Menu Development

“Customization” a Food Trend I Can Live With

Posted by on Feb 8, 2012 in Consulting, Menu Development, News | 0 comments

I tend to agree with a few of these trends. I especially believe in the customization trend. I started my business partly because I was tired of seeing the same items menus across the city. Chicken Ceasar especially. Why? I wanted to help culinary teams fine their “inner groove”.  

The top five food trends according to a culinarian | QSRweb.com.

Every kitchen has a soul. It is a collaboration of many factors and each should have a unique identity. Just because some else has it on the menu does it mean you have to. I have termed this the “vanilla” factor. Kitchens as well as guests want to have their unique twist on a dish and make it there own. By developing a menu writing formula and recipe writing processes based on things a kitchen believes in and does consistently well will allow continual improvement by the kitchen. It will also allow you to easily make special requests or custom orders possible.

A kitchen should focus on producing a core group of recipes very well and then with the right guidance from the kicthen a well trained sales person should be able to easily create unique menus. The sales person can be a waiter, catering sales manager or the receptionist who is the only one office. If they understand the way menus are put together it can work.  CCS is has developed a series of worksheets for custom writing menus  which details cooking methods best suited for a particular protein, provides an internchangable list of seasonal sides, sauces and garnishes which can combined in any manner based on the desires of the person writing the menu item. There is no experimenting on the guests with a on-the-fly menu item because it sounds good.

For more information please contact us

 

How do people really see your menus?

Posted by on Feb 4, 2012 in Consulting, Menu Development | 1 comment

Menu writing is very important in todays market place. Have you every really thought about how they see the words on the menu. Words are a power medium. The wrong words used out of context can be devistating and bad for business. Everyone sees and interprets the words in a book diferently. Some guests who are detailed orientated my see a spelling mistake and become annoyed, they don’t see the great combination of flavors on the menu. They start looking for more mistakes. Are they focused on choosing dinner or commenting on your bad english. Sequencing of words is also overlooked sometimes. For example have you ever wondered about the Marinated Grilled Steak at the local bistro. Was the steak grilled first and then marinated. Well that is how it reads. Shouldn’t it really be Grilled Marinated Steak. It is the  logical method of preparation.

So it is interesting to see how someone like Phil Vettel looks at a menu in the following article. Jam: Deconstructing the menu by Phil Vettel. How do your guests critic your menu. It would be an enlightening experience for a third party to review your menu and see how they interpret it. Good questions to think about.

Don’t be afraid to talk to a non-biased person to help you move forward and write great selling menus

 

Planning a New Year’s Eve Menu

Posted by on Jan 1, 2012 in Consulting, Food, Menu Development | 0 comments

I write and develop a lot of menus over the course of a year. From small little snacks to elaborate menus for a fundraising gala based on a specific theme.  After all these years some of the questions I ask  myself when thinking about what to serve are instinctive and come very natural to me. I want to stop for a minute and take some time to write down the process I go through when putting together a menu. In this case it was putting together a menu for new year’s eve for my family and best friends. 

I break down the menu writing process into several steps:

  • Inspiration or Directive
  • Research and Experience
  • Selection of Ingredients
  • Adaptation and Natural Flow
  • Execution

The process started with a vision of a 10-year-old girl who would be there for the evening. She said “can we make home-made pizza?” Great, that starts the process. A direction, a request or need.  Immediately I start thinking about homemade dough. Next I consider the fact that there will be a diverse group of ages at the party and it’s also New Year’s Eve. (more…)

Minimize your catering menus.

Posted by on Dec 8, 2011 in Catering, Consulting, Menu Development | 0 comments

Fewer dishes on your menu done extremely well has always been a trade mark of great restaurants who flurish in good times and bad. As the economy as weeded out the operations with massive menus, smaller operations with clearly focused menu programs continue to succeed. Adding dishes to your menu just to get more customers can be very hazardous. If your menu is not focused on a theme or particular style you begin to create long term problems. When Tex-Mex cuisine started gaining popularity everyone jumped on the band wagon and quesadillas sprang up everywhere. Now they have become so common everyone thinks they need to have them just because. Break the mold and only have them on the menu if you can make them special and perfect everytime. If you don’t they can no longer give you competitive advantage.  Think aboutyour menus, do you need to have that manny items?

For caterers, extensive menus for your clients doesn’t make sense anymore. A printed menu is an illustration of what you are and your style. Most of the caterers in competitive markets are custom driven, so why have them. Develop a system where you build an open forum with the culinary team to function in that manner.  Smaller lists of seasonal of a la carte building blocks of proteins, side dishes etc that the sales team can build upon shows adapability and allows your team to sell proven menu items. Customized Culinary Solutions has developed a sales matrix program that allows for those situations. As described in the following article about smaller one dish eateries as a restaurant trend today, we all know they will the be wants of our catering clients next.

One-dish eateries: Simply delicious – USATODAY.com.

Gourmet burgers provide affordable luxury why not my wedding?

Posted by on Dec 5, 2011 in Menu Development | 0 comments

In the these days of cost conscious brides and cut entertaining budgets, caterers are trying to re-invent the cow and find cost effective cuts of beef, why not try a burger. Think about, 200 of your closest family and friends or colleagues from work, enjoying a gourmet burger. Match that with a local brew, seasonal vegetables for the sides and housemade sauces served family style and that’s an event I would want to go to. Luxury could be American Wygu, Bison or Heritage Turkey, Heirloom Tomatoes, Local Arugula and Brioche grilled with Truffle Butter.  Think about this article and all that could be imagined. Move over tenderloin and salmon combo!

Gourmet burgers provide affordable luxury.

Writing Recipe Names is a Process Not a Random Act

Posted by on Nov 30, 2011 in Consulting, Menu Development | 0 comments

If you are using a computer based recipe management system or thinking about setting one up. You need to think about how you name a recipe.

Over the last ten years I have been involved in setting up, organizing and creating recipe data bases for my own company as well as many catering companies and independent restaurants. It is not as easy as you think. Generally there are scenarios that occur when setting up or cleaning up a recipe data base. The first is the organizing of written recipes that had been created over the years in some digital format for example with wordprocessing software or for those who were more advanced a spreadsheet as they felt energized to do the costing at the same time.  The second which is a typical scene in a smaller operation a collection of photo copies, handwritten notes or a downloaded recipes from the internet all sitting in a folder on the kitchen shelf collecting that thin grease film so common in a commercial kitchen. Both of these systems are not inter-related and are only as effective in supporting sales or creating consistency in your kitchen if they are continually updated or uniformly documented. (more…)

Craft brews and local foods are popular in Britain

Posted by on Nov 29, 2011 in Food, Menu Development, News | 0 comments

For years I have been the brunt of many a joke about the quality of food and dining in England. I am glad there are people recognizing the fact that without the change in food quality and expectations by the young chefs, farmers and producers of England we would not have the gastropub. If you look at the last rash of restaurant openings in Chicago, how many have been based on a English Pub.

I love the creativity associated with the Gastopub. Great beer home made sausages and a casusal environment, what better way to spend the evening out enjoying a meal. I will toast a pint of real ale in their honor.

PS Try the Cask Conditioned Real Ale from Two Brothers Brewery available (sometimes) at Brick House Restaurant in Skokie or a Pint of Mild from Revolution Brewing on North Milwaukee in Chicago. Both true beer drink experiences. So when thinking about your beer menu in your establishment, think real, think local not how cold the the cooler needs to be to turn the lable blue on your bottle.

Craft brews and local foods are popular in Britain – Related Stories – ProChef SmartBrief.

An autumn soup tames wild mushrooms – Related Stories – ProChef SmartBrief

Posted by on Nov 8, 2011 in Culinary Techniques, Food, Menu Development | 0 comments

I was thinking about wild mushrooms as I prepare for my team practice this weekend. When working with any ingredient, I try to see how many different was it can be prepared. Getting the full potential from an ingredient takes time and skills. It is also a great cost saving practice. I take the peels and trimmings to make mushroom reduction to fortify soups and sauces. Here is a quick recipe for a mushroom soup I came across. Enjoy

An autumn soup tames wild mushrooms – Related Stories – ProChef SmartBrief.