We weave our life of the stories we tell.  Here is how EC has come to be.

I learned the essence of cooking from my Grandmother Ruth. Every weekend, family and friends would gather around a table of deliciousness where an unexpected guest was always welcome. I left the comfort of Grandma’s table looking for adventure and somehow food always seemed to be front and center. I left Alamosa, Colorado (population 10,000) and soon began delivering hoagies in Philly which naturally led to harvesting wild rainforest honeycomb in Guatemala. Shortly thereafter I began my “formal” training in the rough and tumble of upscale kitchens in Denver, while working with a local character by the name of “Tomato Rich” Carbonne, who used to be a linchpin of the D-town restaurant scene. Unknowingly, my time spent delivering slightly doctored boxes of tomatoes to North Denver Restaurants served as an initiation of sorts.

I didn’t realize it at the time but I was done for, a hopelessly hooked fish being reeled in slowly and surely into the culinary underbelly by a bald headed big-hearted beast of a sous chef named Matthew Brown at Tommy Tsunami’s Pacific Rim Diner and Tomato Rich. In these shady confines I was blindsided by my passion for the art of tickling the palate in the media of flavor, color, texture and aroma. Ever since then my life has been a holy catastrophe of following my nose and my heart from one adventures to the next. Soon, I was wrestling sailfish into a local’s rickshaw of a boat in Costa Rica, butchering freshly caught shark on the Gulf Coast. After one particularly aromotic week at the Burning Man Festival in 2000 my olfactory powers led me to jump in a car headed for Tejas with several Austinites.

I woke up in Our Fair City, determined to leave the past behind and find myself once and for all. After numerous attempts to do something more “normal” with my life like going to college or becoming a teacher, I found myself in the familiar confines of what was then the Granite Cafe (now Fino). And soon enough I was back on that gravy train that Grandma Ruth had set me on so long ago. Soon, I was at that Austin institution Mother’s Cafe letting my creative zeal loose with reckless abandon in a marvelously self-organizing kitchen. It was here that I experienced the most harrowing adventure of all, cooking for Austin’s Vegans. I ‘ve spent the last 5 years cooking and honing my culinary zeal while learning the craft of catering at Austin Catering.

As I head out into the perilous landscape of a life as a food entrepreneur I’m hoping to bring it all together in a party for your tastebuds. You name it, chances are, we can do it: Whether you are wanting Grandma’s old time comfort food, some high falutin’ Haute Cuisine made from Austin’s Local Food Scene, or the most organitastic vegan fare in the city, be assured that you that what you will get is some of the most energizing and soul satisfying grub this side of the Miss’ippi. Give us a shout, you won’t be disappointed.

- Jesse Bloom