Chef Irie is a Caribbean fusion chef meaning his food is layered with touches of Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and African flavors; all in true Jamaican style.

Chef Irie left Jamaica when he was 19 years old in pursuit of becoming an architect. However, it was while he was in college that he decided to quit his full-time job and dedicate himself to a career in food. In essence, he wanted to become a culinary architect.

He studied at Johnson and Wales University in North Miami and worked his way up to owning his own catering business.

His advice for young chefs is to pay their dues: You’ll have to wash dishes and peel potatoes – there’s no easy road. Working in every part of the kitchen will help give you a better feel for what it takes to be a chef.

Whether you’re looking for a personal chef, a dinner for two or catering for a reception, Chef Irie can add a unique spice to your cuisine that will make it a memorable event.

Interview: Chef Irie Spice 5.22.11 from Agustina Prigoshin on Vimeo.

Connect with Chef Irie via:

Twitter: @ChefIrie

Facebook: Chef Irie (personal) and Chef Irie Spice (professional)

Website: www.IrieSpice.com

Blog: www.ChefIrie.blogspot.com (he writes about food and it’s representation throughout his childhood)

Chef Jorge started his own business in late 2008, a catering company called Chef George Catering. Aside from catering weddings and corporate events, Chef Jorge takes time to give back to the community and cater for local charities such as the March of Dimes and the United Way.

He also uses his culinary skills to interact with the community with a side business called Homemade Chefs. Homemade Chefs is an interactive cooking class that’s held between two to three times a week; he even hosts private classes.

Chef Jorge’s mission with Homemade Chefs is to make cooking approachable, to make it an experience. All his classes are themed, incorporating global cuisines. Each class ranges from $35 to $45 and registration is simple: just visit their Meetup.com page, select the class you’d like to attend and pay through PayPal.

In the interview below, Chef Jorge walks us through his businesses and even teaches us how to tend to an accidental burn (I wonder how many people know about his household remedy).

Interview: Chef George Catering 4.10.11 from Agustina Prigoshin on Vimeo.

Chef Jorge shows us how to make a quick and easy Heirloom Tomato and Apple Salad with Pistachio Vinaigrette.

Take a peek into an Indian Vegetarian cooking class:

Facebook:

Chef Goerge Catering

Homemade Chefs

Chef Jorge

Twitter:

@ChefSazon

@cookingflorida

For wine tastings, cooking classes and demos, visit the Homemade Chefs Meetup.com page.

If you’d like to get in touch with Chef Jorge for your catering needs, you can speak with him or his sister, Vanessa, to schedule a tasting: 954-200-2895. You can also visit his website: www.ChefGeorgeCatering.com for more information.

I have six Spaces (the equivalent to six different desktops on one computer) open on my computer and have assigned all Microsoft Office documents to open in one particular Space, but it seems that MS Office doesn’t like its assigned Space. The document I’m usually working on loves to move and I have to search through five different Spaces to locate it.

Amidst my frustration, I turned to Twitter and posted: “I HATE, HATE, HATE microsoft office (I hate it so much, it doesn’t even deserve to be treated like a proper noun) HATE it!!!”

When Tweetdeck announced that I had a reply, I checked it and @kelbyj with a bio reading “Marketing/AR @ Microsoft” responded to me saying: “@AgustinaP what happened to make you hate Office so much? Can I help?”

I thought, “Cool! This is the first time Customer Service comes to me! Thanks Twitter!”

I explained to @kelbyj how my documents moves around and he replied about 20 minutes later: “@AgustinaP seeing if I can find you a recommendation from the Mac Office product folks…”

I eagerly awaited his response, but when I got it, I was let down. @kelbyj: “It’s actually a Mac OS Spaces issue. Here’s a blog post that might be helpful: http://bit.ly/45f9vW”

First of all, I felt slightly offended that he would say the problem was with my Mac. I try my very best to keep my computer clean and running perfectly.

Second, should I be surprised that someone from Microsoft would say the problem is with Mac?

And third, @kelbyj, why did you send me that link? Have you read it? I’m no computer software genius, but that link leads me to a blog that doesn’t look like a Microsoft or Apple blog. Who wrote that and why should I listen to what that person says? And most importantly, the post is long, too long for me to care to read past the first paragraph, especially when that first paragraph doesn’t directly address my problem.

I’m very disappointed. I almost felt like Microsoft was listening to me and trying to help. All they did was waste my time and give me false expectations.

Sigh.

My favorite part is driving through the city. I absolutely love the architecture. It’s like New York, with a European twist.

I’m jumping on a plane at 10:30 p.m. tonight (9:30 p.m. Miami time) and am sad to go. This trip was filled with tango, sea mammals, glaciers and tons of food!

The only thing I won’t miss is this country’s strange spacial proportions. Check out my dad’s parking garage (with my walking brother)! To park, you drive into the garage and to leave, you have to back up the whole way, haha!

When I first got here, a music festival was already winding down and I got the opportunity to catch some last minute shows.

I went to watch Gary Burton, a very well-known Jazz musician. He plays the vibraphone with four mallets as opposed to the usual two. He teamed up with several other jazz musicians and toured the world, including a stop in Buenos Aires.

Gary Burton got tango stuck in my head and I wanted more. So my friends took me to a milonga in an old warehouse.

A milonga is a type of tango music and dance, but at the same time, it’s a place where tango enthusiasts gather to dance. The dance floor was littered with a mix of experts and novices and the music was hypnotizing.

As soon as I get back to Miami, I’m taking tango lessons. I already spoke to a friend of mine who teaches and she’s waiting for me. I can’t wait!

While still on my tango high, the next night, I met up with my friend, Raul Cabral, a world-famous tango instructor who spends the year circling the globe and teaching tango. Raul invited me to Buenos Aires’ Channel 2 TV station to watch Tanghetto perform live in the studio.

Tanghetto plays electronic tango music:

Here’s another snippet of their performance:

After all that tango, I traveled south:

Visiting Trelew, Puerto Madryn and Puerto Piramides:

I loved the rocky beach:

My brother watched the whales get close to the shore:

And the reason for Puerto Piramides’ name are the pyramid shaped rock structures. This giant rock has several craters that are the result of when the Argentine Navy used it as target practice for their missiles:

I visited Ushuaia and met the most adorable sea lions who performed tricks for us:

I also rode the End of the World Train that actually took us to the end of the world:

Beyond this bay is where Argentina and Chile end, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans collide causing a very impressive and violent current and Antarctica begins:

Vistied El Calafate:

I saw some magnificent glaciers and hiked El Perito Moreno glacier:

Ate glacier ice:

Landed in Bariloche with a broken plane and wandered the empty airport, deliriously, for hours:

Finally back in Buenos Aires and eating as much delicious food as I can before heading back home. Mmm, empanadas and alfajores

I’ll be writing, posting pictures and videos as much as possible while I’m over there for two weeks. I get to Buenos Aires Monday morning, just in time for a great big BBQ celebrating my brothers’ birthday and Independence Day. My mouth is watering while thinking of that BBQ.

I leave Thursday to Ushuaia, the worlds’ southern-most city. It’s a short flight from Antarctica, so I’m taking my ski clothes. We’re going to hike Perito Moreno and two other glaciers, as well as go whale watching.

I’ll try my hardest to document my travels as often possible.

I can’t wait!

Gabriel Goldberg is managing Spain’s latest Bachata and R&B sensation, Sonny Monreal. Sonny, just moved to Miami in the hopes of launching his album in the U.S. So, in case you Refreshers didn’t know, you were among a Spanish, pop singing icon, Wednesday.

After Refresh Miami, I went with Schek, Golberg, Sonny and Ulises Orozco to Lime Fresh for some late-night dinner. That’s where Sonny sang along to the radio playing over the restaurants’ speakers. I wanted to ask him to keep singing throughout the meal, but I decided to let him eat, haha!

I’m sure we’ll all be seeing much more of Sonny and hopefully, it’ll be through his successes.

If you know me and how camera-crazy I am, you know I had to take a picture with him

At first I thought that companies wouldn’t cut their funding towards advertisement (primarily TV advertisement) because that’s their biggest form of exposure, but by the same token, isn’t it very pricey?

In advertising, I’ve heard that “sex sells;” but when times get tough and advertisers are competing even more, when does sexy advertisement go too far?

Two examples of tasteless commercials:

1. Joe’s Crab Shack: two men and a woman are sitting at a table, the woman gets her food in a covered steamer and one of the men says, “Take your top off.” The woman looks confused and says, “What?” The man repeats, “Take your top off.” You can’t help but find this man to be a pervert until the other man at the table lifts the top off the woman’s steamer to reveal steam-cooked lobster. The first man clearly meant to the take the top off the steamer, not for the woman to take her top off.

I think the commercial could’ve been executed in a more tasteful manner, one that doesn’t imply a man ordering a woman to take off her shirt.

2. Quiznos: this one was actually pretty disturbing. Their latest commercial starts with an oven telling an employee that it wants the young man to tell the audience about their new Torpedo sub. It hints that the oven and the employee have had a previous encounter which they “both enjoyed,” one which the employee doesn’t dispute. The oven tells the employee to tell watchers that the Torpedo is only $4; it tells the employee to repeat it two more times with more and more passion behind his message.

An oven and a human seeming to have had an affair? An oven ordering a man to be sexier? Kind of creepy.

An example of a great, and sexy, commercial that I don’t think I’ll ever forget is Kate Walsh driving a Cadillac CTS. In trying to sell the car to viewers, she describes the cars’ features and then says, “The real question is, when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” Her words are followed by a shot of her stiletto pressing down on the accelerator.

Now, that commercial is sexy, not raunchy like the others.