Winners of the Pub Food Guide 2014 Announced

More than 100 reviewers participated in the 2014 guide, which includes up-to-date information on more than 400 hotels across New South Wales.

Fifteen pubs received three schooners, the top honours of the awards.

The Woolwich Pier Hotel took the title as the eftpos Best Pub as it’s a “shining example” of what a pub is all about, from its menu to its vista of the river, its children-friendly atmosphere and its service, the guide said.

Guide editor Keith Austin described The Woolwich Pier Hotel as typical of a “NSW’s modern pub scene”.

Best Newcomer Hotel was awarded to Marrickville’s The Henson, which is considered a pub for the whole community.

“It has a playground out the back….and there’s even a pub that had clowns to entertain the kids,” Austin said.

In terms of the most family-friendly hotel, however, Good Food crowned The Belrose Hotel in Belrose for its jungle-themed playground and friendly staff.

And with the burger trend still going strong, The Commercial Hotel in Gerry was praised for its rendition of a pub burger: saltbush lamb with beetroot, caramelised onion and a side of sweet potato rounds with mayonnaise and curry-spice dip.

According to Austin, some of the biggest changes in the pub world include the move to cater to more families by offering family-friendly settings as well as a move to improve the quality of food and drinks on offer, including making ingredients in-house and sourcing quality craft beers.

Source: http://www.hospitalitymagazine.com.au

Brahimi to Open Guillaume at Darcy’s Restaurant Site by Easter

The new restaurant will highlight Brahimi’s food philosophy, where fresh, high quality produce is the key, and diners can expect an ever-changing menu that showcases the seasonal produce of the day.

Brahimi’s Guillaume at Bennelong team will exit the site when it closes at the end of the yearand move over to guillaume with him, including his head chef of 12 years, Jose Silva and head sommelier Chris Morrison.

“My team and I are so excited at the prospect of this new restaurant. It is a fresh start for us in a wonderful venue, full of character and history, a real Sydney institution,” said Brahimi

“We have some ambitious plans that I believe will raise the standard of what we do to a whole new level. I believe it will make the perfect home for my team and me to create something very special.”

Brahimi is incredibly grateful to be granted the opportunity to open his restaurant at the site, which he, like many Sydneysiders, holds close to his heart.

“Attilio Marinangeli is one of Sydney’s notable restaurateurs and Darcy’s has been an iconic restaurant for more than thirty eight years. I am grateful that Attilio is giving me the opportunity to establish my new restaurant in that beautiful restaurant space,” he said.

“Like many Sydneysiders I have a strong sentimental attachment to Darcy’s. My wife and I dined there to celebrate the birth of our first daughter and we loved the intimate and elegant atmosphere. We have since had many happy occasions there and we now look forward to many more to come.”

Following council approval, renovations are expected to commence at the 92 Hargrave St, Paddington site in early January.

Much hype and controversy surrounded Brahimi’s departure from Bennelong, particularly as the Opera House Trust sought to find a new restaurant to fill Guillaume at Bennelong’s void.

Restaurateur Frank van Haandel was eventually chosen to take over the site, which will be occupied by Bennelong by Stokehouse from May 2014.

Guests enter the Cliff Dive via a staircase illuminated only by a neon sign that leads down to the Tiki-style venue.

“It’s not tiki in the 50’s Polynesian way,” Alex Dowd, co- owner, told Australian Bartender. “What we’re re-interpreting it to be is more about the Pacific – more regional. So we’re saying it’s a Papua New Guinean dancehall.”

The space features a large dance floor with brightly coloured fish lanterns hanging overhead and two bars, one of which is designed to look like a deep cave.

Cliff Dive serves beers in cans, offering everything from Yo Ho Black Porter from Japan to tins of Tiger Beer, Bingtang and Brooklyn Lager. Much like Tio’s, the venue also offers  tiki-inspired cocktails for ten dollars, including its Mojito and Supa Colada.

Dowd said that there will be a “dumpling-wonton, pan-Asian kitchen” at Cliff Dive.

“You always want to have, when you have a bar that serves food, you want to have food that’s small enough that you can hold while you have a drink,” he said.

Source: http://www.hospitalitymagazine.com.au

Cookbooks Connect Us to What Springs from the Good Earth

Many of the best new cookbooks are all about the garden. No longer do their authors act as if food originates in the grocery store.

Three new cookbooks emphasize food plucked fresh from the soil, the beauty and nutritional value of vegetables, and how to cook what you grow yourself or pick up at the local farmers market.

“Hedgebrook Cookbook: Celebrating Radical Hospitality,” by Denise Barr and Julie Rosten (She Writes Press, $24.95) is a fine example of this welcome new sensibility. The first cookbook from Hedgebrook, a Whidbey Island retreat for women writers, is as much a celebration of community and cooking with love as it is a beautifully photographed compilation of “comfort food” recipes. Most of the recipes, from Slow Roasted Tomatoes to Ginger Pumpkin Bread, start with fruit or vegetables from the bountiful Hedgebrook garden. The book gratefully acknowledges its local island suppliers of everything from wine to fish to bread. The cooks know the origin of what they’re feeding writers lucky enough to gather around Hedgebrook’s farmhouse table.

A disclaimer here: I wrote one of the essays in the book about the pleasure of being generously and thoughtfully fed, housed and left alone to write. I’m guessing it’s the only time I’ll be published alongside Gloria Steinem, who spends part of every summer on Whidbey, nurtured as so many have been over the past 25 years by the gardens and chefs of Hedgebrook.

“66 Square Feet, A Delicious Life; One Woman, One Terrace, 92 Recipes,” by Marie Viljoen (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95) is a book born of a blog, but it doesn’t look it. It’s a handsome hardback, filled with arty food, flower and city photos. It’s as much about how to squeeze pots full of herbs, strawberries and lettuce onto a Brooklyn terrace as it is about Viljoen’s love of cooking and setting a pretty table. The book is arranged month by month because the author revels in seasonality. Recipes such as Milkweed Buds with Ginger and Soy Sauce (a “forager’s special”) are balanced with more likely dishes such as Carrot and Cumin Soup and Broccoli Bruschetta. While this cookbook is all about city life on the East Coast, and the one from Hedgebrook is about island life nearly as far west as you can go, both offer visions of growing, cooking and sharing fresh food as central to living a good life.

“50 Best Plants on the Planet: The Most Nutrient-Dense Fruits and Vegetables, in 150 Delicious Recipes,” by Cathy Thomas, (Chronicle Books, $29.95) nearly reviews itself in the title.

Right off, I miss the food artistry and seasonality of the two other cookbooks. The tone tends toward “If you have to eat two-three servings of vegetables a day, why not be effective about it?” The nutritional detail and calorie counts are balanced with luscious photos and tempting recipes such as Warm Quinoa Salad with Cilantro and Black Beans, and Pasta with Roasted Pumpkin. You may want to skip the Butter Bean and Chard Slumgullion. This might be just the cookbook to inspire someone with a scientific bent, or anyone intent on finding new recipes using healthful ingredients from arugula to watermelon.

Source: http://seattletimes.com

HT Editor

What to Cook and Where to Try It in the City

Ahead of the first Emirati food championship, Penelope Walsh finds out what to cook and where to try it in the city.

Sometimes, unearthing local and authentic eating options is a struggle when relocating to another country. Yes, the UAE is awash with the cooking of the wider Middle East. Moroccan, Iranian, Levantine food are all in attendance here, but aside from the odd Yemeni mandi spot, the food of the Gulf is underrepresented. And Emirati food is even harder to find.

In a bid to change this, and aiming to show and promote the extensive culinary heritage of the nation, the first ever Dubai Hospitality World Championship will take place this week, from Saturday November 16-18 at Dubai World Trade Centre.

Operating under the directive of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council, the event is organised by Zabeel Palace Hospitality and while it welcomes chefs from across the globe, it will also feature a dedicated Emirati championship, serving as a spotlight on Emirati chefs, home cooks and food products.

Open to UAE nationals, the Emirati chapter of the event features four categories: professional (with 112 teams of professional Emirati chefs, from all seven Emirates), amateur (which challenges the next generation of home cooks, between 15-25 years of age), the Emirati home-made dish category (which judges the creation of authentic Emirati dishes) and the Emirati home-made and innovation product category (aimed at promoting entrepreneurial food businesses).

The event marks a far reaching and comprehensive way of promoting a passion for the nation’s food, aimed at seeing this translate into the retail and restaurant market in UAE. For Amna Al Dhahery, a UAE national from Abu Dhabi and one of the organisers on the Local Championship Committee for Dubai World Hospitality Championship, the subject of Emirati food has been close to her heart for some time. Now working for the Jumeirah group, during her studies for a hospitality degree, Amna explains that her dissertation was on the subject of why there is no Emirati cuisine in the UAE. Involved in promoting Emirati food at last year’s Gulfood exhibition in February 2013, Amna tells us how this came under the notice of Zabeel Palace Hospitality. ‘They took an interest in this and wanted to take action to promote the food further,’ she says.

‘[At the championship] international teams of chefs are coming from 12 countries around the world. This will promote our food because they will be with us for the three days, cooking our food and watching what our chefs are doing.’

Is it fair to say Emirati food is underrepresented in Dubai? ‘It’s not represented,’ Amna says. ‘We are representing other cuisines [in the UAE], Lebanese, Chinese cuisine, but we are not promoting our own cuisine, which is really rich. In planning this event, we put together a list of 96 dishes that are part of the Emirati cuisine, from salads, main courses and desserts. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw the list. You only really need four dishes to be recognised.’ she jokes. ‘If you go to the UK you’ll find English food, in France you’ll find French food. But you can’t find Emirati restaurants. There is one, Al Fanar in Festival City. We need to teach the new generation.’

We venture, that perhaps Emiratis would rather eat new and different food when they dine out, rather than the same dishes they can get at home – after all, do you go to restaurants to eat food you can cook yourself at home? But Amna doesn’t agree. ‘Emiratis want to eat their own food in restaurants. What is needed is an authentic, home-cooking style representation of the cuisine, ‘like your grandmother used to make’.

The problem of the lack of Emirati restaurants is partly due to the lack of Emirati chefs. ‘The Arab society doesn’t necessarily see this job as appropriate, especially for a man. Some people don’t accept it. Look at chef Khulood Atiq [author of Emirati cookbook Sarareed], she had to work really hard to be known.’

Amna does believe this attitude will eventually change, however. ‘Now we are getting the support from the government. We don’t mind [non-Emirati chefs] cooking Emirati food, but we need Emirati chefs at the same time,’ she says.

Source: http://www.timeoutdubai.com

HT Editor

Home News Technology Waste Mayor Boris Launches “FoodSave” Push for London Businesses

Businesses in the capital are to be offered dedicated advice on how to reduce the amount of food waste they produce and best practices for partnering with farms and energy companies to ensure unwanted food is reused in an environmentally friendly fashion.

London mayor Boris Johnson yesterday launched the “FoodSave” scheme, which will see the Mayor’s Office partner with the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and food charity Sustain to provide small businesses with a specially tailored service to help them curb food waste levels.

“FoodSave is a brilliant initiative that can help businesses reduce their food waste disposal costs and become more efficient,” said Matthew Pencharz, the mayor’s senior adviser on environment, in a statement. “I encourage as many businesses as possible to get involved and both save money and help the environment.”

The organisations have launched the scheme with a handful of firms from the hospitality sector on board, but they are now looking to expand the initiative early next year and are inviting companies in the food and hospitality industry to express an interest in taking part.

Specifically, the project will help individual firms identify where food waste is produced, offer best practice advice on how to reduce waste levels, and help companies partner with charities, farmers, and energy-from-waste generators to ensure unwanted food is reused in the most appropriate fashion.

The Mayor’s Office said the aim of the initiative was to directly support 240 businesses and deliver overall savings totalling £360,000 by March 2015 by avoiding sending more than 1,000 tonnes of food waste to landfill.

Source: http://www.businessgreen.com

HT Editor

Adam Humphrey Reveals the Secret to His Cafe’s Success

For starters, he and his wife Lovaine make everything on site, from fresh bread and pastries through to traditional English fare.

“We make everything for our cafe, we are in at between 4.30 and five every morning and bake all our own bread, croissants and pain au chocolat, and we change our muffins every day.”

“We also do things that come from Britain like scotch eggs and pork pies, so we get a lot of English office workers coming in,” Humphrey says.

Customers don’t order from a menu as such, and when food is sold out its sold out, however they can request specific items for the following day.

“The customers will tell you what they want, which we find quite liberating – we want to keep it interesting for our guests and make them effectively what they want.

“You know your food is going to get sold because people have actually said ‘can we have this tomorrow?’ and that’s probably what sets us apart a little bit,” he explains.

There is a formula behind the menu at Arras Too, one that is marked by both consistency and change. “It’s a case of keeping a core group of things that are good and then introducing new things off the back of that.”

Cafes vs. restaurants

Humphrey believes the street’s remaining 26 cafes’ ability to survive amidst such a competitive environment is testament to the city’s strong cafe scene.

“It’s a sign of how the cafe scene in Sydney is in terms of the amount of cafes on the street that are thriving and doing really good business.

“I’ve always said the Sydney cafe scene is without a doubt probably one of the best in the world, and I really, really like being a part of that,” he says.

Humphrey is also of the belief that people are creatures of comfort, and will return opt to the same venue again and again.

“They have a favourite coffee that they like to drink from their favourite cafe, or a favourite sandwich that a particular cafe does. Very rarely do you get somebody defecting to another cafe, it’s quite interesting.”

Cafes are more likely to survive when competition is high as opposed to restaurants, because they are both more affordable to run and offer food that is more affordable and convenient.

“If you put 27 restaurants down the same street you’d see a good deal of them dropping off because they just can’t sustain that sort of competition, whereas cafes run a lot leaner than restaurants so it’s simple that they can survive and there’s enough people to want their product,” Humphrey explains.

“The ingredients are more affordable, you don’t have any of the trappings of a big fit out and with all respect to the cafe workers you don’t need a trained chef with more than 20 years experience to cook cafe food.”

Greater consistency

Since it opened three years ago Arras Too has built up a strong customer base, and Humphrey has noticed the same people tend to come in at the same time each day.

“It’s got to a point where it’s just really, really consistent in terms of we pretty much take the same money every day, unless we’re doing outside catering which is another big part of what we do, or school holidays then that affects it slightly,” he says.

“The same people come in everyday and effectively buy the same things, so that stands to reason that you are pretty much going to take the same money each day.”

A complementary business model

Restaurant Arras and Arras Two operate in tandem, and Humphrey says this allows them to test the waters as to what works and what doesn’t.

“Sometimes we introduce things that have been well received in the restaurant to the cafe, but in a more casual way.

“Our sort of food is always quirky and a little bit fun anyway so we think to a degree it transcends styles.”

Arras is a business that operates as a one-stop shop, capable of catering to the food and beverage needs of all its customers.

“When somebody goes to eat in the restaurant they know they can get a coffee in the cafe next door afterwards, and others might come to the cafe in the morning and tell us they are going to come for some lunch in the restaurant later.”

Source: http://www.hospitalitymagazine.com.au

HT Editor

WA Produce on Show in Shanghai

WA producers are trying to break into the Chinese market via the country’s biggest trade exhibition for food and wine.

From whisky to beef to breadcrumbs, nougat, honey and olives, Food & Hotel China is the country’s largest and longest trade expo and features 1100 companies from 77 countries.

For the first-time, WA will have its own stand at the Shanghai event where 12 local companies will display their goods.

The exhibit is being co-ordinated by the Department of Agriculture and Food and the WA Trade and Investment Promotion Office in Shanghai.

Agriculture and Food Minister Ken Baston said China already ranked as the State’s highest value market for agriculture and food products and there were enormous prospects to further strengthen the market.

“Western Australia is in a strong position to become a preferred supplier of high-quality and safe food to China and other key Asian markets,” Mr Baston said. “This is not only due to our proximity to Asia, but because of our world-class biosecurity systems, our research and innovation, our modern supply chain infrastructure and food safety systems.

“Companies who exhibit at this trade event will have the opportunity to present their goods to importers and distributors who are on the lookout for internationally branded products.”

The Great Southern Distilling Company will exhibit its whisky products at the exhibition for the first time.

Company director Cameron Syme said the company had won gold, silver and bronze medals in international spirit competitions, and was now ready to start exporting.

“Participating in China’s global food and hospitality expo will give us the exposure and allow us to make the contacts we need to successfully launch our brand and products into the Chinese market,” Mr Syme said.

The exhibition will run from November 13-15.

Exhibitors will also participate in the first Food & Hotel China West China Roadshow in Chengdu next Monday.

Source: http://au.news.yahoo.com

HT Editor

Roma Restaurant Project Sours in Slovenia

It could be a cultural breakthrough – an EU-wide chain of restaurants that puts Roma hospitality, food and music centre-stage, building relations with a much-maligned community.

But plans to set up the first link in this chain are in jeopardy, and ethnic relations have soured, after a Slovenian local council stepped in to prevent the first restaurant from opening.

There are Roma-owned or Roma-run restaurants elsewhere in the EU, but the restaurant in Maribor would have been the first to use the Roma theme as its starting point.

The restaurant’s menu would give a Gypsy twist on dishes found in South-East Europe, such as dolma, burek, goulash and baklava. It would also offer diners a tea leaf reading of the future – the origin of its logo, an upturned cup.

The EU-backed social enterprise also hoped the cultural immersion might improve inter-ethnic relations, while providing employment for Roma, who suffer unusually high levels of economic hardship.

“If an employer in Maribor sees you are Roma you will not get a job,” says 37-year-old Bayram Mehmeti, the restaurant’s prospective waiter. His parents moved to Maribor from Kosovo 30 years ago.

Mr Mehmeti was among many Kosovo Roma families who moved at around the same time to find work in Maribor’s then-thriving industry. But industrial collapse means Roma unemployment is now estimated at 97%, compared to the average of 18%.

Slovenia, a small Alpine country, joined the EU in 2004 – the first ex-Yugoslav state to do so. Like most of its partners in the eurozone it has suffered in the financial crisis.

The restaurant project has already provided training for 23 Roma, five of whom were chosen to join the staff should it manage to open its doors in February. The plan is to reinvest profits to employ more staff and expand elsewhere in the EU.

But the plan was thrown into jeopardy last month, when a community council stopped the restaurant from moving into a vacant pizza restaurant. The premises had been promised by Maribor’s mayor, Andrej Fistravec. The blocking move was “obvious xenophobia”, says Mr Fistravec, a sociologist before being elected mayor in March.

The city’s 3,500 Roma feel let down, says representative Fatmir Beciri, a Maribor resident for the past 35 years.

“I am very sad about this dispute. It is not just a restaurant, it is an opportunity for Roma to get employment,” he said.

Mr Fistravec blames his predecessor as mayor, Franc Kangler, for promising the community council the right to decide the building’s fate before he resigned in December, having been the target of a series of anti-corruption protests. It is unclear how the legal tussle over the building will be resolved.

The community council denies having anything against a Roma restaurant, but opposes it because it conflicts with its own plans to turn the building into a community centre for all ages.

Critics say the council plan is unfeasible and a smokescreen for residents’ antipathy to Roma, which comments about the story in Slovenian online media suggest are widely shared.

“Their [Roma] behaviour is catastrophic,” says a middle-aged Slovenian woman privately. “Even the children behave badly, they spit and talk mean. The adults drive around with unregistered cars. They steal and they don’t even think of working, especially the women.”

According to Mr Fistravec: “Slovenians are outwardly tolerant until they personally get in contact with other ethnic groups”. The Slovenian debate over Roma, he says, has evolved into something akin to the “Jewish question”.

“We are shocked. We did not feel this hatred before,” says Mr Beciri.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk

HT Editor

Luxury Is Back in Food and Redefining Trends in the Hospitality Industry

Luxury is back in food, and redefining trends in the hotel and restaurant business. Post-recession dining is definitely going all in for opulence — costly tasting menus, chicken priced like steak, exotic custom spices, upscale food halls, spare-no-expense tabletops — according to Baum+Whiteman, one of the largest food and restaurant consulting firms.

It has come out with its annual list of hospitality-meets-food trends for 2014, and they make for an informative and entertaining read:

1. Restaurants are back in retail stores: Thirty years ago, American department stores kicked out their restaurants, believing they were too messy and unproductive. But they are now making a comeback as retailers discover the magic of “dwell time” in their stores: The more time guests spend, the more money they’ll spend. The restaurant in Tommy Bahama’s New York flagship sells hamachi crudo, coffee-crusted ribeye with marrow butter, and fish tacos with Asian slaw. In Chicago, Saks is opening its first Sophie’s global-American restaurant; Brooks Brothers will build a 15,000 sq.ft. steakhouse prototype in New York called Makers and Merchants.
2. Tasting-only menus are everywhere: A three-year bull-market is fueling a proliferation of tasting menus around the country. Great for restaurants’ economics, guaranteeing a specific average check along with pre-costed, highly controlled inventory. $270 at French Laundry with $175 supplement for white truffle pasta, $208 for the Grazing, Pecking, Rooting menu at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, $185 for the all-veg menu at Grace in Chicago, $155 at Menton in Boston, $225 at 11 Madison Park. Many are using custom tabletops to emphasize the ceremony and the occasion.
3. Chicken is no longer humble: The humble bird is going haute. Rôtisserie Georgette , a new upscale chicken-focused restaurant in Manhattan, is no mere takeout joint. Run by Georgette Farkas, Daniel Boulud’s former right hand, it has grand space, two rotisseries and a French-accented menu with occasional fried chicken specialties. chefs around the country are ramping up prices as they play flavor one-upmanship. Poulet vert ($24) at Marlow in San Fran is marinated in an anchovy-green sauce. In Boston, Cragie on Main’s roast chicken for two ($74) is cooked sous vide in chicken fat and spices, then finished with butter and togarashi salt.
4. Food halls are the new food courts: Cookie-cutter mall food courts serving repetitive same-old chain food are on the downslide. Enter upscale “food halls” … “artisan” food staffed by local, name-brand restaurants. Best of these combine on-premises manufacturing, eating, takeaway and retail. In New York, see animated basement of The Plaza Hotel. Or the 50,000 sq. ft. Eataly, so successful it raised all rents nearby.
5. Anchovies!: The no-no of Caesar salads has become respectable, people are ordering anchovies, especially Spanish salt-packed ones called bocquerones, and even fresh ones. You’ll find them on Nicoise salads and fresh mozzarella, or tossed with breadcrumbs atop pasta.
6. Bubbles and fizz, the new trends in beverages:
   • Tea: With Starbucks committed to converting America to tea, look for others to amplify the attention. Teavanna opened a tea bar/cafe in Manhattan, with more to come, as brands are discovering people are more likely to buy food with tea than with coffee.
   • Sodas: SodaStream contraptions have consumers experimenting with sodas at home, even making carbonated cocktails. Restaurants also crafting sodas using house-made fruit syrups and infusions, some bottled, some on-tap. The craft beer movement spawns craft sodas.
   • Pressed Juices: Juice bars are no longer for health nuts and body cleansers. Lots of investors pouring into cold-pressed juiceterias now that millions of people are too busy to eat an apple or carrot but willing to pay someone to juice it for them.
7. Beyond butter: EVOO and balsamic vinegar are too old-hat. Now the ante is upped as chefs litter your table with creative spreads. At The Pass, Houston, you get black garlic mostarda, vanilla tapenade, tomato jam, salted butter. Other places offer whipped lardo, rosemary hummus, roasted garlic butter, smoked ricotta, whipped beet butter, porcini oil, jalapeno oil, smoked eggplant dip, salsa butter, whipped chicken liver butter.
8. Green is the predominant color, and sentiment:  Healthy food investments finally are paying off as a niche market rolls into the mainstream. More than one factor propels this profound market change: the gluten-rejecters, Paleo people, diabetics, weight challenged, vegetarians, vegans. Sweetgreen, a 20-unit chain based in Washington, established beachheads in Boston and Manhattan, where lunchtime lines snake out the door until mid afternoon. Chipotle can’t be left behind and is expanding its tests of vegan Sofritas, tofu braised in chilies and spices. At the other end of the price spectrum, bold-face chefs are adding vegetarian tasting menus to their offerings. Restaurant Daniel has three courses for $116.
9. Pop-ups and item restaurants: Weekend popup markets (Smorgasburg, Brooklyn; Ferry Terminal, San Fran, food truck fairs) make room for wacky food creations that often graduate to brick-and-mortar restaurants. Meatball shops are cropping up around the country. Cupcakes may be passé but here are some recent one-item restaurants: a baked potato shop, oatmeal only, churros, Greek yogurt, Nutella Bar coming to Eataly, Chicago.
10. Adding entertainment and adventure to food: Restaurants are enhancing the dining experience by fiddling with our senses, redefining “eatertainment.” Avant garde restaurant Ultraviolet, in Shanghai, shanghais ten high-spending diners nightly to a secret room that radically shifts moods with each course: uplights in the floor, 360-degree high-def projectors, swings in air temperature, four smell diffusers, 22 speakers, LEDs, waiters changing customers to suit the food. Chef-owner Paul Pairet calls it “psychotasting”, you go from Zen to hell in 20 courses over four hours in a night of sensory integration. At the Casino de Madrid building, star chef Paco Roncero built a 9-seat invitation-only techno-dining room. In Brooklyn, a restaurant serves meals in utter silence.
11. Beyond the generic Asian flavors: Friday’s offers sriracha aioli and kimchee has gone mass market. Thai and Vietnamese fish sauce — foul-smelling fermented stuff — is being snuck into Western dishes that need an umami boost, from roasted chicken to grilled meat sauces. Shisito peppers will mainstream as snacks and garniture.
12. Mideast cooking is making a comeback: Forget Spain and Greece, the south side of the Mediterranean and the Levant are where new tastes and dishes are coming from: Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Iraq, Iran. Explore Turkish street food for ideas. The cookbook “Jerusalem” is flying out of bookstores and you need to read it. Zaatar and pomegranate molasses already have made it to kitchens here, and shakshuka will appear on America’s breakfast and brunch menus. Global riffs being added to falafel and hummus.

Source: http://skift.com

HT Editor

Pizza the Action: a Slice of New York Comes to Dubai

A short chat with The Pizza Guys – aka Amber Haque and Rami Badawi – feels a bit like a lesson in the entrepreneurial arts. The husband-and-wife team, who set up their New York-style pizzeria in Business Bay in March, seem to tick all the ‘must-have’ boxes when it comes to starting your own business: product obsession, a focus on customer service, excellent relationships with both suppliers and investors and – last but not least – luck in spades. Above all, they are clearly having the time of their lives.

The idea for a neighbourhood joint that served great Neapolitan pizza, where the clientele knew the owners and felt comfortable hanging out, had been in Rami’s thoughts for at least a decade. Although raised in Abu Dhabi, he had spent a decade working in the US for Ritz-Carlton, and would often end up in the local pizzerias after lengthy night shifts.

“They were really the only places open at the time – people would go there to grab a slice or a calzone on the way home,” Rami recalls. “I noticed they had a cult following, and I remember thinking, wow, I bet these guys make a lot of money.”

Although the couple first met at high school in Abu Dhabi, Amber took a different career path, gaining a masters in human rights law before moving to Dubai in 2008 to work as a sales and marketing director for a local firm. But the obsession to create the perfect slice of pizza eventually saw them team up at the beginning of 2011 to set up their own business.

“Rami is a pizza fanatic, and he has been ever since I’ve known him,” says Amber. “Because of his background in the hospitality industry, he’s been exposed to a lot of food, so the idea to include ingredients like stracciatella cheese and wagyu beef came from him.

“He’s pretty militant about the oven temperature – we have a laser-controlled thermometer. He knows exactly what he wants and he’s thrown away pizzas that have come out of the oven in front of customers because they weren’t up to scratch.

“We’ve even had to turn away people because the oven wasn’t hot enough. He’s a little bit extreme, but that’s because this is something he’s been thinking about for a long time,” she adds.

Rami doesn’t immediately strike the casual observer as a “militant obsessive” but the softly spoken Palestinian soon reveals the depths of his passion for pizza.

“If somebody doesn’t like my product, it hurts my feelings,” he says. “I take it so personally that every time something goes wrong, it really hurts. But I don’t think you can be like that every time something goes wrong, because you can’t win every single battle – but we do really try to.”

Luckily for Rami, the feedback seems to have been almost universally positive. Much of the credit for that must stem from the preparation that the Pizza Guys put into their product. Building on Rami’s encyclopaedic knowledge of New York pizza and hospitality background, Amber took on a course at the US chapter of the Association of True Neapolitan Pizza, which has trademark protected the Italian city’s original methods for pizzamaking.

After that, it took the Pizza Guys 14 months to set up the company, with a series of trips to New York, planning the menu, finding a contractor and testing the product countless times.  The final piece of the puzzle was completed when the team located a local investor.

“I consider myself to be quite a lucky guy,” says Rami. “I’ve been in this town for quite a while and through my network I was able to fairly easily raise the funds for this. We faced many other challenges but this was not one.

“We approached somebody and he had one question – was the pizza good? ‘Prove it and make it for me’, he told us. I said ‘I can, but we don’t have the oven’. He managed to get access to an oven – at Cipriani in Abu Dhabi. Their chef wasn’t very happy, but we went anyway. We made the pizza, our investor brought a whole group of friends, and it was a great experience – they loved it.”

“But I would say that you shouldn’t just look for money, look for people who are aligned with your way of thinking. We are so fortunate that we had our choice of investor; we didn’t go with one particular party because we knew it wasn’t going to fit in with my style. I have to be in the driving seat. You have to find somebody who’s aligned with you long and short term, who will let you do your thing.

With the funding in place, Amber and Rami then went to work on finding the right suppliers. They shipped in their oven (which operates at a frightening 900 degrees Celsius, cooking pizzas in just two minutes) from Valoriani, an Italian firm that has been building purpose-built wood-fired ovens since 1890. Their coffee and flour come from two other family firms that have been making the products for six generations. Even the grain that is fed to the cows on a handpicked Australian farm that provide the pizzeria’s wagyu beef is genetically modified organism free.

“Right from the beginning, we tried our best to create good relationships with our suppliers and contractors,” says Rami. “We negotiated some ridiculous payment terms; everyone is flexible, you just need to know how to negotiate that.

“One of our contractors got paid almost eight months after we got started and it wasn’t because we weren’t paying – it’s what we agreed. So that’s something I would encourage everyone to do; always give your suppliers a little bit now and again, because people not paying is a problem in Dubai, so if you can find a way to stagger it out for as long as you can, that helps you keep going.”

The Pizza Guys have also placed a premium on customer service, another area where Dubai doesn’t exactly have a sparkling reputation.

“We take out all the checks if something happens, like a delay,” says Amber. “First of all, we don’t charge them, but then the next morning, you have to follow up. What you find is that people are very forgiving, a lot more forgiving than you’d think. Every one of those people is potentially a hundred new customers.”

Business so far has been brisk but already the Pizza Guys believe they’ve learnt a couple of lessons about setting up a firm.

“We didn’t hire any external help, like consultants, which is unusual,” says Rami. “And in doing that, it’s very easy to overlook things. If I had one piece of advice for anybody, it would be to be as absolutely pessimistic as you can possibly be when putting together your business plan.

“And when you’ve reached the ultimate point of pessimism, then just add another 50 percent and you might be ok. Because there will be delays in construction – it happens everywhere, not just in Dubai – and we didn’t anticipate some of the approvals would take so long from the ministry.

“You can just simply forget about things. Why is it so important? Because of the budget. If you don’t have someone with you who’s done it before, I think it’s more fun, but there’s also a lot of room for error.”

They may only be ten months into the restaurant game but already the team is looking to open another outlet in Dubai by the end of 2014. Given their policy of limiting deliveries to only a few nearby neighbourhoods in order to make sure the pizzas are still piping hot by the time they reach the customer (there’s that focus on product again), it looks like there is plenty of room for growth. Rami says that their business partner is keen to expand outside of Dubai, but he’s also keen not to jump too soon.

A nearer target is that of balancing the books; the couple say they are likely to make an operating profit in January next year, with the aim of breaking even at some point towards the end of 2014. In the meantime, they are trying to get the message out via word of mouth, via social media and via more traditional marketing tools.

“Loads of people will just come and hang out,” says Amber. “It’s men, overwhelmingly; they love pizza. But we’re going to start going after women. They tend to worry more about low fat foods and calorie counting – but we don’t put any fat in our dough, it’s all handmade. Some of the cheeses are handmade – so it’s good stuff, it’s just about getting the word out there.”

“To me, success is about staying in the game,” Rami says. “Luck comes to all of us, but you have to stay around long enough for that to happen. Be prepared, when an opportunity comes, and make sure you’re still around to take it.

“Don’t go into business if you have a bad product; I think, unfortunately, that there are a lot of people who look at somebody else and think ‘I can do that’, and then open a business. I think if you have your heart behind it and really put your time and effort into it, and be responsive, it will work out.

“But if you can’t stay in the game, you’re not going to get lucky.”

So in the spirit of investigative journalism – it’s a tough gig working forStartUp – I headed down to The Pizza Guys outlet in Business Bay a few days after the interview. I’m no pizza expert, so I also brought along an American foodie with a particular penchant for New York-style pizza. And the verdict? “Best I’ve ever had outside the Big Apple,” came back the answer, through a large mouthful of dough, tomato sauce, and melted cheese.

Source: http://www.arabianbusiness.com

HT Editor