We have, in the past, attempted to openly reply to Yelp! reviews on their site from a company managed account. While we felt we should have the opportunity to openly reply to the remarks being made about our establishments, Yelp! disagreed and removed our responses. So we’ve taken the conversation to our own venue. We feel this is the most fair way to truly dialogue about the experiences we attempt to provide.

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Dear Greg,

Check please? Ok, ok, this is really good. So to clarify, what you’re saying is that because we don’t make our hot dogs and charcuterie in-house (the latter of which we don’t even have on our menu at all), and because the server told you that when you asker, you wanted to leave? Man, you must have a tough time finding spots to eat around here. Our friends at Quality Social and The Linkery must be the only folks that are graced with the pleasure of your patronage. Maybe that’s why you haven’t posted a Yelp! review in two years, you’ve just been searching for some house-made meat in all the wrong places. I know how it is, I’ve seen it a hundred times. Guy goes into a restaurant, gets a hot dog that wasn’t made in-house, panics, and just gives up meat for the rest of his life. And you know what that means? Now the world has another vegetarian, as if it didn’t have enough problems already.

I’ll tell you how it is, and it ain’t pretty. We simply don’t have the facility to make our meats in-house, so we outsource to some great local, independent businesses, places like Hamilton’s Meats and Venissimo Cheese. Yikes! Supporting small businesses and realizing our own limitations? What were we thinking?!? And sadly, our employees are honest and have integrity, which is unfortunately the reason your server replied that, no, we don’t make our hot dogs in-house.

Useful feedback and information can help others, however useless feedback and useless information…done.

Best Regards,

Craft A. Commerce

During a 10 month installation at the Kiasma museum of contemporary art, Mikko Kuorinki formed a new piece every week, comprised of passages from writers such as Mitch Hedberg, Elias Canetti or Joe Brainard for her work ‘Wall Piece with 200 Letters’.

“Making things takes work, and concentration, and you have to just get up and do it.”

The toothpick people at Daneson have put out a single malt scotch flavored toothpick set. For the guy or girl who truly has everything.

This has been making the rounds these past 24 hours, but it’s just too cool not to share.

Happy Birthday, Daniel Day Lewis.

Urbanic Paper Boutique up in Venice Beach has just launched a pop-up shop offering some of their awesome products, like these point-of-interest maps for Brooklyn and San Francisco. Sure would be cool to see a San Diego version pop up sooner or later, but for now El Dorado’s list of their favorite San Diego haunts will have to suffice.

The other night, Arsalun snapped this picture of a Blue Moon truck advertisement citing the beer as “San Diego’s Finest”. Stone Brewing’s Greg Koch, and now even the San Diego Union Tribune have weighed in since, agreeing that something like this is downright “offensive”.

The amazing and ever talented Eric Tan came to town for Comic Con last week, and we just came across this awesome San Diego inspired print he released as a Con exclusive.

8 – 22GB Drives and 4 Personal Computers were all that made up this early Google “Corkboard” server. This one one of thirty racks used in the dawning days of Google. It is now on display at the National Museum of American History.

Frank seems to have perfected the recipe.

(click to view the rest at stanleycolors.com)

We always get asked about our flyers at El Dorado. Did you know that one of the lead designers of the majority of our flyers, Pablo Stanley, is a comic artist? He’s gained a lot of attention lately from his musically inspired pieces, ranging from The Beatles to Freddie Mercury, and today he debuted a piece inspired by The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” . In addition to breathing visual life into classic tunes, Pablo is also an accomplished musician and photographer. We’re extremely proud to call him our friend.