GUP Cuban

WOW! is the one word way I would describe my experience for lunch on Sunday at Lincoln’s newest food truck. I found out about GUP Kitchen from friends and social media (both Twitter and Facebook). Their location hasn’t been convenient for me in the past, but on Sunday it did and I knew I had to give it a try.

GUP, stands for Ground Up and is a concept for both the food and way of making it. It comes from the idea that you should know where your food comes from; “literally from the ground up.” The reality is that everything you will eat is seasoned with hand-ground and custom-blended spices and sauces. Chef and Co-Owner, Erik Hustad studied Culinary Arts at The Art Institute of Seattle and came back to start GUP with cousin and co-owner, Gabriel Lovelace. http://eatgroundup.com/the-story/

GUP is a modern take on a food truck. It is actually a large trailer pulled behind a pickup truck. The white outside is decorated with their logo, website, twitter address, Facebook, QR code, etc. The menu is on a flat panel monitor too, pretty neat. From word of mouth I had heard that the Cuban Spiced Pork sandwich was fantastic so that is what I got along with the Mac n’ Cheese (More on that in a minute). Ordering was simple and quick.

From the first bite of my Cuban Sandwich I knew it was going to be good. The sauce makes this sandwich stand out from your average Cuban. There is a reason GUP calls it awesome sauce. It was a mayo based sauce with some unique spices. I could taste garlic, a little sugar, some citrus, and other flavors I could not really pick out distinctively, but that doesn't matter, because it was amazing. The pork meat was very tender and juicy. It also had onions, lettuce, and small sweet peppers on it. I was a little surprised not to find pickles since this is pretty traditional on a Cuban. All of this goodness was served on a ciabatta roll from Le Quartier. I happened to eat this at my parents house and my dad wanted a bite. His response was that it was as good of Cuban Sandwich as he has ever had. I have to agree.

I had originally ordered Potato Salad with my sandwich but at the last minute decided to go with the Mac n’ Cheese because it had bacon in it. Typically Mac n’ Cheese is not something I order. It is never something I crave, but this was pretty good. This was a rich Mac n’ Cheese made with cheese, onion, and bacon added in. The bacon added something but not quite as much as I was expecting. With bacon the more the better right?

Service was fast and I enjoyed talking with the guys in the truck as they assembled my meal. They explained that it is tough to find locations where they can operate (Private Parking lots) because Lincoln’s laws do not allow them on public property or on in a parking place on,say, O street in Downtown Lincoln. Prices were very reasonable for the amount and quality of food I received. I paid $6.95 for a sandwich and it must have included a side as well because I was not charged for the Mac n’ Cheese. Portions were good, not huge but not small. I would put the value ranking higher than other “Fresh Local” food places in town with expensive overhead (Review of that place to come someday).

In conclusion I hope these guys continue to have success. Going in to the dark months of winter won’t be easy but their food is worth a trip into the cold outdoors to get. The food is outstanding, and I am happy to support young entrepreneurs in a family business venture. I will be going back and trying the Chicken Salad for sure and some of the other sides. I encourage everyone to find these guys (social media is the best way) and try them out.

GUP Kitchen Facebook Page
GUP Kitchen Twitter Page
GUP Kitchen Website

Make sure to watch this in 720P or 1080P at full screen!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Food:
Your choices at the beginning are your choice of meet (beef, or chicken), single or double meat, and then your choice of vegetables that are grilled along with the meat (onion, mushroom, green pepper). Your food is grilled in front of you as it moves down the assembly line. At the end they slap some cheese on the meat and pile it into a slightly toasted 12” hoagie roll.
The sauce table follows the cash register and is filled with lots of great stuff. They had several liquid sauces such as Au jus, mushroom sauce, and creole. Then they had toppings/sauce such as Spicy Ranch (my personal favorite), ranch, hearty steak sauce, bold steak sauce, salsa, mustard, ketchup, and many more.
I experimented and found that my perfect mix that night was a bit of au jus, followed by some bold steak sauce inside, followed up with a bit of spicy ranch in place of mayo. This combination proved to be very messy but good. Probably not the best food choice for a first date, but it would be a fun date place because of all the different choices and things to try. I really enjoyed the French fries. They were thin, straight cut, and fried to a perfect crisp. Portions of fries were small by most places standards but with such a large Philly I found that it was about the perfect amount. All of the toppings/sauces were great for dipping too.

Decor and Atmosphere
The place had a nice feel with bright colors, stainless steel, etc. The décor on the walls was neat too. It was many historic photos of Lincoln from the 1950’s and older. It was neat to see the evolution of town while waiting in line. They also had flat screen TVs in a few places as well.

Value
This place is a good value. The sandwiches are large (See picture below) and could easily be split for 2 meals if you ate a portion size with some fries. I believe the cost was about $5.50 for the beef, fries were an additional $1.50 or so. I am guessing that this place will be busy at lunch because of the good value and large portions.

The Cons
There were a few things that do need improving though. This is a new place and it was obvious that staff was still being trained on what their responsibilities are, so I am really hoping these problems will improve with time. The lines were long, and slow, let’s hope that the hype of a new place dies down and the employees are trained. While the grill team had multiple people, it was essentially made one at a time. I think they will need to improve on the workflow to speed things up to reasonable standards (10 min). The floor was dirty, lots of crumbs, some used napkins, etc. Tables were relatively clean though. I am sure this is just because they were super busy.

To sum it all up, I enjoyed my time at PepperJax Grill. I really think they will smooth out the few problems and have a lean, fast operation up in maybe another month. The food was good for fast food, and a great

Question Setup
I am a big fan of Lastpass Password storage system after learning about it on Security Now and hearing why it was safe to use (Episode 256). I am also using the Google Authenticator on my Android phone(Also available for all other major mobile phone OS) for a second form of authentication when logging into my Google account because of how much additional security it provides, especially as this account grows more important. The question I asked below was simplified slightly (Probably due to me not thinking things out fully to get the answer I wanted) but the results were good and answered about 80% of my question.

My question was as read by Leo

“Leo: No. Question 7, Jon in Lincoln, Nebraska - another cornfield flyover - worries about giving Google too many eggs: Steve and Leo, I love the podcast. I'm a long-time listener, LastPass and Vitamin D advocate. I have the entire family well educated and believing now. Yay. Over the weekend I saw that now LastPass - as we mentioned in the news - supports Google Authenticator. This is great news because I currently use the app on my Android phone to get into my Gmail account. I also know how much more secure two-factor authentication is, thanks to previous Security Now! episodes. But it makes me wonder if tying so many of my services to Google is a good idea or a potential security problem. What happens if Google were to go down for a few hours? Any thoughts or opinions on this would be appreciated. Am I putting too many eggs in Google's basket?”

Watch the video on Youtube of Steve and Leo answering my question below. Start at 1:30:00 goo.gl/kaJD5

Click here to view the embedded video.

After hearing this answer I am feel reassured about my concerns and I am very glad it is independent and closed loop. My biggest concern was if my Google account was suddenly compromised/deleted/suspended etc that I would be locked out of my Lastpass too, but since it is independent and I have a backup of codes generated I know I won’t lose my Lastpass. Just in case I always have my local Lastpass Pocket standalone as a measure of last resort (No cloud).

The bad, was that parking was terrible. We must have parked in the worst possibly place because it took 1:45 to get off the air base. Granted they said over 250,000 people came to the show over the weekend but we expected traffic to be better.

Enjoy the photos below. They are only a small set of the more than 600 I took that day. View the rest of my edited photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P

http://liquidretro.net/Images/LNKAirshow2011/LNKAirshow-09-10-11-290.jpg

View the rest of my photos from the Airshow on my G+ gallery at http://goo.gl/Enn9P

The pictures below were all taken after the storm except the first one. The storm rolled through when the sun was starting to set so this created some great colors on the clouds. The bubble clouds are mammatus clouds. These were some of the most defined mammantus clouds I have seen recently.

I am always a little slow posting things to the blog but am much better about posting to the new G+ which I love. Follow me at http://Liquidretro.net/+

The entire set can be seen on Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/sets/72157627107802974/

Build Quality
The build quality of the M9s are quite good. The heads are a hard metal shell and the metal looks to be anodized. I ended up with the silver buds because they were a little cheaper than black. The cord seems pretty sturdy. It is kind of slick feeling so hopefully this helps avoid knots. The cord is in a Y configuration. This is a personal preference but I much prefer the J cord style of the CX300’s. This will take a little getting use to. The plug end is bent at a 45 degree angle and I think this will work well for people who wrap the phones around a device or put the device in a pocket while using it. For my devices its a nice tight fit that really clicks in. The one area I can ding build quality is the speaker grill area. On my CX300’s its made of a wire mesh, on the M9 it looks to be a cardboard cover. I am a little concerned with how this will hold up over time, especially with sweat. I like to wear my IEM while biking.

Sound Quality
I would categorize myself somewhere between enthusiast and audiophile. I don’t have the budget to spend thousands on speakers and headphones every year but do enjoy quality. I would say I favor bass but like crisp clear full range either. Muddy strong bass for me is a pass. I tested with a variety of music. I am recently into electronic,dubstep, house stuff, but balanced this with Tech N9ne new album “All 6’s & 7’s” because of the hard hitting base but sharp clear fast lyrics. I also used Silversun Pickups, Incubus, and John Mayer. The later because this is an excellently mastered album with fine detail in the guitars.

The M9’s are advertised as for bass heads and I would not argue with that. The bass is strong but not overpowering for my taste. The bass improved as the headphones burned in (See below) the bass becamse more accurate and cleaner. The mids and highs are very crisp, with the highs maybe being too crisp and strong for my liking. This can be improved with EQ but isnt a huge thing. I think I will get use to it the more I listen. I prefer the crispness to the not as crisp mids and highs of my CX300s.

The soundstage is pretty good for in ear ear buds. Its no where nearly as large as my Sennheiser 595 cans but there is several factors of price difference too. The soundstage is large and improvement over the cx300’s.

These headphones do need a burn in period in my opinion. I was not impressed with them on first listen but I played music through them over night for 2 nights and the phones improved quite a bit. Tones mellowed out and some of the harshness of the mids and highs wore off. I would think the more I use them the more this will improve.

Fit/Noise Reducing ability
Many people do not like in ear headphones because of the fit. They say they the sound quality is poor. This is 100% down to fit. Companies need to really stress this in instructions. Without the proper fit all in ear earbuds will sound terrible. The proper fit transforms them. This said I am still experimenting with the fit of my M9’s. I really want the double flanged versions to work for me but I don't think it will for me because they are a bit large. I do wish they had a couple of sizes of the double flanged versions but for the money your still getting a great value.
These are a ported design. The port is directly opposite of the speaker driver. It is a small hole in the metal housing. My CX300s were sealed and this worked great for noisy things and riding my bike into the wind. The ported design of the M9 still seemed to work pretty well when mowing but I did have some trouble when riding my bike. The wind noise was more noticeable than I expected. I may stick with my second pair of CX300s when riding at windy times.

Other
The amount of extras these come with is impressive for the price. The case is nice, I don't see using it much as its not big enough to put a phone or ipod touch into, but you could fit a shuffle easily into it. The airplane adapter is super nice. I have always wanted one of these but don't travel enough to buy one. Looking forward to trying it out. They came with 3 sizes of one flange ear tips in the bass boost (black) silicone, 1 size of double tip bass boos material. Also 1 pair of double flange tips in a balanced silicone (gray). I found the little covers a little hard to fit on but they all seem to stay.

Comparison to the CX300’s
My CX300’s have been my old reliable workhorse. I do everything in them without worry. I accepted their falts of having some muddy sound (Part of this was due the excessive wear I think I might have on my original pair). I must say that the new M9’s are better just about everywhere and I wont hesitate recommending these to anyone in the market for in ear buds for $20.

Conclusion
I bought my M9’s at Amazon for $16.99 and for the money I would say these are a fantastic value. These are so much better than any of the included headphones that come with any music player it really should be an automatic upgrade for anyone. While I have not experienced the really high end in earbuds and IEM’s I can say that the M9’s as a whole are the best I have heard. They are not without falts but I think I will get use to some of these. Time will tell how much I end up using them in the next few months. For less than $20 its very hard to go wrong.

Will update with a photo tonight.