The fundraising event will be Friday, May 7, 2021 at Lemongrass Asian Cuisine, 3376 Wentworth Dr., Hemet where donors can pick up meals chosen in advance from a nine entre menu. Lemongrass is owned by Tu Thien Uong who has made a commitment to, “Serving organic produce from local farms and fresh natural ingredients including local and natural meats.”

Tu says the dinners will also include “An additional meal of ½ lb. Cajun Shrimp compliments of Lemongrass’ new seafood restaurant opening soon.”

Healthy Valley Foundation supports a variety of projects which benefit the citizens of the Hemet-San Jacinto Valley.

Foundation President, Bruce Wallis, laid out the tremendous impact the Foundation is making on the Valley, “In the past few years, Healthy Valley Foundation has contributed thousands of dollars to support or underwrite projects such as fitness and exercise equipment at multiple Valley Wide Parks • Hemet Center Against Sexual Assault Programs (C.A.S.A.) • Mt. San Jacinto College • Scholarships for Health Professional Studies • Hemet Hospice Volunteers • EXCEED • EEK Fitness • Boy Scouts of America 3 Peaks Division • V.I.P. Tots • Fingerprints Kids Museum • State of the Art Fitness Center San Jacinto High School • BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) Program at Hemet Union School District • • Exercise equipment for Healthy Living Project at Tahquitz High School and most recently providing restaurant meals to first responders during the pandemic.”

Wallis continues about this year’s Fundraiser, “With the help and support of the community, Healthy Valley Foundation is already planning new projects and contributions that promote healthy living in our beautiful valley.”

To find out more about Healthy Valley Foundation, visit healthyvalleyfoundation.com.

Cindy Thompson • Contributed

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post LOCAL RESTAURANT CONTRIBUTES TO HEALTHY VALLEY FOUNDATION ANNUAL FUNDRAISER. appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted stay-at-home orders across the state Monday in response to improving coronavirus conditions, a surprising move hailed by beleaguered businesses. But some local health officials worried could undo the recent sharp drop in cases and hospitalizations.

“We’re seeing a flattening of the curve — everything that should be up is up, everything that should be down is down — case rates, positivity rates, hospitalizations, ICUs,” Newsom told reporters.

The turnaround came about a month after hospitals crafted emergency plans for rationing care and as intensive care unit capacity in the vast Southern California region currently stands at 0%. State data models forecast that the region’s ICU capacity will rise to 33% — the highest of any of the state’s five regions — by Feb. 21.

The lifting of the stay-at-home order allows restaurants and churches to resume outdoor operations and hair and nail salons to reopen in many areas, though local officials could choose to impose stricter rules. The state is also lifting a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

Most California counties will return to the most restrictive purple tier of a four-tier, color-coded system for determining what businesses can be open.

Northern California was never under the stay-at-home order and the Greater Sacramento region exited two weeks ago. Now, the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley agricultural region and Southern California, covering the majority of the state’s counties, may exit the order.

The state predicted the following regional ICU capacity in four weeks: 25% for the Bay Area; 27.3% in Greater Sacramento; 22.3% in the San Joaquin Valley and 18.9% in Northern California.

After the stay-at-home order was lifted, elected officials in many counties announced they would move to allow the reopening of outdoor restaurant dining and other services.

“We will be moving forward with some limited re-openings, including outdoor dining and personal services,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a tweet.

Heavily populated Orange County south of Los Angeles planned to lift some restrictions as well, said Jessica Good, a spokesperson for the county health agency.

In Los Angeles County, home to 10 million people, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said outdoor dining will reopen Friday with capacity limits for restaurants.

Newsom imposed the stay-at-home order in December as coronavirus cases worsened.

Under the state-imposed system for closures, multi-county regions had to shut down most businesses and order people to stay home when ICU capacity dropped below 15%. The state makes its decisions based on four-week projections showing ICU capacity improving.

Officials have not disclosed the data behind the forecasts, though Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state’s health and human services agency, said the state would make more data public later Monday.

Last weekend, San Francisco Bay Area ICU capacity surged to 23% while the San Joaquin Valley’s ICU capacity increased to 1.3%.

Republicans said Newsom was relaxing the rules in response to political pressure and the threat of a recall. Republican organizers have until mid-March to gather 1.5 million signatures to force a recall vote against Newsom, who is halfway through his first term.

“This Governor’s decisions have never been based on science. Him re-opening our state is not an attempt to help working Californians, but rather an attempt to counter the Recall Movement. It’s sad and pathetic,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson tweeted.

Jeff Smith, the Santa Clara County executive, said his county had no plans to impose stricter rules but criticized the state’s decision.

“Essentially it’s a decision being made politically that puts people’s lives at risk, especially in Southern California,” he told The Mercury News.

The criticism wasn’t limited to Newsom’s partisan political opponents.

Democratic Assemblywoman Laura Friedman of Glendale said state lawmakers have been kept out of the loop on changing rules that Newsom’s administration has used to impose COVID-19 restrictions.

“If you think state legislators were blindsided by, and confused about, the shifting & confusing public health directives, you’d be correct,” she tweeted. “If you think we have been quiet about it in Sacramento, you’d be wrong.”

Newsom said the appropriate people had been notified in advance and called the suggestion that he was lifting the order due to political pressure “nonsense.”

The state’s purple public health safety tier, which most counties will now be in, allows for outdoor dining, the openings of hair and nail salons and outdoor church services. Bars that only serve beverages cannot be open.

The county-by-county tier system uses various metrics to determine the risk of community transmission and applies color codes — purple, red, orange or yellow — which correspond to transmission risk levels.

As of last weekend, California has had more than 3.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 36,790 deaths, according to the state’s public health website.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post California lifts virus stay-at-home orders, curfew statewide appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

NEW YORK (AP) — It would be just a temporary precaution.

When the viral pandemic erupted in March, employees of the small insurance firm Thimble fled their Manhattan offices. CEO Jay Bregman planned to call them back soon — as soon as New York was safe again.

Within weeks, he’d changed his mind. Bregman broke his company’s lease and told his two dozen or so staffers they could keep working from home — possibly for good.

The gains were at once unexpected and immediate. Bregman is saving money on rent. He no longer has to persuade recruits to relocate to a crushingly expensive city. He’s increased his staff by 20% and for the first time added new hires in Texas and California.

“I was very skeptical at first that we could conduct business this way for a long time,” Bregman said. But having employees work from home proved a “huge benefit” for everyone.

Like no other event in memory, the pandemic has upended economies in the United States and across the world — transforming how people work, travel, eat, shop and congregate. It has changed how students are educated, how people communicate, how households are entertained and which industries, geographic areas and categories of people will thrive and which will suffer.

It has widened a gap between educated and affluent people who can work from home and the less fortunate — people in lower-income households without college educations or high skills who depend solely on wages rather than stock or home equity gains — who now stand to be left further behind. And it’s forced many working mothers to quit their jobs for lack of child care.

The economy shed a shocking 22 million jobs after the pandemic struck. Many employers have since recalled some of their furloughed workers. Yet the recovery has slowed. Not until the end of 2023 does Moody’s Analytics foresee the U.S. economy regaining its pre-pandemic employment level. In the most bruised sectors — hotels, for example, and retail — changing economic habits mean that employers may never need as many workers as they did before the pandemic.

Even after vaccines have conquered the virus, economies have restored their health and jobless people have found work again, the economic landscape will almost surely look different. Among the many life-altering consequences of the year 2020, the coronavirus reshaped how people and businesses engage economically.

At the very least, the crisis accelerated trends that were already well underway: A shift away from physical stores toward e-commerce. The flexibility of working from home. The streaming of movies rather than theater-going. Frequent meal deliveries. Video-conferencing replacing much business travel.

“We’re not going back to the same economy,’’ Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told a European Central Bank forum last month “We’re recovering, but to a different economy.’’

Businesses are rewriting their business plans to keep up. Warner Bros Pictures announced this month that all its 2021 movies, including a new “Matrix’’ movie and “Godzilla vs. King Kong,” will stream on HBO Max at the same time that they appear in theaters — a seismic shift for Hollywood. Restaurants are testing delivery-only “ghost kitchens’’ to keep serving customers who remain wary of crowded dining rooms.

Even so, economists say it’s far from certain which of the myriad changes will prove permanent and which may fade as people who’ve been holed up at home for months return to their pre-pandemic routines.

Will white-collar workers yearn for their old cubicles and face-to-face contact with friends and colleagues? Will foodies return to fashionable restaurants, young people to the hottest bars? Will audiences once again gather, elbow to elbow, for symphonies, Hollywood blockbusters and Broadway musicals? If attendance doesn’t return to normal, can those industries survive?

For the economy’s vast retail sector, the urgent question is: Will customers want to shop in physical stores in numbers anywhere near what they used to be?

Retailers like Lisa Shah are holding out hope. Shah has been hurt by a plunge in tourism in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where her three LIT Boutique stores are located. Before the pandemic, her women’s clothing stores combined would see about 600 customers each weekend. Government-mandated restrictions and the anxiety of customers have slashed that figure essentially in half.

Shah has since built up her online store, changed the brands she offers and dangled discounts. She keeps asking herself what else she can do.

“I don’t know where else to pivot,” she said. “We’ve pivoted so much.”

Optimistically, some experts detect a collective hunger to return to the old ways, at least for people with the means to do so — to the familiar and comfortable routines of gathering at bars, dining in restaurants, strolling in stores, flying off on vacation.

“I don’t think you should overestimate how much will be permanently changed” by the pandemic, said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “The idea that COVID will be a fork in the road for a lot of things — I am personally skeptical.’’

People, Kirkegaard said, “want to go to restaurants. They want their life back, not a new life they haven’t tried before.’’

China, where the virus originated, may provide a hint of what’s to come for others. After that nation mostly contained the virus with a draconian lockdown and became the first major economy to emerge from the pandemic, normal life reasserted itself with surprising speed. People returned to restaurants and shops, even though guards still check temperatures at malls and supermarkets. Cinemas are about half-full but have reopened. Chinese are beginning to travel for fun again.

MISSING THE OFFICE, NOT THE COMMUTE

Uncertainty about COVID’s lasting impact is evident in how companies and workers have spent months weighing the pros and cons of remote work.

Thimble’s head of product, Mitch Kushinsky, enjoys the flexibility of working at home. He has an old dog that needs to go out every hour to relieve himself. If he didn’t work at home, Kushinsky would probably have had to put the dog down. He doesn’t exactly miss the commute downtown from the Upper West Side.

Then again, Kushinsky has to share the home workspace with his wife, who can be noisy. Then there’s the unexpected: When a pipe burst in his building, he found himself working alongside construction workers who had to tear down a wall in his apartment to make the repair.

Sometimes, he just misses being with co-workers.

“You learn a lot just being around people,” Kushinsky said. “You lose that working remotely.”

For all the attention focused on employees who can work effectively from home, they are hardly a majority. According to a McKinsey Global Institute study of 800 jobs in nine countries, only a fraction of people work in jobs that can effectively be done remotely — fewer than 30% of workers in the United States, for example, and fewer than 12% in India.

Still, a McKinsey survey of 800 corporate executives worldwide found that 38% of them expect their employees who are now working remotely to continue to do so at least two days a week after the pandemic. That compares with 22% in surveys before the pandemic, according to McKinsey.

The shift is big enough to have far-reaching implications — improving the quality of life for some, while deepening inequality and hurting some urban economies. Emptier cities are a grave threat to downtown restaurants and retailers that depend on office workers. Rents in cities like San Francisco and New York are sinking as more people move out. Municipal governments will struggle to collect enough taxes to provide services.

Some employees now working remotely express mixed feelings about the arrangement. A body of studies indicates that most of them oppose giving up the workplace environment entirely.

“I miss Manhattan so much — it feels like a piece of me is missing,” said Han Dang, Thimble’s 31-year-old chief of staff, who has been working out of her apartment in Queens, where she grew up. “Every time I go back, I remember the places I went to, the coffeehouses, the shops.”

Janet Pogue McLaurin, a global research leader for the architecture and planning firm Gensler, expects many companies to eventually adopt a hybrid model, allowing people to work from home once or twice week. In a survey of about 2,300 U.S. office workers, Gensler found that only 19% wanted to keep working from home full time. More than half said they’d favor going to the office part of the week. One-third said they wanted to be in the office full time.

Verizon is reviewing which of its employees’ jobs can be done most effectively from home, said Christy Pambianchi, the telecom giant’s chief human resource officer. But Verizon has decided that its 20,000 employees who work in customer service centers, answering questions by phone or online, will work from home permanently.

Before COVID, Pambianchi said, “there were a lot of things they thought they couldn’t do remotely. Not only have they done it; they have done is successfully for eight or nine months.’’

Jazmyn Brown worked at Verizon stores for more than six years, rising to manager by the time the pandemic hit. When her store closed, she was transferred to customer service, a job she will do from home permanently.

Brown, 31, is delighted. The move eliminated a long commute that kept her away from home in San Diego until 8 p.m. and gave her less than an hour with her young son. Now, she ends her workday at 4:45 p.m., with just a quick drive to to pick up the 2-year-old from his grandmother’s house. Last year, she didn’t even have time to buy a Christmas tree. This year, it’s already up.

“Everything has slowed down, and I have more time than before,” Brown said. “I don’t miss driving. I don’t miss traffic. I don’t miss filling my gas tank twice a week. I can cook dinner, and I’m not exhausted so we can spend time together.’’

THE GHOST IN THE KITCHEN

The pandemic has caused an unimaginable nightmare for the restaurant industry. Some of the scars will likely linger.

In pre-pandemic days, Brenda’s French Soul Food was always hopping. A popular restaurant in downtown San Francisco, it drew tourists and locals alike with its beignets and other Southern foods.

Everything slammed to a halt on March 16, when San Francisco banned indoor dining to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Suddenly, 150 employees were jobless. Chef Proprieter Brenda Buenviaje couldn’t bear to break the news in person.

It’s a story that has happened again and again this year. The National Restaurant Association estimates that one in six U.S. restaurants — more than 100,000 — have closed. Many that stayed open shifted to takeout and delivery, but they need fewer staff. The association estimates that 2.1 million U.S. restaurant workers remained out of work in November. Hudson Riehle, who leads research for the association, predicts that U.S. restaurants will collect $659 billion in revenue this year — down 27% from the roughly $900 billion the association had forecast earlier this year.

Independent restaurants were hit hardest, said Rick Camac, a dean at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York. Loans from the government’s Payroll Protection Program helped initially. But that money has long run out. After an anemic holiday season, Camac expects another big wave of closures early in 2021.

By contrast, some fast food chains have mainly recovered, thanks to a growing customer use of drive-thru and curbside service. In China, the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S., spending at restaurants was up 0.8% in October from a year earlier. But customers are still uneasy. Some bring their own utensils, and restaurants keep jugs of hand sanitizer at the front door.

“Now, I will be more careful,” said Chen Luping, a 38-year-old mother of two in Beijing.

The pandemic has accelerated a trend toward takeout and delivery that was already well underway before the virus hit. In February, 63% of U.S. restaurant goers were eating their food elsewhere; by the third quarter of the year, that figure reached 90%, Riehle said.

Even when restaurants eventually reopen at full capacity, in-person dining may never revert to its pre-pandemic levels because so many people now prefer eating at home, says David Portalatin, an analyst with The NPD Group.

Restaurants are rethinking the amount of dining space they need and are adding drive-thru lanes. Starbucks is closing 400 U.S. cafes and speeding up its plans to build more pickup-only locations. Menus have slimmed down to control costs and focus on food that travels well. Ghost kitchens, which prepare food for delivery only, may proliferate. Carrabba’s Italian Grill, a 220-restaurant chain, has launched a delivery-only brand called Tender Shack out of its kitchens.

“We fast forwarded about five years into the future in a few months’ time,” Portalatin said.

Buenviaje kept afloat in several ways. Brenda’s French Soul Food reopened for takeout and delivery. And she’s now shipping meals nationwide through a service called Goldbelly. Buenviaje sold out of Thanksgiving dinner kits and is creating some for Christmas.

Smaller takeout-focused branches elsewhere, including Brenda’s in Oakland, which opened just before the pandemic, are thriving. And soon, Buenviaje will start delivery in Silicon Valley through a ghost kitchen. She’s been able to rehire 75% of her staff.

“Out of necessity,” she said, “we figured out a new path together.”

GROUNDED

The pandemic grounded most corporate travelers. And it demonstrated that much of the business that used to be done in-person can be achieved as effectively, or nearly so, via email and Zoom conference calls. Amazon, which told it employees to stop traveling in March, says it’s saved nearly $1 billion in travel expenses so far this year.

Any long-term decline in business travel would have far-reaching consequences — for corporations as well as for the airlines, hotels and restaurants that cater to them. Business travel accounts for more than a fifth of global spending on travel and tourism.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has suggested that business travel could settle into a “new normal,” 10% to 20% below where it used to be. Southwest Airlines’ CEO Gary Kelly noted that while overall passenger revenue has dropped 70%, business travel — normally more than one-third of Southwest’s traffic – has tumbled 90%.

“I think that’s going to continue for a long time,” Kelly said.

One possibility: Instead of sending executives out on regular trips to check on field operations, major companies could fly key employees to headquarters once a year.

In the meantime, some tourist destinations have so far managed to weather the storm. German restaurants and hotels in top tourist destinations like the seashore or the Alps — especially those with outdoor terraces or beer gardens — enjoyed some respite over the summer as many people vacationed at home rather than flying to Mediterranean destinations. It’s unclear, though, whether that trend will continue.

MALL MELTDOWN

The pandemic has also changed — or sped up changes in — how people shop. Worried about venturing out in the pandemic, people shopped much more online. When they had to go out, they favored one-stop shopping at big box stores and discounters. The trend has been devastating for smaller retailers and mall-based stores.

The trend toward online shopping has been growing, of course, for years. But the pandemic accelerated it by perhaps two years. Big box stores like Walmart and Target and other big retailers that are deemed “essential’’ also benefited from being allowed to stay open when much of the economy was locked down in the spring.

U.S. non-store retail sales (including e-commerce) grew 5.6% faster than store sales from January 2011 through this March. Since then, the gap has ballooned to 24.4%, according to Retail Metrics, LLC. Traditional retailers are retreating in the face of competition: 11,157 U.S. stores have closed this year, far surpassing the previous high for store closures: 8,706 in 2017, according to CoStar Group, a real estate research firm .

Copying discount stores, retailers like Kohl’s and Macy’s added curbside pickup for the first time this year. Best Buy is reducing the amount of floor space set aside for traditional shopping and devoting more to in-store pickup and to support deliveries of online orders.

In China, too, e-commerce has experienced a huge boost. Housebound families shopped online, paying with internet- and cellphone-based systems. Online merchants posted double-digit sales gains during the pandemic. Traditional retailers, which had to shutter for two months, are struggling to draw back shoppers, even with discounts of up to 70%.

E-commerce accounted for 24.2% of Chinese retail spending in October, versus 14.3% in the United States, the biggest share for any major country.

The decline in traditional retailing, coupled with the rise in people working at home, carries ominous implications for commercial real estate, too. Demand for office and retail space throughout urban downtowns is likely to stay weak, offset only partially by e-retailers’ growing need for warehouse space.

The exodus of downtown workers has been devastating for neighborhood restaurants like Forlini’s, a Chintatown fixture since 1956 popular with lawyers and judges who work in lower Manhattan.

Derek Forlini, who inherited the business from his father and now runs it with a cousin, used to relish chatting up customers in the dining room. He was always surprised and delighted when a judge recognized him in the street.

Over the summer, Forlini erected an outdoor dining space and installed plexiglass shields indoors. But the lunchtime crowds never came back. At first, Forlini brought back nearly all his 20 or so employees. Yet within weeks, he had to cut the staff down to about 10. He couldn’t bring himself to let go any more staffers; many are longtime friends.

“I couldn’t cut any chefs,” Forlini said. “I just couldn’t pick and choose.”

Forlini and his cousin eventually had to forgo their own salaries to keep paying the staff. When New York reinstated a ban on indoor banning this week, Forlini decided to close the restaurant — not forever, he hopes.

“Manhattan is ghost town,” Forlini said. “Nobody’s working — they all went to Zoom. And then there are people who just won’t come to restaurants. I know if we reopen, we’ll be working for nothing again.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post From restaurants to retailers, virus transformed economies appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“These closures are part of those that started last week, which were a result of expiring leases for locations with declining in sales pre-pandemic. However, we were unable to mobilize the resources needed to include these locations last Friday,” said Jason Kemp, president of VitaNova Brands. “All closures have been incredibly difficult decisions but will allow us to reallocate resources to our locations under the AYCE (all-you-can-eat) and Marketplace concepts. “We will do everything in our power to relocate employees and assist others impacted with access to available local resources,” added Kemp.

The impacted locations are:

• Hometown Buffet: Hemet CA, 3041 West Florida Avenue, Hemet, CA 92545

• Old Country Buffet: Whitehall PA, 1245 Whitehall Mall, Whitehall, PA 18052

For more information about the restaurants, visit www.HomeTownBuffet.com and www.OldCountryBuffet.com.

ABOUT VITANOVA BRANDS

VitaNova Brands© (VNB) is a multi-concept operator of independent restaurant brands, based in San Antonio, Texas. VNB has built a unique and scalable model designed to identify and acquire underperforming restaurant brands, assume full control of operations and strategy, and rapidly improve profitability and return to growth. Currently we operate TogoKitchens.com, Zio’s Italian Kitchen, Sushi Zushi, Tahoe Joe’s, Don Pablo’s Cantina, Hometown AYCE Marketplace, Old Country AYCE Marketplace, Furr’s AYCE Marketplace, and Ryan’s AYCE Marketplace. Learn more at https://www.vitanovabrands.com/.

-Kim Miller – Media Contact

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post TWO BUFFET RESTAURANT LOCATIONS TO PERMANENTLY CLOSE IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19 appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Allysun The Uhmayzing, owner of “Madam Confection” writes the first article of her bi-weekly food column.  This week’s visit takes us to: The Early Bird Cafe, a family-owned and operated restaurant.

Please welcome Allysun with your positive comments!

Editor’s note: Our article last week was supposed to highlight this most amazing artist and pastry chef. Unfortunately we fell short of our editorial standards: in the article, we referenced non-existent pictures and gave the impression, by omitting such pictures, that we were representing Allysun and her family in a laughable manner. I take full responsibility for the gaffe, and offer my apologies to Allysun, her family and our readers. Below is the picture we should have run: it is of a four year-old Allysun baking with her grandfather.

Now, I can only say that I hope our readers will enjoy the first of a bi-weekly column from one of the truly most “Uhmayzing” people I’ve ever met: Allysun The Uhmayzing. Take it away Al…

-Mark

Located at: 220 S Lyon Ave # H, Hemet, CA 92543, behind the Walgreens on Lyon and Florida

Hours are: 6 AM – 3 PM Seven days a week

Each family member plays an integral role at The Early Bird: they play to their strengths. Elbia is the accountant, dealing with finances and scheduling, her husband Joe who, in the 5 minutes we met while he was delivering ingredients to the kitchen, did a stand-up comedy routine! He wants the world to know that Early Bird Cafe is,”The BEST thing to happen to this valley!” 

The pride that they all take in their establishment shows.

Azcune is the younger sister by 18 years and lovingly refers to her older sister Elbia as her “sister/mom.” she runs social media and provides warm service at the diner. 

The challenges of working with family are worth the rewards of being free and being your own boss. This family has an entrepreneurial spirit and works hard together despite the challenges of continuing to provide hand-made food, cooked with love that you can taste. Their dad opened his restaurant when Azcune was five, and she is proud to be continuing that legacy.

“We make a great team, we treat our employees like family and our customers over the years have become like family, We are a Christian Restaurant and the public receives it well: they like that we are open with our faith,” says Azcune.

They are all Christians: “John 3:16” is displayed on their front door and on the back of their shirts. Elbia explained that it was after the passing of her mother she felt lost and was seeking comfort. She says she found it in this verse, that it helped her cope with her loss, and that it also is what inspired her to stencil it on the door and on the shirts of her staff. She also said that she, “…respects everyone and their values,” and doesn’t, “…push my beliefs on anyone.” 

They are known for their bread pudding, baked fresh daily, and they also have a large menu with something for everyone. The entire family pride themselves on cooking from scratch, using fresh ingredients, made to order. The first time I ate here, I was immediately impressed and the difference is palatable. I had the Eggs Benedict and it was excellently prepared, the portion was generous and my entire breakfast was under 12.00! 

“Allysun The Uhmayzing” is a “momprenuer” who owns Madam Confection. She is an award-winning Pastry Chef who is passionate about great food.

She can be reached at madamconfection@gmail.com

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Serving up food

The post Serving up food, great prices and a family-friendly atmosphere appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Uhhhhmayzing…

“The business name is Madam Confection, but the name I gave myself as a Pastry Chef was “Allysun The Uhmayzing, and it just stuck, so that’s what most people call me now,” says Allysun The Uhmayzing, owner of Madam Confection. 

No, she’s not kidding…the name’s on the business card.

“I’ve always wanted to be a pastry chef. When I was four years old I was helping my grandparents bake bread,” (see photo of Mrs. Uhmayzing in this article). “Being a pastry chef is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” says the Santa Ana-born pastry chef adding, “I plan to build a sweet empire.”

And how sweet it is.

If your taste buds have been blessed enough to taste her award-winning cheesecake, or if you’ve ever stopped in at the destination coffee house (where she is in residence as of October 11), or at Harvard Street’s La Boutique (where the “Opera House Tea Room” hosts an afternoon tea), you know that, while the name may seem light-hearted, this young woman is a truly serious pastry chef with talent to spare. “I’ve been blessed to work with at least for James Beard Award winners, including Chuck “Chucky” Dugo of “The Slanted Door,” at San Francisco’s Embarcadero, and Sherry Yard at Spago. I feel Sherry truly molded me…and I also feel that I’m just starting to come into my own as a chef,” says Uhmayzing.

Working her way up from her grandparent’s kitchen, Uhmayzing moved from making lollipops using vintage 1950s molds and selling them for a buck a pop in high school (“I was making $100 a day”), to becoming an apprentice pastry chef at age 16, to graduating from Pasadena’s Le Cordon Bleu at age 19. 

“I was going to school for eight hours and driving to Spago Beverly Hills where I interned under Sherry Yard for eight hours a day. It was Sherry who taught me to “work smarter not harder,” which she drilled into the interns. I’m a tall woman, so she made sure to tell me to raise my work space and distribute my weight properly—to lessen the stress on my back. I’ve never forgotten what she taught me,” says Uhmayzing.

From Spago, Uhmayzing worked at two Club Med locations, followed by the Norwegian Cruise Lines, then as Executive Pastry Chef at Highland Springs Resort for the Lavender Festival, then on to Palm Springs to work with Pastry Chef Michael Beckman at “The Workshop,” before settling down, or so she thought: “within a year, I was going crazy because I wanted to keep busy. I wondered how I could balance my love of baking with the challenge of being a new mother. That’s kind of difficult, but I made it happen. Finally my significant other, Jake, begged me to quit—for a while. Within six months of my daughter Luna’s being born, I was “wearing” my baby while I was baking.

Uhmayzing thought she’d just keep her hand in dough while making a few pies: 200 pies later she realized that she had to raise her daughter in the same place she loved as a child: the kitchen. Allysun’s “Madam Confection” was born. 

Can one woman with a driving passion to build “a sweet empire” while home-schooling a daughter–continuing to provide the high standards she’s set for herself and her business? I wouldn’t bet my sweet tooth against her.

Allysun can be reached at madamconfection@gmail.com

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: For this Pastry Chef

The post For this Pastry Chef, the name says it all… appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After a long day of work and a back to school event with my sister in law and her three little ones, we decided to check out a local restaurant called Delgado’s on the way home. We parked the car, unloaded all the kids and tiredly walked in the entrance. Immediately we were greeted by Hector Delgado Sr. with a warm, welcoming smile and were told to sit anywhere we would like. Of course, my oldest niece chose the first booth she saw, ran to it and exclaimed this one guys! So we sat down and little did I know that the service of this family would touch my heart in such a special way. Not only was the service excellent, but the food also came out quick and was delicious.

I was so impressed by the attentiveness and kindness shown to my family even with two little ones making a mess and being their best selves! When Hector Delgado Jr. came back to check on us and ask how we liked the food, we all replied, “It was wonderful.” Thank you so much for the excellent service and friendly atmosphere I said to Hector Jr. He replied, “Thank you very much. I really appreciate your kind words and taking the time to let me know, really means a lot.” He then went on to say that the older generation is very friendly to Hector Sr. the owner of the restaurant but tends to make Hector Jr. win their respect because he is younger. When he walked away, my sister and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes. We knew we had ended up at Delgado’s for dinner that night for a reason even if it was just to put a smile on someone’s face. 

Delgado’s Restaurant serves authentic Mexican food and has been open for 15 years this November. Hector Delgado Sr. started working at 14 in his uncle’s family restaurant until he opened his own business. His son Hector Jr has followed in his footsteps working at the family business since he was 13, after school and on weekends. 

Delgado’s, a family-oriented, wholesome, genuine and very welcoming restaurant is open Tues- Sat 7 am to 7:30 pm, and Sunday 7 am to 6 pm. They offer specials every day of the week except Sunday and Menudo is made fresh and served daily. They also provide catering and delivery. If you’re looking for a great place to eat, look no further than 517 E Main St in San Jacinto, CA. Try the Chile Relleno and experience not only the deliciousness of the food but the joy of an all-around great place.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: My Experience at Delgado’s

The post My Experience at Delgado’s Restaurant appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.