This year Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday creating a perfect storm for restaurant operators, with the opportunity to make the entire weekend a financial windstorm for many establishments. While not necessarily a “holiday,” the day of celebration generates $10 billion nationwide, and a night out tops the list of how shoppers spend that money.…
Without even taking a sniff or sip of wine, we can get an overall idea about what we are about to enjoy. The first step in the tasting process is to look at the wine in our glass in order to evaluate its appearance. The color can give you hints about the approximate age, what…
Ginger, long a popular spice and herbal medicine, is fast becoming the latest mania, reaching into the depths of culinary corners near and far. Its clean taste makes it a desired ingredient for many dishes, but it is a flavor that easily matches with any fare, from sweet to savory and everywhere in between. So…
Food halls are the latest culinary movement spreading across the United States. In a sense, food halls take us back to a time before there were supermarkets, before there were convenience stores and drive-thrus, back to a time when locally sourced, artisanally crafted was the prime way to buy and consume. So what, you may…
At its most basic, wine can be described as the “juice from fermented grapes…and usually having an alcoholic content of 14 percent or less.” But the definition doesn’t do well to describe the many complexities of a tantalizing wine, nor the rich history of the origin of wine-making. Evidence of early wine-making reaches back to…
Did you know that Super Bowl Sunday is the second largest food consumption day of the year? True fact! The infamous sporting event is second only to Thanksgiving. And now that we know that the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots will be facing off in Super Bowl XLIX, on February 1st, many of us…
Restaurant.org predicts that the year 2015 will bring an overhaul to children’s menus as parents attempt to feed their kids healthier items while dining out. Expect to see baked chicken rather than fried, and more vegetable or fruit options to replace fries and overly sweet desserts. Here’s a recipe for Chocolate-Granola Apple Wedges. We think…
Wine tasting can range anywhere from the simple to the complex, much like the wine itself. A lot of knowledge can take you far, but with just a little bit of background information you can start the tasting process and learn as much as you’d like as you go along. Over the next several weeks I will be…
With the battle over an increased minimum wage continuing, 2015 is likely to bring some changes to the restaurant business as the spotlight turns to the people behind the food—the servers, the cooks, the bus staff, bartenders, host/hostesses…all the employees who ensure smooth operation on a day-to-day basis. The debate over minimum wage is a…
Just when restaurant owners started to figure out how to appeal to the Millennials, in march Generation Zers, with their emoticons and emojis, their iPads and YouTube, SnapChat and Instagram, their tech-savvy minds and digital wherewithal. Before snarling and grumping over these new young diners and all their quirks, perhaps it will be best to…