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All posts by Jennifer Welsh
We recently posted an article related to the importance of equipping your professional kitchen with high-quality cookware and smallwares. The overarching theme of the post – which was more of an overview – was that quality is more important than quantity even if you’re just starting out and money is tight. In this post we’re going to focus on knives, the bedrock of food preparation and the professional chef’s best friend and ally.
Bringing together and hiring the best staff for your restaurant is a top priority before opening. But once your business is booming – customers are streaming in on a regular basis and the feedback is stellar – you have to keep that staff happy and motivated so that you can maintain the high level of excellence that you’ve worked so hard to establish. Nothing in the restaurant industry can be taken for granted; customers are fickle and trends are constantly shifting.
No matter what type of cooking-related business you’re thinking of launching, equipment – and the related budget – is a vital consideration. Regardless of whether you’re opening a small catering concern out of your home kitchen or if you’re jumping into the deep end with a gourmet restaurant in the ritziest part of town, the “meat and potatoes” of your business is not actually edible.
While embracing your sense of social responsibility is reason enough to give back to your local community, doing so also comes with an ancillary benefits for restaurants which make charitable efforts part of their strategies.
We’ve all heard the expression, “You eat with your eyes.” And while your diners aren’t going to chow down on an actual menu design anytime soon, the look of your menus can not only make or break what diners order but also weigh into their overall dining experience.
In a perfect world, each and every diner who visits your restaurant will leave satisfied,
Have you ever wondered how the restaurant business stacks up next to industry-wide averages when it comes to job growth? Well, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) is weighing in, and the answer may come as a pleasant surprise for bar and restaurant workers.
When I was in culinary school, there was nothing I liked more than to sit down at the end of the day and watch a television show about cooking. From MasterChef to Top Chef, the reality ones were my favorite. But over the years many fictional chef characters have won over our hearts and attention, and have become staples of the way people view the culinary world. Others have gained a more infamous name. Here’s our list of the top 7 most popular fictional TV chefs.
1. Monica, from Friends
Monica Geller, played by Courtney Cox on Friends was depicted as having a bumpy career, as do many chefs. Bouncing around from being a cook, to a chef, to a waitress, back to being a chef, being a caterer, a restaurant critic, and being unemployed, her career had definite ups and downs. Monica’s career was also unexpected at times, reflecting the chef career in reality. For example, when working as a restaurant critic, after writing a particularly nasty review about a venue, she made the owner a sauce and was then offered a job as the head chef of the venue.
2. Chef, from South Park
Jerome McElroy, most commonly referred to as “Chef” on South Park was portrayed as a cafeteria worker at the elementary school in South Park. The character was usually viewed as an authoritative figure that the children of South Park could confide in and seek advice from, being more level-headed than most of the other adult residents. However, oftentimes the advice given by Chef was inappropriate. Chef went into the culinary field after giving up on his musical aspirations. In reality, those going into the culinary field are often attracted to the idea of creating and serving food. It is not necessarily a fallback option for would-be artists, rather a career path for would-be chefs.