the tortilla. It makes the cheese kind of crispy and creates a unique flavor, then I flip it again, add the brisket and onions and chow down (dipping in the bracing liquid as I eat)

be careful what you ask for...

Ok here’s the current status of the project, pull up a chair as this is definitely a TLDR for most

Its really a pain building anything in the city of Dallas due to the rules, difficult to communicate with staff and unnecessary bureaucracy. Just to give you an example of how bad the city is, the department in charge of issuing permits and giving out certificates of occupancy bought a new building to move their operations into. They failed to get a CO on the building, had to cancel the move and are currently trying to sell the building at what will be speculated at an 8 million dollar loss. Of course no one will be held accountable except the taxpayers of course. Here’s a short video:

This is the closest thing I’ll get to being political online but I wish everyone (all sides) who believes in government would try to build something because I’m convinced every rational humans tune would switch on a dime

/rant

One of the obstacles I have on my site is parking. Practically, I need parking but the city has a lot of rules around parking that make it difficult to obtain a CO. In my case, I have unorthodox but functional space for parking but I cannot get the necessary credit for those spaces to fulfill the city building rrequirements.

That was until something wonderful happened last Wednesday (5-14-25) when after 6 years of work by a variety of people (including myself to a minor extent), the city council passed a parking amendment. This beautiful amendment changed the required parking from 40+ spaces on my site to only 8 which I already have. I also have the 40+ unorthodox spaces on site I previously couldn’t get credit for but no longer need the City blessing. Plus my site is connected to a hike & bike trail where we expect people to walk/run/ride from in order to enter the property. We also hope people will come in groups via Uber and Lyft and will have space to accommodate those who drive but we wont have a huge parking lot which would be a waste of land, especially considering how I plan to develop and use this venue.

Its been a while so I’ll post our concept rendering for those who don’t remember of have never seen it:

Another problem I’ve been fighting for over a year is a situation where the new apartments next door worked with the city and commandeered the front of my building as their entry and exit without ever telling me causing this to happen on a daily basis:

As you can see my primary entry and exit gets blocked by people cutting across to avoid the light and eventually by those exiting the new apartments next door.

I've spent the last 18 months working behind the scenes so I can buy this strip of land and right of way from TxDOT and finally got it closed a few months ago. I lied low so no one tried to stop the sale and then dropped the bomb on the city and neighbor once I had the leverage of ownership informing them they are no longer allowed to use the land I own for their entry and exit.

Fortunately, this leverage forced their hand (primarily the city, the apartment developer didn’t care and I have a good relationship with them) so they rectified the situation by exiting directly onto the street in front of their building like they should have done in the first place. Needless to say, this was a huge win and stress reliever.

Despite the issue above, the apartments are a great improvement to the area and going to be a great neighbor. They have retail facing the Hiking/bike trail along with my site which should draw a lot of people to both sites where we all win. Here's a video I took yesterday of the bridge coming off the trail to the apartments, my property is adjacent to theirs below the retaining walls:

The apartment developers and myself are working to hopefully make this area the hub from which walkers/bikers/runners from all over the city will come to in order to enjoy the 70 mile trail system and hang out before and/or after at the retail both of us plan to provide.

On my main building my short term plan is to create a small restaurant in the corner of my building so I can keep my existing tenants and finish it out as a restaurant and obtain the certificate of occupancy. Then I’m going to test it out with a variety of chef/operators and see how they do in a short term scenario. There wont be a long term lease so we wont be stuck with each other until we’ve done enough events to feel confident moving forward.

I’ve been conversing with a team of people that have run restaurants and bars & will let them do the first pop-ups in my building to see how they do with food, beverage, service and operations. If those go well, then theyI'll run the restaurant for a few months and if that proves worthy, I'll make a deal for a year and keep updating the terms if we all like working together. The ultimate goal is to have a full restaurant up front with an attached Speakeasy bar accessible from the restaurant through a concealed door as well as having an inconspicuous exterior entry as well. This will give the site an upscale restaurant out front with an interior bar in addition to the casual outdoor areas that get food from food trucks and drinks from pop-up bars in the rear.

If I can get the small corner of the building ready for a 30-35 seat concept, we want to be able to do something by the start of the 4th quarter of 2025 so I may have something to finally show everyone.

The group recently put together a demo dinner with drink pairings for us all to try and get acquainted with one another. The food was pretty good but if I'm being honest, it didn’t wow me but I'm more partial to simple food with good ingredients done well vs fancy overly prepared stuff, here was the menu:

Here’s some quick video clips of the food as well:

Compared to all the other restaurant people & chefs I’ve spoken to, which are AWFUL communicators, this group has shown to be professional, decent communicators and ambitious so I’m hopeful they can and will deliver. They came up with the name Tribute and even created a logo (which I like seeing this level of initiative), what do y’all think?



I’ve got my landscape designers updating the design from the previous rendering video and hope to start site landscaping, hardscaping, infrastructure in a few months so the backyard looks gorgeous even if its not activated yet.

I grabbed a cool neon sign from the 40’s or 50’s I plan to install in the rear to be used as yard art. We may reface it so it says “Tasty” & “Food Trucks” with the arrow aimed at where the trucks (including Black Betty) will be:



The group loves Black Betty and want to have a rotation of notable chefs that would do pop-ups out of her showcasing an elevated fast food coming out of a food truck.

We also think the site will make a great venue people can rent out for wedding showings, reunions, etc so we’re going to design the stage to have roll-up doors and sliding door walls so it can be enclosed and used as conditioned space in bad weather or for a more private setting

I probably went way too far but thats where I am as of this writing

I just pray that I dont stroke out before it can get opened!

our knowledge of this song and countless others only exists because of life long efforts spent by John Lomax and his children Alan, John Jr. and Bess after their mother tragically passed during their youth.

the reel explaination stored in libraries of congress also contain video evidence revealing frequent attempts to erase particular human experiences from our history books

Lomax family is a pretty remarkable one, especially when it comes to American music history and preservation. John Lomax III has a pretty interesting history in music promoting acts like Townes Van Zandt and a favorite of mine Steve Earle. Also he’s the father of John Nova Lomax who passed away in 2023 at 53 from cirrhosis. John Nova was a writer with the Houston Press on music and also wrote these amazing stories of him just walking down the 10+ mile major thoroughfares of Houston that I loved reading. His walks usually included a number of pit stops along the way at amazing dive bars and lots of drinking, not surprised he died how he did. His father and John Nova’s friend and walking partner David Beebe published a book of his writings and pictures of these hikes that I need to get.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115944318509

eBay

Brand New- "The Sole of Houston" 154pp book by John Nova Lomax and David Beebe | eBay

The building of building permits not being able to get the right building permit for its own building is one best cases of irony I’ve heard in a while. Not sure if Dallas is unique in having over bureaucratic issues related to building permits. I remember Houston and particular West Houston a community inside Houston where I lived being terribly restrictive.

That really is quite the irony, but I expect nothing less from any government entity. The inefficiency of the government itself is even more so plagued by the amount of incompetent workers it employs.

I literally just received a jury duty check where I served for one day back at the end of February. Maybe there are fiscal timeframe considerations, but other than that, why the **** did it take nearly 3 months for remittance?

The bureaucracy is off the charts in Dallas. From what I hear Houston doesnt having zoning like Dallas so y'all can do seemingly whatever you want wherever (which probably isn't a good thing in all cases)

I'm doing three plats currently, one is past the one year anniversary with no end in sight. I did them 20 years ago in 6-8 weeks but since then they've added so may more departments and steps I now have to get 9 different departments to sign off on it and they don't talk to each other nor is there an expeditor at the top overseeing the plat to make sure each department does their job so I have to nag them incessantly and beg them to tell me what they want to get the job done. Most of the time they wont even bother calling or emailing me back and there is no consequence for not doing so. Cant be fired, reprimanded, etc...creates perverse incentives where accountability is next to nothing and avoiding pain caused by making a decision is easier then being decisive and completing the job.

Its maddening but I have to give the city and the staff that pushed through the parking amendment and that was a huge win (lol at at pushed through, it took 6 TEARS!)

I will say that anyone that’s ever worked for a large corporation will know how inefficient private corporations can be as well. For all its faults my experience with government agencies has generally been better than the crap at a corporation like GE.

fair point, I find bureaucracies in general maddening and have always thought we could cut down on prison costs by sentencing non-violent offenders to 8 hours a day of AT&T technical support (sentencing them to the equivalent with government would be considered cruel & unusual punishment imo)

I would say some of the inefficiencies at GE are because they are doing contracted government work. The other being that they are too large with too many industries leading to an absolutely bloated corporate structure.

I thought this was a cooking thread?

I thought this was a poker forum...

another persistent mystery of the universe is how to calibrate posting sarcasm displayed by other people

The dog pile is... FUN!

A small test run of Mongolian Beef. Taking the dog lure coursing on memorial day, making fried rice and the beef for the potluck.

I prefer my mongo beef on the sweet side. At the Chinese restaurant I worked at in HS, the chefs would add a shocking amount of white sugar at the end to finish, I'd say like 1/2 one of those big chinese ladles

recipe from made with lau!

That looks really good.

NOT THE DOG!