Tag Archives: Foodie

January 9, 2015 · 11:43 am

Wine And Winning

Foodie Friday! I don’t know about you but I enjoy a glass of wine with my meals when I dine out. Unfortunately, there is no faster way to run up a restaurant bill than to order wine. I’m pretty familiar with many of the better low-cost wines from around the world and I tend to seek them out when I’m dining out. Usually they cost anywhere from 2 to 3 times what I know I would pay at retail.

This image shows a red wine glass.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This sets up a classic problem. Restaurants make a good amount of profit on selling wine and liquor and I certainly don’t begrudge them that. I would rather, however, pay them a lot for a really great dish that I know I can’t possibly make at home or for spectacular service. Paying $35 for a $12 bottle offends me, frankly.  The restaurant’s priorities are out of sync with mine and that’s never good in any business.  As a result I (and a number of my wine-loving friends) have made it a habit to seek out BYOB restaurants.  We bring our own wine and spend our money on food.  That’s a missed profit opportunity for the establishment, especially since we avoid “corkage” charges religiously.

Lately, quite a few nearby restaurants have done a very smart thing.  On what are their slow nights they offer half-price bottles.  Has this enticed us out on a Wednesday night?  Yes it has.  Which points to how we all need to solve business problems no matter what our business.

In this case the restaurant is selling the wine at a small markup, nothing like the 100%+ they usually charge.  More importantly, they have more covers on slow nights, and their overhead doesn’t change if they restaurant is full or empty.  As a customer I think of it as a big win, and going out Monday or Wednesday is fine with me, especially since it is generally slower, the service is better, and the kitchen usually more attentive.  I might even buy a much better bottle than usual which helps the turn over the wine stock or order an additional dish.  In other words, it’s a big win for everyone.

Isn’t that how every business dilemma need to be resolved?

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January 2, 2015 · 9:59 am

Top Foodie Friday Post Of 2014

Since it’s Friday I thought I’d finish the week of reviewing the most-read posts of last year with the most-read Foodie Friday post.  This one is from April 11 and was originally called “Sinkers vs. Floaters.”  In all candor it tied two other posts – “Pumpkin Eggnog” and “Why Saving The Pots Is Bad Business” – as most read.  Since it was the oldest and kind of one of my favorites, I’m reposting it.  Enjoy – back to new rants next week!

It’s Foodie Friday and this is the last food-related post before the start of Passover.

matzah ball soup

Photo credit: h-bomb)

In honor of that, I thought I’d raise one of the most important questions this time of year brings:  sinkers or floaters?   I’m talking about matzo balls, of course, and the question of whether they should float in the soup like little clouds or sink to the bottom like rocks is a matter of serious debate around the Seder table.  As it turns out, the debate contains some instructive business thinking as well.

I’ll preface what I am about to say with an acknowledgment that I am not a neutral party.  I have some definite thoughts about matzo balls.  I should also add that here in the New York area, many non-Jews eat a lot of matzo ball soup year round so the debate isn’t limited to Passover tables.

The basic recipe for matzo balls is simple.  Matzoh meal, eggs, fat of some sort, and liquid.  That’s where agreement stops.  The primary aspects of the discussion involve the following (almost Talmudic) questions:

  • Should the kneidlach (Yiddish for matzo balls) sink or float in the soup?
  • Should they contain schmaltz (chicken fat) or margarine or oil?
  • Should seltzer be used to “leaven” them?
  • Should the egg whites be separated and whipped to add lightness?
  • Should they be boiled in salted water or in the soup broth?
  • Should they be the size of golf balls or tennis balls?

There are some minor issues including the use of parsley and other seasoning but the above are the main elements.  Every family has their own answers and even within a family there is disagreement, especially if there are two grandmothers involved.  Which brings us to the business point.

There are few things more simple and yet as complex as these little dumplings.  The risk one runs when just assuming they can make them without careful thought to each of the above is that the debate rears its ugly head at the table and a familial brouhaha ensues.  The same problem happens in business.  We often look at seemingly simple issues without a fully thinking through the many complex underlying issues that can affect how well the final product fares.  That can be a huge mistake and it’s always worth a few minutes thinking through those issues before jumping into a problem.

Floaters with a nice “chew”, by the way.  Yours?

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December 26, 2014 · 11:38 am

Sous Vide

Image via jetcitygastrophysics.com

It’s a special Foodie Friday for me. I received a holiday gift of an immersion circulator yesterday. It just might be a catalyst of large changes in how I cook. It also got me thinking about the business point which is our focus today.
What one does with an immersion circulator is to cook using the “sous vide” method. You French scholars out there will recognize that the term means “under vacuum.”  You place whatever you’re cooking into a plastic bag, extract the air, and seal it. That can be as fancy as one of those Foodsaver devices or as simple as a zip lock bag.  Either way, what happens next is the magic and where my gift comes in.

The bag (or bags) is placed in a water bath.  The immersion circulator holds the water at a steady temperature which is the desired end temperature of the food.  So, for example, you might want a steak cooked to 140 degrees.  That’s how you set the circulator.  The food never gets warmer than the water it’s in, so the method is pretty foolproof.  It cooks to an even temperature all the way through – no overcooked parts, no raw parts.  Because it’s in a sealed environment no moisture is lost either. When you’re ready to eat, most cooks will take the product out of the bag and, in the case of most proteins, put them briefly in a very hot pan to sear them.  Other than that it’s really “set it and forget it”.  Which is the business point.

Sous vide cooking doesn’t require much attention.  That is dangerous.  Chef Thomas Keller wrote “Eliminate the need to pay attention and you eliminate the craft” in his book on Sous Vide.  I agree, and we need to be mindful of the same thing in business.  Part of what we do is to set up processes that work extremely efficiently without a lot of hands-on from managers.  That’s dangerous.  First, no process is foolproof (in sous vide a bag could rip or, if cooked way too long, the food can become mushy).  Second, as Keller says, the hands-on part is the craft of business.  While data extraction, as an example, might be automated and hands-off, what we do with it is very much the craft.

I’m excited about trying my new toy this weekend.  As in business, I’ll do so mindful that while the process may be “foolproof” the designers might never have met a fool such as me and pay a lot of attention.  Make sense?

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