I love to do fundraising, and I am lucky enough to have a place like JJ’s to host all of my fundraisers. In the past I have held fundraisers mostly for people in Camarillo going through some hardships. It’s a great way to help those in need and have a great time doing it. Now, in the past the most I have raised is about $2,700, my goal for tomorrow night is $3,000! So please come out and show your support!

This fundraiser is being hosted by a wonderful woman I met who has gotten behind the fight against breast cancer due to her mom being a breast cancer survivor. Ms. Alex Luizzi will be at JJ’s tomorrow night selling pins and bracelets for donations during the fundraiser!

So please come out and visit, bring all your friends, try out our wonderful new menu and let JJ’s donate on your behalf.

DON’T LET CANCER STEAL YOUR WAY TO SECOND BASE!!!!

JJ’s is now blessed with some true culinary expertise. Our new chef, Jason Corona is a Director’s List of Achievement graduate of Le Cordon Bleu. In addition to that, he is also the creator of the delicious menu at the Zzyzx Cafe. We now have the pleasure of bringing him on the JJ Brewskys team to transform our menu into that must have food. You know those places that have that one dish that always makes your mouth water… I want to be that place in Ventura County.

Now don’t get ahead of me. We have to give Jason some time to really familiarize himself with our food and our guests so he can grasp what kind of food we need. We will definitely have a new menu with some really delicious things by the holidays… I’ll let you all know when we will be debuting our new menu for everyone to try!

Taryn Gray, Megan O'neil, and myself Dianna Steele

The picture above is the amazing team we had working at the JJ’s booth. Starting on the left we have one of our very talented bartenders Taryn Gray, in the middle is one of my amazing servers Megan O’neil, and then of course there’s me! In addition to the girls we also had one of the owners Dr. Brian Donley working with us. It was the perfect team! 

We met at the restaurant around 10 am and started loading up everything we needed for this event. We were told to plan to serve about 1,200 samples so naturally I was ready to serve 1,300. We packed up pretty quickly and then we were on our way. This was also my first time visiting the Camarillo Ranch House. I know, I know, how have I lived in Camarillo for most of my life and never been to the Camarillo Ranch House? Honestly, I don’t know how that happened because every single person I know has been there and up until last weekend… I had not. Well that is besides the point because I went last weekend and had a blast! 

The house was absolutely beautiful and I was really in awe of this gorgeous tree that our booth was next to. I even took a picture for you all to see! 

Huge Tree at the Camarillo Ranch House

I know, you’re amazed too, I don’t blame you! I just love seeing things that have survived so many years and still provide such beauty for all of us. The barn was also absolutely amazing! I didn’t take a picture, but I had a friend recently get married there and they took their pictures against that beautiful, vibrant red barn. Absolutely classic. 

Anyways, we got there and got all set up within about 30 minutes. I believe next year though, we will be providing much more in our booth design. The best designed booth was definitely the Spanish Hills Country Club…. kudos to you! None the less, we had some of the best food there in my opinion. I was surprised to see so many people serving shrimp and other seafood because a lot of people don’t eat seafood or have allergies to it. We were serving our always delicious Kobe Dog Bites and Spinach Dip. The Kobe Dog Bites are slices of a Kobe beef hot dog wrapped in a pastry with blue cheese crumbles inside, topped with some smokey BBQ sauce. We transformed our Spinach Dip into an easy to eat finger food by making little tortilla cups and filling them with Spinach Dip and topped with some home-made pico de gallo. Talk about YUMMY! I think it’s always nice to have a vegetarian option like the Spinach Dip. 

A couple of places that really stuck out in my mind were of course the chocolate covered strawberries from Bobalu Berries, the cannolis from D’Amore and the sandwiches from California Pizza Kitchen. Drink wise, I always love Eberle Winery and Opolo Vineyards and lucky for me they were both there. Also a big hat’s off to Pacific Beverage for bringing that delicious Apricot beer. Our wonderful representative from Pacific Beverage was there spoiling us with beer. Just a quick moment to say thank you Tara for all the hard work you’ve done for JJ’s over these past years! 

Me and the always amazing Tara from Pacific Beverage

All in all it was a pretty fantastic day filled with good food, good drinks and great company. If you have never attended the Taste of Camarillo, I highly suggest going next year!

I got the chance to meet Geoff last Saturday at a celebration for his recent win. Held in the gorgeously landscaped back yard of George Erb’s home, Dean was surrounded by around 90 of his supporters, family and friends. With food provided by Ottavio’s, a low-key 5 person band in the background, and of course myself providing the beer, it was a great evening. The mood light and celebratory, definitely a well deserved night of fun and good company after the long campaign season.

It was a pleasure for JJ’s to be contacted for such an event, and a personal pleasure of mine to meet Geoff Dean who often comes into JJ Brewskys. A heartfelt congratulations to the new Sheriff Elect Geoff Dean!

The personality of craft beer has taken over our entire business and we couldn’t be happier about it. We try to support California craft breweries by featuring them on both our tap and bottle beer menus. However there are a few select breweries that we hold dear to our hearts, and one of them is Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Sierra Nevada beers are a staple on our tap lines. We always try to support their specialty releases and involve them in other events at JJ’s, like beer dinners and promotions.

This post is really more of a history lesson on how the wonderful Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. came to life. It all started with a beer lover named Ken Grossman. Ken was an avid beer drinker and began brewing his own 5 gallon kegs at home. Using the knowledge he gained studying chemistry and physics at both Butte Community College and CSU Chico Ken opened a store that supplied other home brewers with materials and advice, The Home Brew Shop. He had a dream of opening his own brewery and with the help of his co-founder Paul Camusi, that dream started to come to life in 1978. They began building a small brewery in Chico, CA with secondhand equipment from other breweries and a soda-bottling machine. Using quality ingredients and plenty of hops (what they are now famous for), they created premium craft beers from substandard machines.

The first batch was finally brewed on November 15, 1980… The famous Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The brewery was named after the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one of Ken’s favorite hiking places.

The beer took off. Its popularity grew so quickly that only 9 years later in 1989, Ken’s demand had outweighed his facility’s production abilities, despite numerous upgrades throughout the years. That’s when they moved production to its current site in Chico, CA. Ken equipped the new site with a 100-gallon copper brew house that he brought back from Germany. This was sufficient enough until 1997 when again his demand had out grown his production capabilities. Ken then hired the original coppersmiths to make new barrels to match the originals, and that is what’s making those delicious beers today. They are now able to produce almost 800,000 barrels per year!

It has been Ken’s stand to only use premium ingredients to make premium beer throughout the years. That still rings true today. Ken is still personally involved in every aspect of production and loves his craft beers…. And so do we!

Dad’s work hard all year-long to provide for their families and they deserve to relax. We have quite a few fantastic father’s on our hard-working staff and I would like to take this chance to show them some appreciation. A big thank you to Erick, Mike, Victor, William, and Brian… we are lucky to have such awesome men on our staff. We appreciate all the hard work you do for us in your time away from your precious little ones. I would also like to show some appreciation to Jonathan and Chris, who spend some awesome quality time with their nieces and nephews.

It takes a lot to be a father, but it takes even more to be a great father. So to all you super hero dads out there… Happy Father’s Day!

So now you know the place to be for next year… but if you need somewhere to hang out for the rest of baseball season and the upcoming football season, you know where to find us!

Well I have been MIA for a little while due to some medical needs but I am slowly coming back. I have noticed however that this blog has had quite a bit more traffic and I just want to say thank you! Please feel free to send me comments, I would love to hear what you would like to know about the restaurant and anything else.

We are in the middle of a very intense NBA finals season right now and we at JJ’s appreciate all the fans coming out to watch the games with us. We are doing everything we can to make JJ’s the place to go for sports. To all you Laker fans out there, think of us when you need a place to watch the game. You can sit at a beautiful bar with 6 HD televisions, and $3 pints during any NBA finals game!

Continuing in the sports fashion, we are always showing the Dodger game as well. All you baseball fans out there, let us know how we can become the place you go to watch the game!

This post is short and sweet, once I am back full-time I will be on here all the time so you know what’s going on…