Festivus Gastronomicus
Field Trip: Google
Sorry mom, there is just no polite way to put it. Today’s lunch with Jason at the Google campus blew my fucking mind!
It may look like a wedding reception or some other kind of fancy party, but it’s really just a Friday lunch at the Googleplex. And yes, that is a Jazz band on the right of the photo.
There are several restaurants that serve the Google workforce, offering everything you can imagine: Southwestern, Indian, Chinese, Italian, and Natural Foods cuisines. I’m sure there’s more that I don’t even know about.
Last time I visited, I had a great salmon from the Italian place above, it was perfectly cooked and seasoned. Google has headhunted from some of the finest restaurants in the Valley and even hired some friends of mine to come cook for them- so you know the food is good.
Their Indian restaurant even has a mango lassi dispensor. How cool is that?
They will however give you dirty looks when they see you trying to take a picture of it, so this was the best I could do.
On this particular Friday we didn’t bother with the restaurants inside. Instead we opted for the BBQ going on out on the patio. Here is the part where my mind is completely blown.
The menu was seafood paella, grilled eggplant, some cold soup that looked tasty, grilled chicken, and Kobe beef BBQ steaks.
That’s right, I said KOBE BEEF!
After years of hearing about Kobe beef, I finally experienced its awesome delciousness. Let me tell you, that is some seriously awesome deliciousness too. The kind you have to keep children away from until they are old enough. The kind you can hardly even admit to yourself even hours later when you are writing about it on your food blog.
I’ve had some good beef in my day. I used to live with a friend whose family owned a dairy and cattle ranch in the San Joaquin Valley and the beef his family would bring up was simply marvelous. What made it marvelous was the marbling. You see dairy cows are bred with much more fat in their systems to produce tasty milk. Well all this tasty milk fat goodness also translates into very well marbled beef, the likes of which you cannot buy in the store.
Unless you buy Kobe beef, which apparently has even better marbling and a buttery smooth taste. Damn. I pretty much ignored the rest of my meal because the beef was so good. There was chimichurri sauce on it as well, but it was just the sideshow at the carnival of beefy taste taking place inside my mouth.
I wish I could talk about something else, the selection of fine beverages, the massage therapist who sat down at our table, the encounter with nature that excited the developers at a nearby table, etc. But really, all that happened was a beautiful meeting with steak’s highest power.
After finishing with lunch Jason was barely able to convince me, beef-drunk, to have a special Google Its-It for desert. The chocolate covered chocolate-chip cookie ice cream sandwhich was damn good too. They are made special for Google with beet sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Technically, that makes it health food.
Of course I couldn’t finish it, but I really did try. Thanks to Jason for inviting me out for this splendiferous lunch. The most amazing part of which is that it was all free. FREE. You work at Google and they give you Kobe beef and a Jazz band and your own custom ice-cream sandwich. Now that’s what I call perks.