The Gift of the Maestro

I wasn't supposed to be working today, but I had to take care of a couple things and then swung by the office when I was done. It turned out to be one of the better decisions of the waning year as when I was heading back to my car Felipe came up to me with a plastic bag in which there was something heavy and hot wrapped in tin-foil. Felipe is again on the list of favorite people for the coming year. Tamales...chicken mole. Usually Felipe makes his tamales Oaxacan style (the state where he's from), which are wrapped in banana leaves. These tamales, along with beer and a set of 34Cs are amongst the greatest things ever created on Earth. Lacking in banana leaves this time of year, Felipe opted to make his Christmas batch of tamales in the more common corn-husk style, still fantastic. But of course, you'll have to take my word for it, cause you can't have any.

Chef de Hierro

I've eaten a lot of Mexican food in a lot of different places around this country (and others) and I can honestly say that my hometown of Santa Barbara has some of the best grub that there is. What a lot of people don't know though, is that Santa Barbara is also home to the finest Mexican cook that I've ever come across, a guy who's food is so good it defies description with mere words, generally because I'm too busy shoving it down my throat as fast as I can before anyone else can get their grimy hands on it. Unfortunately all two of my readers, you'll likely never get to taste this fine cuisine (unless you decide to somehow make a career change and become a plumber), because he doesn't own a restaurant.

Felipe Carmona Diaz knows plumbing supplies like Donald Trump knows bad combover haircuts, but more importantly he is a fuckin Iron Chef times a thousand, and twice a year at work we host huge barbeques where this master of fine food gives everything he has to make sure 30-40 plumbing industry honchos are well fed with carne asada tacos. This is hands down the BEST carne asada anyone will ever eat, complete with homemade pico de gallo, guacamole, rice and beans, etc. etc. Felipe marinates the meat in some sort of magic potion (a secret recipe that I'm sure will be buried with him) and when you put it on a warm tortilla and take a bite into your mouth it tastes like the taco version of what a Victoria's Secret model orgy looks like...that is, there's a lot of shit going on here, and every single bit of it is really, really good.