Restaurants To Add Simplicity to Quality - Eating In, Out.

Continuing our focus on the simple pleasures of life, we’re going to take a deeper look this week at what the industry has recently termed haute/casual.

Though we’ve shown a moderate gain in revenues these past few months (at least 10% higher than last year at the same time) the one trend that hasn’t recovered has been decadent dining. Diners are still avoiding upscale restaurants in favor of a more simple, independent, one-of-kind-type eateries. And, for once, the industry is changing to suit them.
 

Focusing on simple and recognizable dishes puts customers at ease, according to Lesley Chesterman of the Montreal Gazette. Finding inspiration in street food, bbq pits, sugar shacks (think of Michel Picard’s new Cabane à Sucre) and unpretentious bistros, dozens of Montreal chefs are putting out large portions that focus on the scrumptious over the luxurious. It was a hot button topic at the American NRA conference in May as well… Restaurants that specialize in Fast Casual  (Au Bon Pain, Panera etc.), restaurants that have always capitalized on a growing desire for simple foods led seminars on how to set yourself apart through a concentration on using ingredients of exceptional quality in uncomplicated combinations.

The same trend has slid in to the bar scene as well. Canadian restaurants are moving bar food up a notch with the same attitude; mac n’ cheese, fish and chips and sliders are all getting ritzy re-visits. Furthermore, these same chefs have also coped to exploiting their staff when it comes to up-tweaking older, workhorse-esque, dishes. Ask your employees what they enjoy eating when dining out or eating in and you’ll discover a wealth of information you probably haven’t ever before considered.

Across the water, Greece has embraced a tradition that had been sadly ignored for the past few decades, the time-honored taverna. For Greeks, dining has always been discourse’s sad cousin; so the reason d’être for a taverna was to provide the comforts of home while one was, well, not at home. The recession has reminded people of the joys of eating in, so it makes sense that entrepreneurs are finding success with homey dishes.

Best of all? The critics (in addition to the customers) are licking it up and asking for more; Food and Wine Magazine, for the very first time in its entire history, actually chose the owner/operator of a food truck for one of its Best New Chefs 2010!

Going With The Grain - Harvesting Local Wheat

Against most culinary adages, I'm going to recommend that you begin cutting with the grain. Not meat of course! But locally harvested, indigenous, grains. Last week's article was about salt; this week, we're talking about 'the salt of the earth’.

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There is next to nothing that we consider as simply satisfying and as fundamentally necessary as bread. When we're doing well, we're the breadwinners and the upper crust, when we're being punished; we eat nothing but bread and water. In recent years we've seen the locavore movement devour vegetables, fish and grass-fed meat, so grains must be the next great frontier.

These grain pioneers were out in force, earlier this month, at the fourth annual Kneading Conference! Skowhegan, Maine, hosted this year’s celebration of artisanal baking with locally sourced beans and grains. Farmers, millers, bakers, oven builders and random curious visitors brushed shoulders with Jeffery Hamelman, Bakery Director of King Arthur Flour as well as Fred Kirschenman, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, previously a member of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board, and many others. Demand for this kind of local northeastern grain is being fueled on both sides of the fence; consumers crave the nuttier, richer flavor, while bakers are excited by the challenge as well as comforted by the decrease in ecological impact. According to many of the conference’s key organizers, one of the greatest aims of the conference is to let people know they are not alone.

And they’re not. From bakeries in Massachusetts to flour mills in Pennsylvania to farms in Vermont, everyone is investigating local wheats. Cayuga Pure Organics is the first vendor to sell locally grown grains, beans and flours in Manhattan, while Island Grains, a grain-heavy Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) co-op in Vancouver, celebrates its second birthday this year. Even Californians are moving away from a total reliance on midwestern wheat. Everyone is excited about the benefits: from the obvious (reducing your eco footprint and contributing to your local economy) to the more obscure (heirloom wheat varieties, which offer exceptional tastes and unique textures, are in danger of being completely forgotten).

Of course there are still issues to be confronted. Frank discussions at the Kneading Conference highlighted the lack of info-structure (the mills and processing facilities) for this largely fragmented movement. There’s an increased cost to consider, as well, according to Cayuga Pure Organics’ liaison, Tycho Dan. If you bought Cayuga's local grains by the container full, you would be paying at least thirty percent more than traditional varieties. Additionally, like all “natural” things, consistency can be a problem. But bakers call it a joyous challenge, rightly claiming that an anonymous commodity isn’t nearly as appetizing!

So let’s face up to facts. The honest truth is that transporting supplies via road or rail is becoming less and less sustainable. We have to start investigating alternative options now, before we’re out of goods…and ideas.

In other words, completely abandon those old half-baked schemes and let’s get this local grain movement on a roll!

*Don’t forget! Bread isn’t the only great use for local grains; think about quenching your thirst with a locally sourced wheat beer.

Working with Low Sodium - Shaking Out That Salt.

Despite all that the Food Network, Morgan Spurlock, and the Slow Food movement, has done to improve our understanding of the food/body equation, North Americans are no closer to being healthy. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study showing that nearly 25 percent of American teens have abnormal 'blood lipid' levels - this includes high levels of LDL (the bad) cholesterol and low levels of HDL (the good) cholesterol, along with high levels of trigylcerides which can clog arteries - and that more than 1 billion adults overweight or obese globally. Surprisingly, much of the blame is being laid on those advocating a supposedly 'healthy' diet: Jonny Bowden, PhD, C.N.S, and weight-loss expert claims that it's the low-fat craze that's caused most our 'big' problems. Trying to eliminate edible fats brought on high-fructose corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated oils, leaving consumers with even greater physical fats than ever before.

These days, most people are catching wise to the hype, realizing that it's the false focus on starches and fats that are actually causing the problem and realigning their focus on a more insidious danger...Salt. According to EatRight Ontario, the Government of Ontario's attempt to connect their residents to registered dietitians and better resources for healthy eating, sodium's main purpose is to regulate the water balance and blood pressure in your body. Good in small doses, but eat too much and you dissipate all the water, leaving nothing behind but a sky-high blood pressure. 

The food industry has already started to step away from the ubiquitous shaker. Three years ago, ED Foods introduced Luda H, soup bases and gravies with 78 percent less salt, while at the beginning of this year, New York City unveiled a broad new health initiative encouraging food manufacturers and restaurants to curtail their salt use, and just a few months ago, Subways, Starbucks, Mars Food US and even Unilever agreed to cut the salt in their products by 10 percent over the next two years. 

Still, many restauranteurs have expressed concern over any possible mandatory regulation as it's very difficult to adjust the sodium content without losing flavor and/or general appeal. Sodium reduction has to be done on an ingredient by ingredient basis otherwise you risk an unpalatable product. Best to start voluntarily expanding your seasoning horizons... Lest all governments actually start enforcing a 1000$ penalty such as the one that New York State is considering.

But don't waste your salt on tears! Here's a list of great ways to avoid sodium based on food style and type. Although it's phrased to apply to the consumer, it could also be a great idea source when you sit down to write your menu. 

The Bottled Water Dilemma - Tap Water Still Runs Deep.

"Good Evening, may I interest you in a bottle of water?..."

It's the classic server push...and responsible for quite the added bit of income for any restaurant. Working as a server in my younger days, managers always made it a point to remind us to sell the bottled water. A glass cylinder of Voss (supposedly taken from an aquifer "shielded for centuries under ice and rock in the untouched wilderness of Central Norway") can be sold at the table for around eight to twelve dollars, while a case of twenty-four will usually only set the house back by about thirty; Nearly 90% of that Voss becomes pure profit, which can be awfully easy for a restauranteur to swallow. 

On the other hand, that sip might just choke you when you realize, asides from lucrative, bottled water may also be the most quintessential of all environmentally unsustainable choices. Seventeen million barrels of oil are required just to produce the containers that hold the 53 billion gallons of bottled water consumed annually (enough oil to fuel one million cars for the same period of time). And that's not even including the costs involved in shipping these bottle-shaped environmental bombs from Fiji or Évian-Les-Bains. In early March, the United Nations admitted that bottled water wasn't sustainable, right on the heels of Inside The Bottle's release of the animated film "The Story of Bottled Water", sparking international debate. 

So, despite the lost revenue, many restaurants are choosing to either restrict bottled water options or to eliminate the option entirely. In return, these restaurants get to ride the crest of public opinion (Giles Coren, restaurant reviewer for the London Times, claims that he will only give top marks to establishments serving a locally bottled water or none at all), they get to act in the best interests of environmental stewardship, and they get to, just generally, sleep well at night. But the money aspect is certainly not a wash; restaurants operate on such a fine financial line! So how to resign yourself to this lost income?

Well, firstly, you can write it off your budget for advertising: sites like Canada's Green Table, the U.S's Responsible Purchasing Network and Corporate Accountability International, make it their business to proudly proclaim which restaurants have made the blue-green leap of faith. Local news sources will also probably jump at the chance to do a piece on your ban (like ABC's coverage of the bottled water debate, for example).


Secondly, if you'd like to put a bit more muscle behind it, you can invest in a filtration system or a CO2 injector and offer home-filtered water or house-made sparkling at a premium, alongside the option of tap like Alice Waters does at Chez Panisse. Rather than making the lack of bottled water a liability, make it a stance, and people will drink it up. Pun definitely intended. 

(For more ideas, keep your eyes on Montreal come september. Ed's hometown is hosting this year's International Water Association's World Water Congress and Exhibition). 

The Where and Why of Purchasing Ethical Meat - Conscientious Omnivorism as the New Black.

In view of the current Gulf Coast situation (which, by the way, still seems to have no solid solution) it seems like a good time to discuss some sources of protein other than fish.

Once upon a time, not eating meat was the easiest and most obvious way to make a moral food choice: Factory farms are among the most pollutant and inhumane of animal producers. However, as professionals, we can’t possibly eliminate such a profitable, and delicious, item from the menu. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t make ethical choices. Thanks to some conscientious and purposeful purveyors*, green sources for pork, beef, eggs and veal have become increasingly available. Proponents of these farmers argue convincingly that the methods employed do not have the same environmental interactions as industrial production. In addition, not only are these animals being raised humanely with a minimum of methane production, but they are also being raised in a more traditional manner (i.e. grazing on a free-range grassy pasture), resulting in a more complex and exceptionally tasty meat.

Admittedly, these steaks can take a cut out of your budget, but customers are also willing to pay more for moral menu items. San Francisco-based Context Marketing released a study a few months ago demonstrating that nearly 70 percent of U.S. food shoppers are willing to pay more for food that is produced to higher ethical standards. The study also asked respondents to identify which qualities and claims about moral foods were most likely to encourage their being purchased. Over half agreed that humanely raised meat with no supplemental hormones and no antibiotics were very important. In the past, abstaining may have been only way to be sure of making an appropriate dining choice but now even staunch vegetarians are choosing to eat meat in order to help promote ecologically sustainable and humanely-raised choices.

As some of the world’s largest consumers of meat and meat by-products, we food professionals have a strong hand in guiding available options. Support ranchers and farmers who are making wholesome decisions and we can make eating meat the easiest and most obvious way to make a moral choice. Long live the conscientious omnivore!

* Azaluna Brands, currently producing heirloom eggs and mother’s-milk-fed veal, originated as a project for students at Tuft’s University School of Veterinary Science and thanks to Dr. George Saperstein, professor and department chair, has blossomed into a fantastic resource for ethical animal husbandry. Here’s a great interview with the Doctor where he shares his thoughts on meat and morals.

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EDITED TO ADD:  Still no signs of improvement on the Gulf Coast. 

Sous Vide Cookery - Doing It Under Pressure and In A Bag.

Anyone growing up in the early sixties should be familiar with the boil-in-a-bag dinner. Before the widespread advent of microwaves, a short-form re-heating method was to drop your entire meal (carefully sealed in plastic) into a pot of boiling water. Of course, vacuum sealing has been recognized as a valid preservation technique from even farther back. But the combination of the two, their subsequent adoption by your higher-end professional kitchen, and the consequent coining of the term molecular gastronomy, has been sliding around the edges of the culinary scene for only two decades or so. These days more casual restaurants, and even some home cooks, are experimenting with what we’re now calling cooking sous vide. Sam Gundy, co-owner of Olliffe, a high-quality meat shop in Toronto, wrote a list of the top 10 carnivorous trends to watch in 2010. Right at the top? Sous Vide.

But will it be more than just a fad? A curriculum advisor from the Culinary Institute of America once told me that culinary schools have to be incredibly careful when choosing new courses; as respected institutions, they really can’t afford to chase a trend that might disappear tomorrow. So I think it speaks of the enduring nature of this particular cooking method that I’d like you to check out The French Culinary Institute’s primer on sous-vide cooking. Great temperature guides, thorough explanations and it’s well written to boot.

Now, unquestionably, as a technique, sous vide cookery has certain problems; it's much more reliable when applied to vegetables than to certain proteins, it creates a unique product but doesn’t necessarily always taste better than more traditional methods, and the professional-grade tools are quite expensive (my favorite is Polyscience). On the other hand, when used appropriately, sous vide can definitely create the sublime. So why not make up your own mind? Follow these instructions for making an immersion circulator out of a beer cooler, stage a competition, and see which technique will have it in the bag.

Changing Portion Sizes to leave Guests Happier and Healthier – A Small Bite for a Man, a Large Leap for Mankind.

There’s no doubt about it, people are finally paying more attention to what they’re putting in their mouths. What they’re putting into their mouths and, consequently, into their bodies. Offering healthy (or at least healthier) choices isn’t really an option for the industry anymore. Unfortunately, if you’ll pardon the pun, customers want to both have and eat the cake, which makes transforming an established menu an awkward process. Enter portion control and enter a solution: Offer tiny tastes of your traditional dishes and find that happy medium to satisfy your customers. Mignardise, Amuse-Bouche, Canapé, Oh My!

There are several leaders on this trend: T.G.I.Friday has had amazing results with their “Right Portion – Right Price” menu, now heading into its third year. Fashion Week 2010 in London unveiled an impressive new crop of canapé-centric catering companies, while chefs like Gray Kunz, Wylie Dufresne, Anito Lo and Jean-Georges Vongerichten have always used the tiny taste to test-drive a new composition before committing to it on a menu.

Whether you let your patrons choose to have a dish pared down, or whether you space out smaller dishes with intermezzos and the like, just make sure that you let your customers take their time. No matter the size of the bite, guests who feel as if they have the time to literally pay attention to what they’re putting in their mouths, definitely leave happier.


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Confused by the lingo? Here’s a great summary of their history and definitions.

The Facility of Sustainability - Which Fish are the Right Fish?

It’s easy to make the decision to focus your menu towards more renewable proteins: You’re helping to replenish the environment and you’re saving money – without the big name, a fish rarely costs the big bucks. But how to implement the change? Loblaws, for example, has announced plans to only sell eco-friendly fish by 2013. Yet which fish are the right fish and what are the right words? Navigating the murky waters of sustainability can definitely be a challenge.

Thankfully, there is the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to help! A U.K.-based non-governmental organization founded in 1977, the MCS is dedicated to protecting marine wildlife and preserving future fish stocks through educational outreach and proactive conservation campaigns. In my opinion, their best contribution is a frequently updated list of which fish to purchase and which to avoid – including an explanation why. Actually, their website is an absolute potpourri of information designed to educate the food service professional looking to go green. They even have a handy guide that you can print out and keep with your other purveyor-related papers. So it’s easy…once you know how!

Brilliant Thoughts - Hot Food Trends in the New Year

Bienvenue à 2010!
This month marks the very welcome beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. Although there will likely still be a bit more walking in the dark in 2010, most of us are starting to feel the situation brightening. No better time then to implement some bright new ideas! Every year, the National Restaurant Association (a U.S.-based advocate for the professional culinarian) polls over 1,800 chefs to determine the up and coming trends for the next twelve months.

Unsurprisingly, locally sourced products top almost every category for the industry. Equally unsurprising, most respondents cited food items that concentrated on health, in different forms, as an important trend in the upcoming year. These items ranged from creating entrée salad options for children to investing in gluten-free beer! Yet the best consensus in my opinion? Nearly three-quarters of the chefs surveyed agreed that creating menu items around underused cuts of meat and non-traditional fish - read inexpensive and readily available - is going to be super-hot in 2010. Save the environment and save money? Makes bright sense to me!


EDITED TO ADD: Check out how restaurants, supermarkets and cookbooks are putting these trends to work in Calgary!