Not generally, but for people like me? We communicate our lives, by necessity not choice, in phrases, pictures, soundbites. We narrate our days in imagery and our exploits in links.
Maybe it’s time to try a new approach, to move feastcraft to posterous or tumblr, retain the URL, and move from once-a-week long-form to twice-daily curation of images, links, videos, and the occasional rant.
We’re the Google+, the Facebook, the 140-character generation. Blogging isn’t dead, new media isn’t dead, but information doesn’t just want to be free anymore, it wants to be poignant, short, and readable in Flipboard.
Do we still need, should we still have, comments enabled? When even the Grande Old Dame of blogging, Laughing Squid, closes its comments, there’s something to think about. Even today I get ten times the commentary in tweets, on facebook, and in email than I get on the blog itself. Given the fact that one has to click back to the source to comment, this is a powerful indicator that fewer and fewer readers see the value in commenting inside the walled gardens of blogs and prefer the exposure of social network websites.
I’m thinking about all this as I prepare for my trip to Shreveport and am assembling the slides and short video. Post them on Facebook? Google+? Or here?
Already, even with its small-ish user base and closed doors, linking to a post on Google+ results in eight times (!!) the traffic from Facebook and Twitter combined. Maybe it’s just that Google+ doesn’t suffer from information overload, yet, data diarrhea, we won’t know until the floodgates open.
Yes, maybe it’s time to try posterous for a few weeks and see what changes…
Today, sifting through some of the old stuff we have under the stairs that lead down from the changing rooms and shower to the restaurant, I found an old notebook. Someone must have left it there when leaving a stage or externship, it contains notes on old dishes we used to serve ten years ago (I wasn’t around for that, I had to look it up in our ever-growing collection of old menus). Next to a particularly hard to make dish is an annotation:
Fuck that! Who needs to eat this? It’s complicated and none of the buffoons[?] will appreciate the work it takes.
Anyone working in this industry has thought along those lines at least a few times. Our craft is fleeting. Unlike carpenters, our ware doesn’t live on. A quick glance, maybe an oooh or aaah, a chomp, a chew, done. All we can hope, every day, is to leave a lasting impression with the diner.
More often than not, we don’t. Try as you may, dishes, taste, impressions, have long since taken a backseat behind restaurants and chef’s names, collected like pokemon to show off later. And then, once every week or so, someone comes into your dining room who makes it all worthwhile. You glance through the expo window and see their eyes widen, a joyful smile as they dig into something you poured your heart into. And that, more than anything, is why – low wages, long hours, and a life that is nothing like the glamor sold by FoodTV – this is the best job in the world.
Hammock Restaurant in Phnom Penh - now there's a concept I can get behind.
Don’t get me wrong. I love good niche restaurants as much as the next guy. No, wait, scratch that. I love them more than the next guy. I can’t get enough of the next weird thing, oftentimes bemoaning the early demise of the craziest of them all. But there’s limits.
As someone who is at least tangentially well known and never, ever, learned to keep his mouth shut and his darkest thoughts to himself, I get a fair number of requests to state my opinion on someone else’s latest, greatest, idea. Some rock. Some have been done to death and, just like in dot.com, if your goal is to build the next X of/for Y (“Facebook ofHomeless Shelters”, “Twitter for Pregnant Women”) you might be in for a rude awakening when it turns out Homeless Shelters and Pregnant Women use the original just as well.
And then there’s the ones that are just outright whack. Here’s some for your enjoyment (and if you call me next week pitching one of those I’ll come and hunt you down with a dull BBQ fork).
- Fair Flair – a restaurant serving fairground food “gourmet style”. Dumb idea. People eat fairground food at fairgrounds because it’s part of the whole “day out” magic. It has to be fatty, unhealthy, potentially sickening, and expensive. The last thing people want with their funnel cake is a white tablecloth and obnoxious waiters. Twice a year is enough.
- Slimm Jimms (yes, that was the concept name) – a place for people eating less than 400 calories per meal. Yes, yes, I am all for (and have been a vocal opponent of those restaurants who don’t) having low-calorie meals on the menu. There’s always that one person who has to or wants to eat low-calorie foods. But most people don’t go to fine dining to be served the equivalent of half a sandwich at prices rivaling a whole hog.
- South-African-Russian-Spanish fusion. If there is ONE fusion that will never happen it’s “Russian-Spanish”.
- A place selling bowls of living snails and critters. The diner would then take the fare, bring it one of the six or so public cooking areas, and prepare the meal themselves. I love me some escargot and I really liked grasshoppers in honey when I was in Rome, but even I wouldn’t pay money to cook my own common garden pests.
- Gourmet Sandwiches – it’s been overdone. You can try and fail, sell crap at exaggerated prices, or make a chain out of it, but as a concept restaurant it’s one of the dumber ideas.
- “Taco Truck re-imagined as a brick and mortar restaurant” – what a bunch of steer manure. The whole reason food trucks existed[1] was because brick and mortar was expensive and had limitations. Leave the truck and you’ll arrive where it all started – in an old-fashioned restaurant. That’s not “concept”, that’s been done.
[1] “existed” because today’s reality is different. The same players who made entry into the restaurant sector hard or impossible now dominate the food truck and pop-up market. We started trucks because we wanted to be able to compete, but who can compete with someone who has millions to build food trucks and market/staff them? Not the people who couldn’t compete with the brick and mortars who spent millions to push them into trucks in the first place.
“So what do you do?” she asks me.
She’s maybe fifty, twice married, once divorced, waiting “on the papers” to drop the second deal. Too much perfume, too much hair, too much eyeliner, and not enough eyebrows. Botox smooths the forehead and there’s a faint scar where a scalpel took care of the nose. She’s drinking fancy stuff, with umbrellas and fruits in it. I am drinking Jameson, straight up, my nose isn’t fixed, and I smell of the many olfactory delights and pains acquired over a long night in a small, hot, kitchen.
“I’m a cook,” I respond, staring into my glass. Light catches itself inside the liquid, bouncing like fireflies carrying memories, caught in amber, struggling to be set free by a swift motion of my hand. Wasn’t a good day. There are few good days recently, mostly the ones that leave no memory, wash together in the eternal ebb and flow of orders and sends. New faces come and go, someone gets arrested, someone burns their hand and goes back to work with their brother in Boca. The menu never changes. Fire two steak, order up two salad, send two creme brulee, holler if you need anything I’ll be outside in the sweltering heat of a Dallas night, smoking a cigarette next to smelly trashcans and sharing a meaningless second with the bum who lives between them.
“My daughter is a chef,” she says. “She works here.” For a second I fear she’ll ask me where I work. We’re not supposed to sit here, between the five hundred bucks a night crowd and the lonely one-and-a-half divorcees. We’re supposed to work, clean, and leave. But tonight there’s a gala in the main room, 70s chansons penetrate out into the bar where no one sits besides her and a drunken man trying hard to impress the waitress behind the bar with his stories of corporate mergers. “Her name is Janice,” she tells me. She doesn’t ask me where I work, who cares anyways? Not her. I know Janice. She’s our extern, not too bright, not too useful, but not bad enough to let go. She’s just … Janice. The one who complains about being on prep and burns the chicken when she’s not. The one with the OK grades from school, five semesters of “undecided” in college, a boyfriend who picks her up after work, and a designer knockoff purse filled with knickknacks.
“Her boss isn’t too nice,” I hear. “He doesn’t see her potential. I think he’s just scared. She has great grades and the school she’s at cost her father a fortune, and that frightens her boss. There’s a glass ceiling, you know?”
Somewhere inside me, deep below a layer of Jameson and fatigue, the old flame stirs. A rant about kitchens being the last meritocracy, a place that doesn’t care about your gender, color of skin, religion, or even sexual orientation. About how it doesn’t matter to diners who made their dinner, about the nameless hordes of undocumented workers and deadbeats, the social outcasts, the crazy ones, and the weird. How her daughter hasn’t spent a week inside a kitchen to date, isn’t a chef or cook, and should start cutting her veggies herself instead of paying a prep cook with her father’s money and sneaking off to text one of the many guys she strings along in case her boyfriend has to spend time at work.
But I am too tired. My hands, stained from a day of cutting beets, remain on the counter instead of painting pictures into the air as I used to. I follow the fireflies in amber
“fivehundredTHOUSAND,” the drunken man tells the waitress. Her name is Marie. Twenty-something, college, daughter at home with her mother, kid’s father in jail or rehab or something. She’s seeing someone new now, of course, but that doesn’t matter. She’s the smoke to the mirrors behind the bar. Madonna and whore, unreachable, separated from her guests by two feet of polished German oak and chrome. She smiles, that non-committal yet enticing smile that makes tips go up, drinks go down, and drives drunken men crazy. “That’s how much we spent in one weekEND in Las Vegas.” She comes over. “Anything else, hon,” she asks. Everyone is “sir” and “ma’am” for a drink, “hon” for the rest of the evening. “Nah,” I respond. “Time to pack it up.”
Marie smiles her non-committal smile, hands me a voided bill, winks, and turns back to the drunken man who orders another bottle of wine I couldn’t afford if I saved this month’s paycheck and sold a kidney. Not that anyone wants mine anyway.
Divorcee’s hand touches my arm. She’s leaving, too. “Take care,” she says, “my scumbag ex is over there and I need him sober enough to sign a check.” She nods at the main room, the DJ is playing eighties hits now. “Don’t forget to tip your waitress,” I try to smile. “Ah, no worries, my daughter is a chef here, she’ll take care of it.” I make a mental note to remind her daughter of that tomorrow, grab my bag, and head out into the still sweltering heat of a Dallas night.
They’re all the rage, if a good dozen or so vendors at this year’s NRA Show are to be believed. They range from simple (“we’ll scan your menu, you define ‘hotspots’ to click on, and we turn it into an app”) to extremely versatile. And they won’t take off any time soon.
First, there’s the investment barrier. No one wants to wait for their menu, so a stack of those things has to be purchased (a caveat below). Even small restaurants hold about fifteen to twenty printed menus and sometimes run out – fifteen iPads, $499 per, that’s $7500 just to get the hardware in. Add sleeves and secure storage (employees and guests steal $100 knifes, what’s to stop them from stealing a $500 tablet?), and a good ten grand is just the beginning. Now add in the vendor’s technology and money becomes a real issue. Most restaurants of the level that would do those menus don’t have that much to spend over the course of a whole year, let alone in one sitting.
There’s technology. If my menu changes I’ll change it on my computer and hit “print” which gives me thirty copies to be sleeved and handed out. If my iPad menu changes I have to take a picture of the dish, using best food photography practices (or, which adds to my costs, hire a food photographer). If I get in a new wine I drink a bit with my sommelier and she knows how to sell it. On the iPad menu we have to photograph the bottle, write a blurb, and upload all that to the pads.
And there’s restaurant operations. Rush service is hectic. Things drop. How often a month can I afford to AppleCare another broken screen or buy another iPad? I need people to order within a decent timeframe, tablet menus invite playing and longer ordering times. I also need my menus to be clean and crisp – who has time to wipe down every tablet after one use because someone scrolled with sweaty or appetizer-stained fingers?
An interesting exception are the guys at Titbit who don’t have a solution to the technical and procedural issues, but approach the cost factor in a feasible way – equipment (from tablets to tickers) is neither leased nor bought but deployed on a per-table revenue share of $1 with Titbit shouldering the cost of deployment (and taking a gamble on the restaurant’s ability to convert).
Another interesting aspect of Titbit’s approach is the owners’ willingness, nay dedication, to write a wide variety of APIs and interfaces into their product. This allows restaurants to use their old POSPOS (the second POS is “Point of Sale” I leave the first to your imagination) and not incur additional cost.
Lest I sound like a shill, even Titbit hasn’t solved the issue of maintenance and operational overhead and dangers and unless that piece is completed tablets are a nice gimmick but not very practical in restaurants.
I don’t like being a negative nancy. Ragging on the lack of focus on modern restaurant management and the hype for “in” technologies only gets me so far, self-esteem wise. Yes, it’s true – starting the “next Groupon” just means trading one potentially financially disastrous (for clients, that stuff makes a lot of money for its owners and investors I hear) yoke for a new one – but there’s good work that can be done. Here’s five ideas from the top of my head. Continue reading »
As an attendee at the NRA Food, Spirits, Wine, and Beer show in Chicago next week, I am bombarded daily with new and exciting opportunities to improve my business. The emails come thanks to the show’s internal mailing list which is made available to all exhibitors.
There’s tools, tech, packaged food, recruiter services, marketing firms, and more. And they all have something in common, a property they share with oh so many recent “game changers” in hospitality – they’re band aids.
ABC was once THE destination for travelers east from Las Vegas. Today, wedged between McDonalds, Chilis, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, the sign is all that remains. Better "customer loyalty apps" don't fix that.
The pitch is always the same. “Food prices are up, the economy is down, diners stay at home, we can solve that issue,” they promise. Behind those words is usually something along the lines of email bursts, “loyalty management”, cheaper food sources, wicked applications that turn iPads into reservation systems, or “social media” management.
Now, don’t get me wrong – some of that stuff is not bad. I really like the idea of handing my diners an iPad (well, everyone who knows me knows that I’d prefer it to be an Android tablet) instead of a menu. I love the thought of waitstaff with GPS trackers (and if only to catch the ones making nookie in the alley instead of cleaning the floor) or automated inventory tracking based on RFID chips in my boxes of produce and scales in the shelves which alert me if I am running out of kale or if my stock gets older than a week.
Tom's place is owned by Lasse Sorensen, a true Master Chef who once ran THE in-crowd places in LA and competed in the Bocuse d'Or. He moved to DeSoto, IL (pop. 544) to "just cook". What will those apps and advisers do for chef-owners like him?
But none of those technologies can fix what is fundamentally broken with our food service and hospitality system in the United States. They’re band aids, patches designed to prolong the inevitable and make some money off the desperation and ignorance of chefs and restaurateurs in the process.
Chefs are, all things considered, a smart bunch. One has to be if one wants to survive in this business for more than a few weeks. Recognizing vendors trying to pull a fast one on an order of shrimp is our daily business. And it happens. A lot. Sensing and countering staff issues, working with a very diverse and not always friendly crowd of cooks, floor personnel, and pencil pushing managers – that takes brass balls, brain, brawn, and a keen sense of diplomacy and leadership.
But all that is down the drain the very second chefs and restaurateurs hear the words “new media”. From blogs to Facebook, from Yelp to Open Table, if it’s in HTML or Flash or Java or Objective-C, a fear strikes the generally fearless. The same men and women who would never let anyone cook a steak unless they showed a proven track record spanning years, are just too happy to sign up with “social media” evangelists whose ink on their business cards hasn’t even dried, yet, and who have no association with restaurants other than being a “foodie”.
That’s the sad equivalent of Google letting someone design their website because they used a search engine every day for the past three years.
I had this burger at Al's in Albuquerque in March 2009. It was one of the best I ever had. In April the adjacent lots were purchased by McDonalds and IHOP and an Applebees was opened next to a McCafe. Three months later Al's closed.
Here’s our problem. For more than two decades we, the owners, chefs, operators, cooks, and investors in real restaurants, have stood by and watched chains and chain concepts take our bacon. We stood idly as Applebees claimed and co-opted the “neighborhood restaurant” label. We slept while McDonalds became the “family restaurant”. We watched as Chilis became a “Mexican” gastropub, as Macaroni Grill turned “Italian” and we shrugged when Panera redefined what bread is.
We don’t need tools to make us more like them. Applebees is no neighborhood restaurant, It’s a $1 billion faceless corporation in Lexena, Kansas. We can’t compete with that. We don’t have a billion dollars to our name in revenue. And we shouldn’t. But we can beat them on our turf. And for that, there’s no apps on the market.
None of the adverts and invites and “let us talk to you” requests I received in the past two weeks help good restaurants become great. None help with the question of pushing better, fresher, foods. Not one has a pricing structure that will help Uncle Jed and his two cooks and three servers beat Applebees without becoming the next chain eatery.
Here’s a challenge for you, Silicon Valley dwellers, code denizen, app developers. Forget everything you think you know about hospitality. I know your blog with all those pictures gets more hits than mine, but I want you to understand that you know nothing about us, our business, our challenges, and our relationship to social media and the Internet. Then come see us. Stage with us, work with us, watch us. And then come up with that killer app, the great, the one, the perfect, way that allows us to remain us but gives us the tools and ways to make all those online resources work for us.
If you can do this I promise you’ll be rich, famous, and a hero to every chef (real chef, not re-heater) in the States and abroad. Take my challenge?
It didn’t take a study of Vermont farmers’ markets to tell us what we knew for a long time – supermarkets aren’t cheaper. That being said and it being spring, it’s a good time to riff on farmers’ markets.
1. Find your Market
I always assumed this was easy. Ask around in your neighborhood, read the local paper, and somewhere, someplace, there’s some mention of farmers’ markets, opening hours, and weeks of operation. After moving from San Francisco to Dallas I was shown the error of my ways. Two websites helped me get back into the game, LocalDirt and LocalHarvest, both of which sport large databases of markets sorted by distance and seasons and days. Yelp isn’t that bad of an idea, either.
Another way for me to get the goods on the goods was to email a whole range of local bloggers. Some responded, some even made sense. After a week of all that I had my list, a small list of currently open farmers’ markets and a bonus list of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and local meat sellers.
2. Go early
This goes against anything a weekend should stand for, but believe me – the earlier you go, the better the selection. Like finding a market, I assumed this to be general knowledge until I read market descriptions on Yelp and found a lot of “nice place but bad selection” reviews, all of which after a little prodding told me that, yes, they’d been there after ten in the morning. Hit the hay for another hour afterwards if you must (and I certainly do), but be there at opening.
In some cases it helps to, after establishing a relationship, call ahead or order the week before. My favorite meat purveyor always gets my order the Sunday ahead and has my phone number in case something cool comes in (last week he called me about a half hog he could get me, I said yes of course and went to buy another freezer from Lowe’s).
3. Ask Questions
One of the most annoying things in restaurants, diners asking “where does this come from” about every single piece of food we send out, is actually a must when buying from farmers’ market sellers. Quite a few booths seek to amend their offerings and expand their reach by reselling Costco produce or Sysco delivered fruits and vegetables. That stuff is better bought somewhere else, if at all, and defeats the purpose of farmers selling their stuff. Don’t get up early to buy Mexican tomatoes, all I am saying.
Our local farmers depend on markets and shops to sell their produce. The alternative, selling to large warehouse concerns, usually comes at the price of one’s soul and life long bonds to the buyer. Aside from supermarkets and the frozen foods section, those local sellers also face stiff competition within farmer’s markets from the above mentioned resellers. By buying and insisting on local you’ll support your local economy, job creation, and get better product in the process. It’s a win/win.
4. Buy Food
Today’s farmers’ markets are a weird mix of food and non-food items. From insurance policies to seashell jewelry, from ice cream to Fushigi balls. Balls and insurance agents aren’t farmers or produce, so skip over them. This is a little bit the opposite of P.J. O’Rourke’s “don’t vote, it only encourages the bastards” – vote, vote, vote, with your wallet. I know it’s tempting to snag up a genuine crystal pyramid that is guaranteed to improve your test scores by sixty per cent and makes you sleep better if placed on a windowsill facing north, but – again – don’t get up early to buy miracle cures and car wash products.
5. Get Frisky
Do get frisky with your product. If it’s meat, pick it up (it should be vacuum sealed) and check for freezer burn or, if its unfrozen, for ice crystals and mushiness. If it’s produce ask to take a bite, check for bruising and for discoloration. One doesn’t have to be an expert in fruits and veggies to see what’s worth it. Again, this exercise not only brings you closer to your food (and don’t we all need to get a little bit more frisky with our dishes?), it also helps you pick out the stuff that you came for – fresh, seasonal, and local.
6. Speaking of Seasonal
Buying a tomato out of its local season guarantees its origin to be somewhere far, far, away. Don’t buy out of season. That might mean you won’t have the asparagus souffle for dinner, but who wants a crappy tasting hothouse item from Chile when there’s better foods, grown in season, right next to it? The National Resources Defense Council has a database of in-season fruits and vegetables that helped me out a lot (and ‘powers’ the “Buy Seasonal” section of the book)
7. Bring the right stuff
At the very least bring cash (something I forget in this credit card world quite often). Some places have ATM which charge outrageous fees, better bring your budget in cash and leave it at that. Reusable bags are another one of those “must bring” items. I always have three in the back of my car along with a small cooler which, should I buy perishables, I fill with ice from a gas station nearby on my way out. I also bring a stack of business cards, many vendors will call you if they get something cool in. Last, but not least, bring a friend or two and come hungry – wouldn’t be a farmer’s market if we didn’t make a trip out of it and had coffee and cake afterwards.
8. Try the bread
I wouldn’t have guessed, but it appears that the first sign ups for most any farmers’ market operator I spoke to are bakers. Apparently there’s more of them than any other group. And, given the competitive market, they’ll bake their heart out for you. Skip over the supermarket aisle bread next time and get yours from a farmers’ market.
9. Egg’d
Another surprise to me was to find out that many sellers do carry eggs. But because forty states have extremely rigid licensing requirements for egg sellers those generally don’t get displayed. Ask around, some might give them to you as a gift and charge you for the carton they come in. Worried about salmonella? Don’t be, if they’re trustworthy enough to sell you lettuce (which, statistically, gets you sick much more often and more easily) they can be trusted with eggs.
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Take it from there, go out and have some fun at your local markets. There’s nothing cooler than driving home, planning a meal in your head, and knowing it will taste great thanks to local and fresh produce and meats. Did I miss any web sites or tips? Please do let me know in the comments.
Butcher Shop In Valencia, Spain
As long as I have been a cook, butcher, and – to a lesser and much less successful extent – dreamer, I have been repeating a mantra. It goes something like this: “I wish someone with a camera and a keen eye would come and look over my shoulder. I wish that person would not set out to make a glossy “foodie documentary” or a shock piece on animal slaughter, but report.”
As a society we have lost a lot of touch with our food. Not just figuratively, literally. Gone are the days where we knew our beef when it had a name and pulse. We purchase shrinkwrapped, processed, water-injected, pre-brined, wet-aged lumps of meat, handle them with gloves and tongs, and eat them while watching Top Chef on TV. Few know the work, the love, and the art, science, and craft to goes into our food from the pastures and fields to the dinner table.
Butchery is an old craft. Much, much, older than that of a chef, cook, or restaurant owner. Even before rich aristocrats and clergy employed cooks, they paid butchers for their work. It’s a hard job, it’s not a glorious job, and even most meat eaters will balk at the notion of killing, bleeding, and breaking apart one’s dinner.
Turns out, someone did what I’d hoped for. Liza Mosquito de Guia (@SkeeterNYC) of “food curated” did a short film (her blog is all about her videos featuring food and the people making food and was, deservedly, nominated again for a James Beard Award this year) called “The Good Slaughter: A Proud Meat Cutter Shares His Processing Floor“.
The piece struck two very different tones in me. The respect and professionalism with which both her camera and the people on it treated the animals involved, and Liza’s openness to show the “real deal” from stun to blast chiller.
To be perfectly clear – not everyone wants to know, and not everyone is made to stomach, the real work that goes on behind the curtain. But the depicted meat processor is one of the good guys, not a McDonalds or Tyson’s mass slaughter operation, a great example of HOW it can be done if, though, it sadly isn’t everywhere.
With that warning, there is blood, gore, and guts, I highly recommend going and watching. We can’t get back to touching our food fast enough.
A small layer of stout marshmallow between two layers of cocoa jelly. The jelly is made by combining equal parts of agar-agar, cocoa powder, and sugar mixed well into 20 parts of boiling water then let rest to set.
Served with a drizzle of lemon and white and black chocolate shavings.
Tour De Food
