Well, it’s all over, I guess. Not sure if CBS DFW intended it to be that way, but the cat’s out of the sack. Which, funnily enough, I learned from reading City of Ate, whose own Scott Reitz questioned last week if it was wise to pit professional (aka “monetized”) websites like SideDish against celebrity fluffers with press release posts like Crave DFW and small angry people like me.
It’s been one of those months, August, where half the globe gave money, took money, or put keys to board to write something about, for, or consisting of a new, great, way to bring tech into restaurants.
All of them will fail.
One last weepy meta-post, after that I promise a nice hands-on for kitchen hackery tomorrow.
In the process of starting the book a year ago I sent out about sixty emails to people I’d had contact with and considered at least acquaintances at that time. The email wasn’t extra long, I tried to pay attention to the recipients’ schedules, and six responded. Some with tomes of data, others with a line of encouragement. Both were extremely welcome and without them there would be no book, period. The responses came from friends. Not the Facebook kind. And, curiously absent, were even those whom I’d call friends but who had built a Twitter/Facebook empire for themselves.
“He REALLY loves the meat”. One snickers, the other one makes motions indicating his sucking on something long and stiff. That’s why I hate foodies. I am standing at a booth at the local cooking and restaurant fair, trying hard to ignore the gawking masses, preparing a 26 lbs brisket for its cure. I didn’t notice it until then, but yes, my left hand is gliding over the side, feeling the muscle, learning its ways, and telling my right hand where to cut and where to pass.
It looks loving because it is. Lots has been written about respect, and love, and honor, when it comes to cooking. But those are words. Easily abused, easily faked, easily forgotten. This is more, it’s my work. It’s my zen, my conversation with the animal and its offerings. I can spot a fake chef on TV in seconds by how she or he handles their product, long before the awkward cutting motions or weird preparation give it away.
Since the first iteration of Cooking on Hangouts kind of fizzled when the (admittedly much better looking) ladies did it, too, I figured I’ll throw out another topic, see if it’s of any interest, and we’ll go from here. Since that stuff’s my dinner anyways I don’t care how many people I cook in front of, but how often is it you get to tell the chef what you want to be on the menu?
It’s summer so it’s just logical to make a summer dish and I was thinking about a Triple-S for a change, Soup, Sandwich, and Salad.
For the soup I suggest we’ll make a nice chicken stock based veggie soup with toasted strip croutons. The sandwich could be a modified Croque Monsieur with BBQ pork and a small refreshing spinach salad with mandarin orange vinaigrette.
Whatcha think? Following me on Google+ will make you happy, too. I promise :)
Another one steals the goods. You’ll have to google it, I won’t give them more link love than they’re already getting from stealing and using my content (hint: if you’re into the content theft business don’t leave your stats badly protected, your victims might see how much money you’re making with their stuff).
Purists generally puke when I bring up the word “smoking” in combination with anything but an old-fashioned pit or trailers. For me, however, it’s not how one gets there but what comes out in the end. Sure, it might not be “traditionally smoked” but if it’s damn tasty I don’t give a flying whoop.
I bought a Cameron Li’l Smokey at one of my recent trips to Whole Foods ($29 with two boxes of smoking chips), intending to try it on a few sausages and see how it worked. The weather being as it is, however, making sausage in a 98 degree kitchen wasn’t my idea of fun so I slapped some pork belly on it.
This Is Big Sky Country
A while back I wrote a piece about reservation systems and NFC/QR code. One comment linked me to a post which both pronounced and demanded the death of QR code for various reasons. This didn’t jive with my own observations and beliefs so I wanted to run some tests to see if I was far off base.
In test #1 I handed out two different business cards at a conference. My goto card has my URL (this blog) prominently on the front, a new set of 200 cards had none such data and, instead, a QR code linking to my http://f8t.me/ forwarder. At the conclusion of the event I’d handed out 94 business cards carrying the code and 62 showing the URL. While it’s impossible to establish the number of referrals from the URL card, 48 recipients scanned the card and arrived at feastcraft via the QR code. The audience was predominantly non-technical kitchen staff.
Having goofed with test #1 and not established a trackable control I went on to test #2. For this I enlisted the help of friends throwing a beer social to celebrate the launch of a new music label. The audience, young professionals, was handed a free bottle of beer with a custom label on the front and back. The back label showed either a URL (six letters including .us TLD) or a QR code and the instructions “Want another one on the house?”. No further instructions were given.
The resulting URL showed something like this:
QR code scans got a male name, those arriving from the URL were presented with a random female name. Bartenders were asked to mark down orders based on gender and keep a tally of reused names (people telling other people to order from him using “X sent me”).
At the end of the night their little social handed our 340 bottles of beer based on 109 names, male and female.
And here’s some of the numbers behind that magic:
QR codes were scanned for 56% of all orders, 44% came from URL based accesses. QR code users were more likely to pass the “secret code” on to others and to scan the bottle repeatedly (based on IP addresses which is a little bit of a problem since the venue had free Internet which was used by some phones, we did not set cookies or do any other client-based tracking) by a margin of 1.94 to 1.
My third experiment involved the freestanding access to QR codes. Without much explanation as to what to do with it or how to do it, we added a QR code at the bottom (below desserts and aperitifs) of three menus in Dallas, Sacramento, and Aspen. No control was established, I just wanted to know how many people actually used the code.
When scanning the code, a web site telling the user to mention it to the host and receive a free dessert was shown.
Sacramento led the pack with six percent of all diners scanning the code, followed by Aspen with three percent and Dallas with approximately one in one hundred diners. Conversely, fifty percent of all Dallas diners, 38 percent of all Sacramento scans, and only 24% of the Aspen scans asked for their free dessert.
Facit: From my rather unscientific findings, QR codes aren’t dead and for sure don’t deserve to die anytime soon. User adoption is almost as high as with conventional URL which are ubiquitous these days, easier to access (how many restaurants have five-character domain names), and bring out the playfulness in those who use them. Let’s use them more.
Every so often people ask me about cookbook recommendations. It’s a hard question to answer because I, for one, don’t like cookbooks. Yes, I am an avid collector thereof and a little bit of a nut when it comes to community cookbooks (I am currently spending more time driving around in Texas collecting church- and community cookbooks than doing any other fun activity – which, given the heat, is a solid testament to my addiction and closet masochism), but I believe in “foundations before instructions” and few cookbooks give the former.
That said, here’s my nine-piece list of cook books that shouldn’t be missing from any kitchen. Some, like Culinary Artistry, are admittedly more for the advanced cook interested in background, but that shouldn’t stop you from looking at them. All links go to the associated Google Books page, not some affiliate Amazon link, so you know it’s recommended because I like it not because I benefit from it.
Tour De Food
