Jump to content

What's For Dinner, Take 7


Xray the Enforcer

Recommended Posts

1 minute ago, MercurialCannibal said:

It is just not the cost of ingredients.  We chefs need paid, bro!

i get that, it just seemed that the rest of the options seemed more complicated and technical, and with more expensive ingredients, and i couldn't understand how this was the most expensive starter option,  I don't mind that much, it was f'ing delicious, i was quite relieved, its the 3rd HB restaurant I've been too, and the first one i actually liked.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

i get that, it just seemed that the rest of the options seemed more complicated and technical, and with more expensive ingredients, and i couldn't understand how this was the most expensive starter option,  I don't mind that much, it was f'ing delicious, i was quite relieved, its the 3rd HB restaurant I've been too, and the first one i actually liked.  

Any time you think you can do our jobs buy the ingredients and handle things yourself, mate. 

Wife is concerned my response is hostile.  I know you understand though. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, MercurialCannibal said:

Any time you think you can do our jobs buy the ingredients and handle things yourself, mate. 

Wife is concerned my response is hostile.  I know you understand though. 

 

I'm good, its your craft.  Anyway, what is the main thing which drives pricing in restaurants out of interest?  

Cost of ingredients, technical skill, preparation time, what you think people will pay?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm good, its your craft.  Anyway, what is the main thing which drives pricing in restaurants out of interest?  

Cost of ingredients, technical skill, preparation time, what you think people will pay?

All of those things.

My goal is 25% food cost. I figure out how much things will cost me and then adjust the price on that. I will sometimes charge more if something is hard to make. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We ate at morimoto last night. The food was outstanding. The service was abhorrent. Our cocktails arrived after our first course.  Wine pairings didn't always arrive.  Empty glasses weren't removedette promptly. Sometimes there was a gap between courses sometimes they appeared fast.

The food was impressive though.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That reminds me - I think it's shocking to eat at a Michelin starred restaurant and sit there with an empty glass on your table. I really should not have to hail a member of staff and ask them if I can have another drink. 

Oh, while I'm here - I made these amazing brownies last night, double chocolate with basil. HOLY SHIT. They are amazing. Going to have some for first breakfast now. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Isis said:

That reminds me - I think it's shocking to eat at a Michelin starred restaurant and sit there with an empty glass on your table. I really should not have to hail a member of staff and ask them if I can have another drink. 

Oh, while I'm here - I made these amazing brownies last night, double chocolate with basil. HOLY SHIT. They are amazing. Going to have some for first breakfast now. 

both from your point of view, and the restaurants business plan, the mark up on drinks must be what enables most places to survive, £12 for a pint, fuck off!  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's for dinner? What we have most work nights some sort of slow cooker goodness.  Tonight is a bolognaise sauce - normally turns out quite well and very flavoursome.  We use very lean mince so I don't bother with browning beforehand - normally running out of the door while putting it on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I took my husband for dinner at the Typing Room last week. We had the seven course tasting menu (obviously). Although they only did wine pairings rather than a choice of beer or wine pairings, the first one they poured us was a natural wine and we excitedly told the sommelier that WE LOVE NATURAL WINES so she did almost all natural wine pairings for the rest of the meal. I've not had much experience of pairing them with food but it is definitely something I want to do again - much like with beer, they encompass a greater range of flavours than industrial wines.

Couple of other points about the experience of dining there - it doesn't have a Michelin star (yet) but it obviously aspires to having one and in my humble opinion it's on a par with other starred restaurants I've eaten at. But the overall (not directly food or drink) experience was a little bit less than stellar due to the behaviour of other guests. When we arrived for an 8pm sitting there was a large group of loud male diners (they looked/sounded like city boys/bankers to me) who seemed to have mostly finished eating and we just ordering rounds of drinks. I found this a bit odd since there is a bar adjoining the restaurant where they could have gone (or been asked to go). At one point I had to tell the sommelier that I could not hear her due to their raucous behaviour and she went over to ask them to keep the noise down. But they did still hang drinking around after that.

Also, the actor James Nesbit was at a table nearby and one of his dining pals went over to the table of three women which was adjacent to us and spent, I kid you not, a good half an hour lounging across their table chatting them up (as in, he was stood up but bent over and leaning across the table on his elbows). Surely this is the kind of thing a child does, not an adult - going around the restaurant doing anything but sitting down and eating his dinner? His food was sitting on the table for most of the time he was chatting to these people. We were musing afterwards as to whether this is the kind of thing a decent maitre'd should be managing? In fact, when we described the experience to a friend whose partner does FOH at some fancy restaurants she said perhaps that is why they don't have any stars yet... anyone else in the business like to weigh in on that? @MercurialCannibal

Link to comment
Share on other sites

isis,

that behaviour is fucking abhorrent. 

other guests ruin my dining experience at times as well. a good foh would have moved the bankers to the bar to be loud in.  we will often buy a cocktail for a group just to get them off a table so we can get a new table sat when they are camping.

a guest chatting another table and ignoring their meal is insulting to me as a chef. sit the fuck down and eat, you fuck.

the foh manager should have handled that.

we ate at one of dc's 2 michelin star restaurants friday. the food and service were awesome but it was a bit vibrant in sound and it fit what the restaurant was.

sounds like your meal was at a place that should have been quiet and contained.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Kålpudding. Literally "cabbage pudding". The first time my mom made it I was skeptical, to say the least, but with a little extra salt I found it super tasty. To the point where I've officially designated it as the favourite food of a fictional character I'm writing. Somehow though, the English wikipedia doesn't have an article on it, or even a mention in the list articles for cabbage or pudding dishes! It's not even in the Swedish cuisine article! There's an article about a similar finnish dish, but it's a casserole...

I hope it turns out well, because I had to make rice pudding too which is also something I've never done before. It tasted fine aside from the fact that it's unsweetened as you mix the rice pudding with some ground meat, eggs, and spices as a sort of filling for the cabbage pudding. It sounds like such a weird dish when you talk about it... And then you serve it with boring potatoes. Which I very nearly forgot to put on the stove...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

Some bangin' meatloaf.  Made it low profile so there was more surface area compared to volume because I wanted that sweet, crispy, dank, crust.  

I'm waiting for a meat version of the KoolAid man to come bursting through the wall.

 

 

 

OH YEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

You've made meat sheet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, kairparavel said:

You've made meat sheet.

I'm sorry but isn't this Steak - umms?  The scary thing is, that I actually liked Steak(- umm) sandwiches.

The thing that makes my tongue blister with disrelish is cheese powder and related products - eewww shudder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/17/2016 at 10:36 AM, Inigima said:

Behold the Chocolate Top:

http://i.imgur.com/XScMkZz.jpg

This is the best cookie in the entire world. I grew up eating them and I still love them. I've been trying to figure out how to make them at home and it's like looking for Bigfoot.

 

Probably too little too late but I have an idea.  I have heard that the toll house chocolate chip cookie was invented when a woman was making a batch of standard butter cookies and dropped chocolate into the batter.  Do you think your cookie could be a chocolate chip cookie without the chips?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know enough about buttercream and frosting and similar things but there must be several ways of making it stiffer and stable at room temperature (basically add more starch and/or sugar, I guess... and professional bakeries would also have some kind of stabilizers, after all somewhat similar cookies are sold packaged and keep for weeks).

As for a basic butter cookie: only egg yolk or no egg at all yields less stable but more "flaky" cookies. Similarly replacing some part of the flour with ground almonds changes not only taste but also texture. And of course there is a certain "trick" when combining flour and butter that the dough does not become too homogenuous to yield a more crispy/flaky texture later. So if one has patience one can probably go for trial and error along such parameters.

And always use butter, margarine is really something to be avoided unless there is a very good reason (health reasons are spurious).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...