{"id":333,"date":"2008-03-05T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T03:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laughingmonkey.org\/?p=333"},"modified":"2008-03-05T21:08:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-06T03:08:00","slug":"preview-night-at-vientos-burger-steak-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"Preview night at Viento’s Burger & Steak Bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a friend who claimed that when someone quit their job in high tech, you can measure their worth by how far away they go. For instance, leaving Apple for Adobe… I mean, why bother? But leaving your job to become a search and rescue worker? That’s pretty damn cool!<\/p>\n

In that vein, I was thrilled to hear my friend Mandy was finally logging off the high tech treadmill to pursue her dream, opening a restaurant! I’ve known Mandy as a foodie for some time; we’ve swapped recipes and have talked about our mutual appreciation for good middle-America comfort food. So it makes all kinds of sense that she chose to open a burger joint!<\/p>\n

So tonight I drove to Bingen, WA (across the river from Hood River) for the “friends and family preview” night of Viento’s Burger & Steak Bar<\/a>! The joint was hoppin’! I was greeted at the door by Mandy’s mom and husband, and got a quick hug from Mandy as she was juggling plates in the kitchen. I quickly ran into a a couple of people I knew from my days living in the Silicon Valley (it’s a smaller community than you might think) and chatted with them about various geeky topics while enjoying a fabulous burger.<\/p>\n

Mmm, the food! I had the “Melt Your Face” burger, with pepper jack cheese, jalape\u00f1os and a chili-ketchup sauce, with sweet potato french fries and root beer. The burger was very moist and flavorful, better than I’ve had in a really long time. I’ll definitely be dropping in again.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, and I took some pictures!<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Best wishes to Mandy and crew in their new endeavor!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a friend who claimed that when someone quit their job in high tech, you can measure their worth by how far away they go. For instance, leaving Apple… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,24,42,48],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cooking","tag-food","tag-ore","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}