Happy Labor Day!

In the spirit of fun in the sun, water sports and of course good eating, the team at FoodJiva.com will be taking a few days off to celebrate a year's worth of hard work! We couldn't have done it without the loyal support from all of you!



Have a wondeful Labor Day from all of us at FoodJiva.com!

Stay tuned for more fun and exciting offerings ....

New Addition: Bruno Cafe, Downtown LA!

I wanted to post just a page of the menu for our new addition, Bruno Cafe in downtown Los Angeles. Yes, it's kind of a big tease, because on top of the delicious hot plates (Beef Stroganoff with French Fries, anyone??) and salads (Shrimp Caesar!), this inexpensive restaurant has a ton of amazing food!

Bruno Cafe serves breakfast all day and lunch, so this is perfect for those of you working in the 6th Street/Flower area of downtown. Just go to FoodJiva.com, type in your downtown address and you can see the entire Bruno Cafe menu. Here's just a sampling of what you can get delivered (did I mention there is NO delivery fee??):

• Breakfast burrito with eggs, cheese, onion, potatoes, cilantro and tomato with your choice of ham, turkey or bacon.


• Soujoukh (a delicious grilled Armenian sausage) with scrambeled eggs.


• Waffles with butter, fruit perserves and/or syrup


• Club sandwich with ham, turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo and mustard


• Cheeseburger with all the fixin's!


• Falafel with Tahini sauce, hummus and tomato


• Gyros - beef or chicken - with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion and garlic yogurt


• Beef fajitas!!


• Grilled steak sandwich with lettuce, tomato and grilled onions


• And a huge assortment of gourmet coffees: cappuccino, macchiato, iced mochas, etc.

Are you as hungry as I am???

Good Eating-

Clare

New Feature: Did You Know?

Today we're introducing a new feature called "Did You Know?" This feature will address some cool FoodJiva site features that you may not know about. Today's information is brought to you by Gene, our super cool CTO (Chief Tech Officer). Thanks, Gene!

DID YOU KNOW?

The "Order History" module of FoodJiva.com, accessible through "My Account", not only provides a simple and easy way to keep track of all your past orders, but also allows you to quickly populate your food basket through the "Order Again" button. Did you love San Gennaro's Chicken Penne with a side of Chicken Sausage (we sure do!), and want to quickly re-add the dish, along with your side orders and special instructions, to your food basket? Or are you just ordering your usual Monday meeting lunch items for the team? Clicking "Order Again" not only saves you time, but simply said - it's fun to see the items magically appear in your food basket!

Oh, and let's not forget - be sure to rate your dishes on this very same page after having your meal. Your review helps keep the FoodJiva.com user community up to date on what the best dishes are, in their area, through our ever-so-popular JivaMenuTM!

Happy 4th!

Happy July 4th from all of us at FoodJiva.com! We hope you have a safe and fun holiday weekend. Please note that some of our restaurants are closed for the holiday, including the Corner Deli, Pitfire Pizza, Earth Wind & Flour, Singapore Express and California Fresh. When on our website, please notice that any restaurants names in gray text means it is closed; orange text means they are open.

Open restaurants include Spark Woodfire Grill, Asakuma Sushi, Louise's Trattoria, Chilli Thai, Agra Indian Kitchen and many more. So if you're not in the mood to cook this weekend, simply go to FoodJiva.com and order food for pickup or delivery!

Good Eating-

Clare

Attention Downtown LA - Pizza and Freshness Await You!

Pitfire Pizza

Yes! We've recently added two awesome downtown Los Angeles restaurants to the FoodJiva roster, so now all you loft-residing folk and hard-working office people can use FoodJiva to order lunch and/or dinner for delivery in your neighborhood! Yesterday I tried one of the additions - Pitfire Pizza - and had their scrumptious BBQ Chicken Salad. It has grilled chicken, BBQ sauce, black beans, roasted red peppers, red onions, roasted corn, jicama, Gouda cheese and a wonderful vinaigrette. It comes with bread and was a meal in and of itself. Now you regular FoodJiva-ers (<--what do you think?) are already familiar with Pitfire Pizza on the West side. Now you can get the same awesome food delivered to your home or office in downtown LA!

Speaking of which, I also had a pizza by using their "Be An Artist" option. I had cheese (duh), spinach, Kalamata olives, tomato sauce and mushrooms. FoodJiva.com makes it so easy by giving you boxes to check next to any/all toppings you want. BTW, if you're thinking that I eat to much, let me assure you that I was with someone and we shared these two plates. It was a great lunch, and was certainly way more satisfying than a fast food burger and fries. OH, and their delivery fee is only two bucks!!

California Fresh

We've added California Fresh for you downtowners as well. It's perfect for those of you who are looking for a healthy option. How's this for an amazing lunch delivered straight to your home or office: Grilled Mahi Mahi with a side of Tabouli Salad and hummus. Or how about Chinese Chicken Salad with romaine, red cabbage, carrots, scallions, roasted almonds mandarin oranges, noodles in a sesame dressing? If you're looking for sandwiches, pizza, or even pasta, they've got those options as well. They even have a Kosher menu. Delivery fee? A measley three bucks.

We're adding more delivery restaurants all the time, so keep checking back. In the meantime, we hope you folks in downtown Los Angeles will try these new additions out. Simply type in your address here and get started.

Good Eating-

Clare

New FoodJiva Addition: Spark Woodfire Grill Beverly Hills

(photos courtesy of Spark Woodfire Grill)

Ever see that scene in "Mrs. Doubtfire" where Robin Williams, fresh into his undercover role as the hilarious English nanny, tries to prepare dinner for the family? His prosthetic breasts catch fire as he tries, in vain, to boil water and he ends up burning just about everything else. Fearful that he may lose his job, he orders gourmet food to be delivered, puts the food on nice plates and passes it off as his own.

The food at Spark Woodfire Grill (Beverly Hills) - which we've just added to FoodJiva.com - is this type of food; the kind of food you'd make yourself if you had a degree from the Culinary Institute of America and about 20 extra hours every day. You could easily pass it off as a homemade creation, because, essentially, it is made to order by the people at Spark. How's this for a lovely dinner: Fresh Burrata "Soft Mozzarella" Caprese and Maryland Blue Crab Cakes for a starter; maybe a lovely Baked Pear, Gorgonzola and Candied Walnut salad to share; a perfectly cooked filet mignon or maybe the Mesquite Grilled Surf and Turf (baby back ribs, jumbo shrimp and lamb chops!) for the main course. And if you have room, the Chocolate Hazelnut Brazilia Cake or Warm Apple Tart for dessert. Can you believe you can order all of this online at FoodJiva.com?

Spark Woodfire Grill specializes in the woodfire grilling and roasting of Prime or Certified Angus Beef hand cut steaks, Kobe beef burgers, chops, seafood, all natural chicken, authentic thin crust pizza and slowly roasted BBQ Baby Back Ribs.

So if you're in the Beverly Hills area and not in the mood to cook but want something absolutely fabulous to eat, head to FoodJiva.com and try our newest addition!

Good Eating-

Clare

Restaurant Partner Profile: Louise's Trattoria

Yesterday, the sales team and I were out and about in Santa Monica and needed some nourishment. Normally at the office, we order food on FoodJiva.com (duh), but we were out in the field so we stopped by Louise's Trattoria, one of our restaurant partners, for lunch. The great thing about our amazing lunch is that you can order everything you see here online at our website, including the AWESOME free bread basket above (just request it in the special instructions part of the order form online)! It has hints of rosemary and olive oil and sea salt and it was moist and delicious. A great way to start off any meal.

Kenny started with a Caesar side salad, which was made of crisp Romaine lettuce, crunchy croutons and a flavorful classic Caesar dressing.

I chose the Grilled Chicken Panini, which has roasted tomatoes, Provolone cheese, garlic aioli and lettuce all on rosemary-herb Ciabatta bread, and it came with my choice of a salad (I chose the green salad). It was hearty and delicious and the flavors worked incredibly together.

Jerry got the Napa Burger, which comes grilled to order with cheese, tomato, garlic aioli on a rosemary-herb Ciabatta bun. He chose the pasta salad as his side. He gave the burger and pasta a major thumbs-up.

After finishing his Caesar salad, Kenny got the Fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp. It was a huge plate, and though Kenny attacked it with gusto, he was full about half-way through. But being a bachelor, he was stoked to take the leftovers to have for dinner. Two meals for the price of one, not bad at all!

You can order these and many other delectable Louise's dishes online at FoodJiva.com, and have it delivered right to your doorstep! The best part? Delivery is FREE. Yup, you read it right. We currently feature three Louise's locations: Santa Monica, West Los Angeles and Brentwood.

Good Eating-

Clare

Want Healthy? Soups? Etc.?

One of the coolest things about FoodJiva is that you can set your preferences using our patent-pending JivaMenu option (click image above for close-up). For example, I really like Japanese food. If there is one thing I crave, almost all the time, it's sushi. Some people crave mac 'n cheese, others crave chocolate. I crave raw fish. Yup, I said it.

So my personal JivaMenu always first brings up Japanese dishes that are available at the restaurants that deliver to my house. I've also got "Thai" and "Burgers" set in my JivaMenu preferences, so it brings up those as well (yes, I do love me a good, medium-rare, juicy burger with cheese!). It's a super cool feature that helps organize our restaurant and menu results to suit your taste preferences.

Good Eating-

Clare

Hm...Pitfire Pizza

We here at FoodJiva actually use FoodJiva - go figure! Considering we often work through lunch and sometimes well into dinner time, it's a great service for us (if we do say so ourselves, ha ha). Recently we had a late meeting and ordered pizza using FoodJiva from Pitfire Pizza. Since our offices are located in West LA, the Westwood location delivered. I got the pizza margherita - YUM. The crust was crispy-chewy; you know that perfect crisp-around-the-edges, crusty all over the outside but chewy in the middle? Yeah, like that. After a long day, it was a welcome meal. I placed my order, got the confirmation email, then another email saying it would be about 35 minutes. Low and behold it actually came in 20 minutes! I was a happy pizza-eating camper. BTW, those little red dots on my pizza are Sriracha, which I always keep on hand at my desk, home, car (OK, I exaggerate). If you haven't tried it on pizza, do so immediately! It's awesome.

Good Eating-

Clare

The Soul of FoodJiva

A lot of people ask me, "What does Jiva mean?" Jiva (pronounced "JEE-VUH") is a Sanskirt term for "soul" or "life force." Kinda makes sense since food is nourishing for the body, mind and soul, and, on a more basic note, helps you to live.

With that in mind, FoodJiva will donate 5% of our net profits to local food banks like Westside Food Bank and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, among others. And no, we don't mark anything up to make that donation (people ask me that a lot too!). So the next time you order a delicious Kickin' Chicken Pizza from Dagwood's or the mouthwatering Lamb Korma from Nawab of India using the easy-as-pie FoodJiva website, you can feel good knowing that you're feeding your stomach and helping to feed others less fortunate. Remember when your mom told you to think of "all those starving children in Ethopia" when she forced you to eat her less-than-stellar meatloaf? Well, with FoodJiva, you'll like what you're eating and you'll be helping some local people in need and you don't have to listen to your mom nag you about any of it!

OK, maybe that's a stretch, but you catch my drift...

Good Eating-

Clare

The Start of Something Great

Ever have one of those days? You know what kind of day I'm talking about: Work was a royal pain, traffic was a nightmare and all you want to do is come home, pour yourself a glass of something strong and dig into some good food. But you're not in the mood to cook, and your THIS sick of the same ol' pizza you get delivered too often already.

This is how the concept of FoodJiva was born. Our co-founders were tired of sifting through their crumpled-up take-out menus and exhausted from spending an hour+ online trying to find restaurants that deliver to their homes. With FoodJiva, you go to the website (http://www.foodjiva.com/), type in your address and presto! You'll get a list of restaurants, with interactive menus, that deliver to your place. You can scroll over individual dishes to get a detailed description and sometimes even a photo of the food. Click what you want, place the order online with your credit card (using our safe and secure system) and before you know it, you've got good, hot food at the ready.

Most of our restaurants don't even charge delivery fees, and even the ones that do are super low - think $5 or less. And while you get an estimated delivery time before you place your order, you'll get an exact time via email once you place the order, so there's no guessing on when you'll get your food. You can even add the tip online when you place your order, so when the delivery person shows up, you can literally take the bag of food and be done with it - no signing anything.

The staff at FoodJiva truly believes in what we're doing, and we all use the service regularly. Since I'm kind of a foodie, I'm SUPER excited about this whole concept and company. I'm going to be blogging here to give you the scoop on our current roster of restaurants, update you when we add new restaurants and just keep you updated on general FoodJiva happenings.

Please leave comments or email me with any restaurant suggestions you may have. We want to add your favorite delivery restaurants to FoodJiva!

Stay tuned for my next post, which will tell you all about what JIVA means and how the meaning is an integral part of our business.

Good eating-

Clare