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Service 101: So You Want Your Own Restaurant

open my own restaurant
Great Restaurants Have Inspired Many New Restaurants…For better or for worse.

Eating at a great restaurant is like encountering sirens at sea: though thoroughly beguiling, a magnificent dining experience can make you do foolish things.  Legions of enthusiastic food lovers have crashed their budget on the rocks with an impossibly expensive bottle of esoteric wine or overspent on a tasting menu they couldn’t afford. Bewitching cooking methods have influenced kitchen renovations, spurred the rise in molecular gastronomy tool kits for amateurs and inflated the enrollment rates at culinary schools. Though risky, these are but mere dalliances with danger when compared to overnight restaurant openings and food truck roll outs.

The siren song of flawless service and impeccable food can lull the smartest of men and reasonable of women into a dream state where restaurant ownership seems like a good and easy choice. A well-run restaurant has the power to hypnotize mere mortals and make them empty their bank account and mortgage their home for the promise of serving their three favorite dishes in a well-designed dining room.

Listen to me very carefully. Resist the temptation. Ignore the symphony of wouldn’t it be wonderful and at my restaurant we’d do things like this, only better.

It takes a very special person—the kind of person who loves the roller coaster rush of not knowing what’s going to happen next, enjoys making very little money, loves people, is calm under pressure, thrives in chaos, thinks a twelve-hour workday six days a week is reasonable, and feels more comfortable taking care of others than themselves—to survive the life of a restaurant owner.  You’ll have to do plenty of unexpected things–things like plunge a toilet, shop for vegetables at midnight, wash dishes in an expensive suit, bus tables, dust chandeliers at 2 in the morning, eat scraps from a cold plate of food because that’s all you have time for, and so many other things that will shock you. Someone will no show for work, something will break, customers will be disappointed (even if you’re doing a great job), and there will always be some kind of a personality conflict occurring—no matter how hard you try–somewhere between the front door of the dining room and the employee exit out the back of the kitchen.

Perhaps the siren song of restaurant ownership has made you fearless. Understood. Influential restaurants and great dining experiences can carry a powerful tune. But before you swim towards the cliffs of restaurant ownership, I suggest you follow this simple six-step plan to determine your fortitude as an owner/operator.

Continue to Learn about the Open Your Own Restaurant Challenge »

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Service 101: Finding My Religion

service faith religious work

Ever since I took on the job of Service Guru I’ve been doing a lot of work. Beyond the obvious stuff—learning the menu, getting to know the employees and the customers, and coming up with business strategies—I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching. Does my work in restaurants have the power to transform me into someone better? Does giving great service require I give generously of myself, put others before me, and be forgiving in everything I do?

Take, for example, the other service industry professionals. The flourishing minister or rabbi who must be humble and in control of his or her weaknesses. The successful butler who is accommodating and always gracious. The thriving caregiver, dedicated and understanding when a patient’s discomfort causes them to be cruel. To be of service, the individual is charged to uphold a lofty set of standards for those around them, even if they don’t know the people they serve by name.

I know service isn’t for everyone. But the more I think about living a life of service, the more I realize I’ve been interested in this sort of thing for a very long time. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher. In middle school, I dreamed of joining the Peace Corps and making a difference in the world.

Later, when I was a freshman in high school, I fell for a born again Christian named Rocky and started dreaming about missionary work. The problem was every time I was around the polished senior with a pooka shell necklace and leather coat, I kept thinking about the off-the-books-stuff like the missionary position. I went to Rocky’s youth group meetings in hopes of finding guidance from God and secretly listened to Prince’s Dirty Mind album after prayer circle. I did good deeds, prayed for others, and quietly suffered with shame as I felt a growing wave of longing for the affections of the boys around me.

As I struggled to define my faith, I wondered how a person could hold God in their heart and proceed in life without fault. How could I love God and yell at my brother or sister? How could I love God and make big mistakes?

Decades have passed since I defined myself by a particular religion (I’ve dabbled in many of the greatest hits and kicked around in some of the oldies and goldies).  And yet, ever since embracing the concept of working in restaurants as a Higher Form of service—albeit on a plate-to-plate level—I’ve been feeling that same kind of moral and ethical confusion I experienced when I was a teenager at the beginning of my conflicted, coming of age journey. How can I maintain a high set of personal standards in a thoroughly chaotic and unfair world?

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Lamb Burger with Mint and Pistachio Salsa Verde

ground lamb burger
Lamb Burger with Mint and Pistachio Salsa Verde

Summertime is the season of burgers. Be it beef, bison, turkey, tuna, lamb, or tofu—I find myself craving a burger and its supremely satisfying proportions on a frequent basis.  I love making new variations on the classic theme of burgers. Ground meat doesn’t take a lot of time to prepare or cook and, if done right, can be a real show stopper if the right ingredients are used.

My husband and I work in the restaurant industry which means our off duty time is during the daylight hours. So for us, many of our best meals together are during lunch. Because of this I’ve began perfecting elegant, open faced burgers that taste great, have enough protein to sustain us through a long night, and go easy on the bread.

Thanks to the good people at Jimenez Family Farm (based in Santa Ynez, they drive down to the Hollywood Farmers Market every Sunday),  I discovered the beauty of a perfectly cooked lamb burger. Top the ground lamb shoulder patty with the complementary flavors of mint and sweet Santa Barbara Pistachios, and the results hit the flavor trifecta: simple, delicious, and true to the terroir. This lamb burger with a mint and pistachio salsa verde is so good, I’ve actually started daydreaming about owning my own restaurant and building the whole business around every juicy, burger-bite.

Continue to get the Lamb Burger with Mint and Pistachio Recipe »

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Steven Slater: Avenging Service Hero

“It seems like something here has resonated with a few people. And that’s kinda neat.” —Steven Slater

Steven Slater exits aircraft
From FreeStevenSlater.com

There are monsters among us.

Every day we witness bitter, demanding, resentful trolls—so mired in their own misery—release their dyspeptic nature on innocent bystanders. They shop at our grocery stores and work out at the local gym. They are passengers on flights and sit at neighboring tables at restaurants. They drive the cars you avoid on the highway.

Woe to any who come near these intrinsically bitter people. To witness their pain is to feel it. They dish out their misery with abandon.

These male and female malcontents attack with a simple dispatch of a dehumanizing remark, an acerbic demand, or snippy comment. Their unhappiness is so vast, simple interactions become an emotional sinkhole that can pull unsuspecting victims—the passer by, cab driver, nanny, waiter, coffee shop barista, or flight attendant—into their wicked depths.

As someone who has worked in restaurants for decades, I can tell you from experience that the service industry gets more than its fair share of monster customers. Angry devils dressed as customers step through the door of restaurants, hotels, department stores and retail outlets every day. They bring their anger and their blood-thirst with them as they demand all sorts of things no normal person would ask for*.

Often, these malevolent beasts go without rival. Anyone in the service profession is required to be accommodating, no matter how difficult and unreasonable the customer. We silently take the venomous attack and hope for the ugliness to pass. What else can we do?

Yesterday, a Jet Blue employee offered another kind of solution to the “customer is always right” paradigm. In a controversial–and widely celebrated move–flight attendant Steven Slater snapped after being sworn at by an aggressive customer obsessed with overhead baggage space. He took his I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore thoughts to the loud speaker, told off the offending customer, inflated the airplane’s emergency escape slide, popped open a beer, and slid off the plane. He drove away, only to be arrested later.

Continue for more on Steven Slater: Avenging Service Hero »

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Floc de Gascogne, a Taste of Summer

back yard bbq

It is summer in Los Angeles and you wouldn’t know it. The days are intermittently cool. Only occasionally does the sun rev up enough power to make a handful of the southern California city dwellers turn to shorts and summer dresses. I miss lush grass, thick sweet air, angry rainstorms and, oddly, the crown of sweat-soaked curls that twist at the nape of my neck on the hottest of days.

This summer holds nothing to the hot-house heat and lush green of the east coast. There are no lush green trees, heavy with sun-soaked leaves or grassy front yards so excited by the season’s heat they swell like miniature forests.

Here in the valley of a former desert, the change in season is miniscule. Palm trees are parched. Grass grows on borrowed water. Lawns are so manicured you could count every blade of grass from the standing position.

I need a back yard picnic to perk me up. Pronto.

Luckily, a pair of great friends are having a back yard party this weekend. I knew exactly what I needed to bring with me to perk me and the rest of my Southern California friends up: a chilled taste of summer in a glass.

perfect summer bbq wine
Floc de Gascgogne

Floc de Gascgone–a recent discovery thanks to a fellow restaurant professional and friend—is a blend of fresh grape juice and young Armagnac is a straw colored apertif served chilled. A classy and ancient drink, Floc de Gascogne is a thoroughly modern drink that’s been enjoyed since the dark ages. Crisp, and lightly sweet, the Floc is like a wine cooler that went to an Ivy league grad school: its very sophisticated and smart.

Chateau de Laubade Floc de Gascogne is a 16th century adaptation of the earliest version of the apertif, which blends fifty percent Colombard and fifty percent Ugni Blanc grape juice with a young Bas Armagnac. After settling for a year and decanting, fresh grape juice and young Armagnac is blended in a closed vat and aged until the end of winter. Bottom line, this is a perfect way to start a meal or end a night with a bit of cheese. Serve chilled, this delicate nectar has a playful hint of Armagnac that offers the sweet taste of summer. No matter what the weather is like.

You can find Floc de Gascogne online at my favorite online wine store retailer, K&L. You can see some more of my recommendations and links to this blog over at the K&L store’s blog.

*I do not get paid to write for them.  I’m a big fan!

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Service 101: A Brief History of Tipping

history of tipping

Though tipping the waiter may feel like something that’s always been part of the dining experience in America, the fact is, the act of tipping is a borrowed custom from Europe.

According to Michael Lynn, a professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, tipping in the United States began just after the American Civil War in the late 1800’s. Lynn suggests that wealthy Americans traveling abroad to Europe witnessed tipping and brought the aristocratic custom back with them to “show off,” or prove their elevated education and class.

Tipping—which may have originated in the taverns of 17th Century England, where drinkers would slip money to the waiter “to insure promptitude” or T.I.P for short—wasn’t embraced by all Americans when the custom began to make its way into our country’s taverns and dining halls. A movement against tipping began in the late 1890’s as many Americans believed that tipping went against the country’s ideals and allowed a clear servile class that would be financially dependent on a higher class.

A servile attitude for a fee

According to an article that appeared in The New York Times in 1897, there was a movement brewing against tipping in America. The anti-tipping group believed that tipping was the “vilest of imported vices” because it created an aristocratic class in a country that fought hard to eliminate a class-driven society. In 1915 six state legislators from Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Carolina attempted and failed to pass an anti-tipping bill that would make leaving gratuities unlawful.

In 1916, William Scott wrote a stinging diatribe against tipping in his book, “The Itching Palm,” in which he stood up against the policy of paying for a service twice (once for the employer and once for the employee). He decried tips to be “democracy’s mortal foe” and creates “a servile attitude for a fee.”

In the American democracy to be servile is incompatible with citizenship. Every tip given in the United States is a blow at our experiment in democracy. The custom announces to the world…that we do not believe practically that “all men are created equal.” Unless a waiter can be a gentleman, democracy is a failure. If any form of service is menial, democracy is a failure. Those Americans who dislike self-respect in servants are undesirable citizens; they belong in an aristocracy.

Scott continues, “If tipping is un-American, some day, some how, it will be uprooted like African slavery”.

Continue For More on the History of Tipping»

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Service 101: When Gratuity is Included

Service includedIf a diner is unhappy with service at a restaurant they can voice their concern to the management or leave less tip for their waiter. As I mentioned recently about a recent poll on CNN’s food blog, Eatocracy.com, 49 percent of the people polled said they have left nothing for waiters, while another 34 percent said they have left a very low tip–as little as just a penny–to show their dissatisfaction with service. The amount of a tip, many respondents explained, gives financial reward to waiters for good work and punishes the bad ones.

But what happens when a restaurant eliminates the tipping structure out of their business model entirely? Does service improve or get worse?

Jay Porter, the owner of The Linkery in San Diego, says that his front of house staff and kitchen workers’ performance improved once his restaurant stopped accepting tips. The small neighborhood restaurant began its “no tipping” system in 2004 when they instituted a flat 18 percent “table service fee” on the final check for diners who eat at the restaurant.

“No other profession has the customer adjusting your pay scale according to performance,” says Porter. “That’s just not a circumstance when people do their best work.” Porter says this unique payment model brings his restaurant in line with other American industries. “It’s good for our staff to be seen as professionals, just like every other profession in America. No other profession other than the restaurant industry has people evaluating your work and basing payment on that.”

Continue Reading When Service IS Included »

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Strawberry Rhubarb Compote with Pistachios

strawberry rhubarb compote with pistachios
Strawberry Rhubarb Compote with Pistachios

Some words carry flavor. Speak aloud the familiar syllables of coffee, chocolate or toast, and the brain fires memories of taste. Flash: a steaming cup of Sumatra, soft and gently acidic washes over your tongue. Your first taste of waxy chocolate Easter bunny as it melted in your mouth. Fresh baked bread, made golden from the heat of a toaster, on a cold winter day.

When I speak the words strawberry and rhubarb, I am given a crystalline remembrance with my grandmother. It’s a summer’s day in the 1980’s. I’m in my Grandmother’s tiny kitchen and staring at a pie she’s placed atop her ancient, four-legged cast iron stove to cool.

“It’s strawberry rhubarb pie,” she tells me. She slices into the golden pie crust and it falls away to expose a pink heart of strawberries and softened rhubarb. I take a bite—it’s the first time I’ve ever tasted these two flavors together—and I am struck by the sweet, earthy flavors of strawberry and tart-like-a-lemon rhubarb. The flavors are complex, almost too adult for me, were it not for all the enticing sugar.

“This is rhubarb?” I say to her, knowing the look of the plant from hours of playing make-believe in our family garden. The stalks of the plant resemble celery and the rough green canopy of leaves grow high enough to make a perfect hiding place for me—a child of five or six–from the sun.

I enjoy another bite of memory and it’s gone.

Though my interest was piqued to recreate Grammie’s strawberry rhubarb pie in my own kitchen, my desire for simplicity got the best of me. Rather than make a crisp (I’m always looking for ways around making a pie crust from scratch), I settled on modifying a recipe for a rhubarb and pistachio compote my friend Louisa Shafia created for her cookbook, Lucid Food.

Continue for an easy, no-bake Strawberry Rhubarb Recipe »

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Service 101: Service Not Included

service not included

One thing is for sure, if you’ve ever paid a restaurant tab you have are more than likely to have a strong opinion about tipping. Maybe you always tip 20% of the total bill. Maybe you think a 15% tip is sign enough that you’ve gotten good service. Or maybe you consider tipping a kind of frosting on the cake. Poll a random group of diners on their thoughts about tipping and within seconds you’ll feel the temperature rise as ardent responses come hurling back at you. No matter what you think about tipping, just about everyone has an opinion about what constitutes a good or bad tip.

I’m always amazed at how downright heated discussions become when the topics of service, tipping, and restaurant policies are brought up. People who have never worked in the restaurant business, lifetime servers, part time waiters, and frequent diners all seem to have strong views on the subject. For someone like myself–a restaurant professional who has worked in the industry for decades–I definitely come at this subject from an insider’s point of view. Not only do I write about service, I also read quite a bit about the subject. What surprises me the most is the ardent online chatter (nay, SCREAMING) about restaurant service.

Recently, CNN’s new food blog, Eatocracy, polled their readers on their view on tipping. Practically overnight, 45,000 opinionated readers responded with votes and lengthy ALL-CAP rants discussing exactly why they thought it was right or downright wrong to leave no tip if bad service is rendered by the waiter.

49% of voters said they left servers no tip after receiving bad service

29% left a low tip for bad service

15% said they would never leave nothing, and would never leave anything less than 15%

5% said they left a penny, just to prove a point

to Find Out Why Tipping Isn’t Optional »

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Bourbon-Soaked Cherries

All good things come to those who wait. Parents, farmers, bread bakers, and economists know this. And in the past couple of years, bartenders across the country have learned that the old adage applies when it comes to making flavored spirits. Take a great tasting fruit like a cultivated cherry, add a favorite liquor, and in just a few weeks you’ll have something completely new.

Cherries, or Prunus avium, are a stone fruit that are high in anthocyanins, the red pigment that gives the berries their color. In recent lab tests, anthocyanins have been shown to reduce pain and inflammation and reduce cholesterol and triglycerides. That’s good news to cherry lovers, who are currently gobbling up all forms of cherries–as a snack, featured dessert filling–during their last few weeks of the season. Right now, trees from Michigan, California, Oregon, and Washington State are heavy with rosy pink, blood red, and sunrise yellow cherries.

Thanks to the juicy fruits of Bing, Brooks, Rainier, and Tulare, it’s a wonderful time of the year to eat and, in my case, make cocktails.

Health benefits aside, cherries are a great flavoring agent in many cocktails (think Maraschino Liqueur, Amarena soaked cherries, etc.). Last year, my wonderful friends Todd and Diane from White on Rice introduced me to the idea of using cherries to enhance the flavors of a favorite liquor. Their gift of cherries soaked in Luxardo (a sweet cherry liqueur made from Marasca cherries and ground up cherry pits) blew my mind. The cherry-infused cherry liquor became a favorite featured cocktail ingredient and the center point of an obsession with the classic cocktail, the Aviation (Gin, Luxardo, and Lemon). Ever since then, I’ve been patiently waiting for cherry season to begin so I could try my hand at making my own cherry-infused spirit.

Continue for a Recipe for Bourbon Infused with Cherries »

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Food Styling and Food Photography Tips

I love food. I love to eat it and dream up new ways to engage with all its different ingredients. I enjoy playing with my food, photographing it, telling stories about it. Clearly food is much more than a source of nutrition and sustenance. For me–and many more people like me–food is art.

My food obsession has reached an all time height, thanks to the accumulation of decades working in restaurants and writing this blog. Because of my heightened interest in food photography (and incessant questions about how he does what he does), my friend Matt Armendariz generously offered to allow me to sit in on his recent Food Styling and Food Photography class with the ladies of Food Fanatics at his studio in Long Beach.

Between jokes and colorful industry gossip, Denise Vivaldo and Cindie Flannagan offered students a handful of tricks learned over the years (nay, decades) they’ve been working in the food styling business. Vivaldo and Flannagan gave students insights into making food ready for camera and how to think about food styling as a career.

Food Styling Tips from the Pros

Use non-edible (but not poisonous!) items to prop things up.
Just because you use a cosmetic sponge to prop up a piece of meat before you shoot it, doesn’t mean you can’t eat the meat. Take the picture, remove the sponge, and dive in! The ladies at Food Fanatics suggest that if you don’t have a lot of an ingredient (say pasta or rice) you can fake a false bottom with wet paper towels to give a bowl or plate additional height.

Frozen syrup and cosmetic sponges help maintain a food shot for longer.

Continue for more Food Styling and Food Photography tips »

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Happy Food Dance and Green Gazpacho

Green Gazpacho with a sparkling rose Txakoli Gurratxaga

I think we’ve all experienced The Happy Food Dance at least once in our lives. Food obsessives–and I consider myself one–might engage in food-inspired ballet at their dining room table on a weekly basis.

I’ve seen toddlers bounce up and down and pound their fists with glee when moms present an especially tasty morsel. I’ve witnessed teenagers in a rare moment of no self-awareness squirm and twist in knots as a bowl of ice cream is placed before them. Even aged men with walkers and life-worn ladies with canes do a jig when presented with their most favorite dish.

No matter what age, certain foods set us dancing in our seats.

As I mentioned before, I adore food. So you’re more likely to see me sashaying in my seat than hitting the dance room floor. I dance for a perfect piece of fruit, Nancy Silverton’s pizza, a great bowl of pasta, a well-made morsel I’ve crafted in my kitchen. The dance is different for everyone, but it usually begins like this: a plate with enticing food gets fingers squeezing, and toes tapping. Then a sly grin appears, the head bops back and forth, and a bounce of excitement pulses so strongly, the whole body begins to move in a sideways, chair specific dance. All of a sudden you’re wiggling with anticipation and expectant joy. Your mind sings “I’m gonna eat this! I’m gonna eat this!” and your hand goes flying for the nearest utensil and zip goes the food into your mouth. Ecstasy. Dance complete.

I’ve been in the thick of training for my new job, so I haven’t had a lot of happy food dance moments at home lately. But all that changed the other night when I made a bowl of gazpacho from a recipe I found in my much-oggled Lee Brothers’ Simple Fresh Southern cookbook. It’s the first recipe I’ve made from this most delicious looking and inspiring cookbook by the two brothers–based on the table-side boogie it inspired, this is just the beginning of my explorations.

Continue For a Refreshing Cucumber Gazpacho with Tomato Salsa Recipe »

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On Brooks Cherries, Learning, and the Perfect Lemon Wedge

Bourbon Cherry Cocktail Mixed Drink
Master Cherry Cocktail: Things can get messy when you're the student.

In the ancient tradition of master and student, the student will always get the crap beat out of them. All the abuse aggressive teaching ends the moment the student masters the knowledge they’ve been struggling to learn. Military basic training is like that. Sports teams operate the same way. Even Yoda was no pushover with Padawan learner, Luke. And so it is when you enter a kitchen to become a cook (or in my case, the Service Guru): you’ve got to put up with a lot of shame, frustration, and possibly sharp points (the kitchen is full of polished chefs’ knives) on the way to mastering your station.

Once the ass-beating is done and the grueling hours of study and repetition turn into muscle memory, a kind of zen-like moment of release occurs. The student no longer tries. The student does. All the hard work results in something so graceful it makes the apprentice filled with pleasure (and less pain).

I still have a way to go before I am considered a master at my new job.

“In Japan, we have a saying, you can not make a sword with cold steel, ” my new boss, Chef H said to me before he began my training this week. “It is only when it is very hot and fresh from the fire, that you can pound steel to make it thin and sharp. No matter how hard you hammer cold metal, it will never become a sword.”

I grimaced a little. “So what you’re saying Chef is that right now you’re going to beat the crap out of me while I’m still new and malleable?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. “Yes, that is it exactly.”

Continue for the Recipe for a delicious Bourbon and Cherry Mixed Drink! »

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Service 101: On Becoming a Service Guru

*Gasp!* A new job!

Things are about to start tasting a whole lot different around here.

I’m pushing aside the canned tomatoes and Italian fettucini, and stocking my larder with bottles of fish sauce and dried rice noodles! Why? Because after more than three years working at Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton’s Pizzeria and Osteria Mozza, I’m starting a new gig at a pan-Asian restaurant.

What will I be doing? I won’t be bartending or waiting tables. I won’t be managing, either. My title? Service Guru.

(Cue: Sound of excited GIGGLING)

As Service Guru, I’ll be head coach of a big plan to get employees excited about giving great service every day. And not just take your order and get you out the door on time kind of service. We’re talking about creating a service program that gives employees the tools they need to put smiles on customers faces, turn them on to new and tasty foods, and makes customers want to come back to the restaurant again and again. My new gig is, without a doubt, my dream restaurant job.

Continue For the Inside Scoop »

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Summer Reading: Great Food and Writing Books (and some fluff)

Summer Reading Picks: On Writing and Down and Out in Paris and London

I was lucky enough to get in a lot of reading while I was on vacation. Though much of my reading was crammed into the last two days of my trip, I was able to plow through three books in just a couple of days before returning home. Each book offered food for thought, entertaining story, and psychological fodder.

Continue Reading for my current picks for Great Summer Reading for Foodies »

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A Culinary Vacation in Michigan

It’s hard to get back into the swing of things after you’ve been on a good vacation. The brain struggles to crest the bumps of daily life. I can almost hear the tick-tick-ticking of my mind as it processes the basics: Where do I put the groceries? What should I say in this email? Where are my car keys?

Vacation is over, but my mind is water-logged with vacation memories. There are juicy mental-snapshots: family gatherings, sandy beaches, barefoot soccer matches, food adventures, inspiration from Zingerman’s, my two-year-old niece “making cakes” with empty pots and pans, and humidity-induced thunderstorms. The memories clog my synapses as I attempt to get back to work.

Other vacations to my husband’s family home in Michigan haven’t been as relaxing as this, since in the past I allowed myself whole chunks of vacation time for my freelance writing work. But this time was different. I vowed that this vacation would be for nothing more than relaxing and celebrating my parents-in-law’s 50th wedding anniversary*.

Our holiday in Michigan started in a rural commuter outside of Detroit. Plymouth is the kind of town where kids can play ball in the street without fear of speeding cars and play on their front yard with a lo-fi water sprinkler. Our first few days were dedicated to napping and shopping for ingredients in Ann Arbor—which meant an obligatory visit to the incredible food emporium at Zingerman’s, and buying lots of great bottles of vino at Every Day Wines for the upcoming wedding anniversary celebration.

Continue Reading for Great Food Tour Recommendations for Michigan! »

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Vacation Cocktail: A Sangria Recipe

If a vacation back home could be distilled and put into a glass, I think it might taste a lot like sangria.

The simple moments–the naps on the couch, dinner table conversations, picnics, garden time, observing the changes in the landscape, listening to the sound of nature, building sandcastles, catching up with old friends, and walks around the old haunts–all have a kind of essence to them, or flavor.

A homecoming cocktail would have to start with wine, since every dinner in the family dining room requires a toast. After pulling the cork on a bottle of crisp white wine and a floral rosé, I’d add zesty citrus—sun kissed tangerines or juicy oranges—to mimic the blast of sweet excitement I feel whenever I see my beloved friends and family. Of course I’d mix in some plump and ripe strawberries to mark the long ago days of childhood and vacation trips to the Pick Your Own strawberry fields near my home in Massachusetts. I would add fresh mint to commemorate my family’s summer gardens and my great grandmother’s iced tea recipe for a hot summers’ day. I would slice up some mahogany dark cherries—sweet gems from the Ann Arbor farmers market if I got lucky—to show the influence of my husband and his Michigan family on just about every aspect of my life. I spoon in a bit of Cointreau to sweeten things up and tip my hat to the sophistication of my family’s palate.

Continue to get my Homecoming Sangria Recipe »

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Fava Bean Puree and Spaghetti

Fava beans are a lot like life: it takes a lot of work to get to the really good parts.

First there’s a pod to deal with. Peel back the zipper-string that keeps the pod sealed tight, open up the green shell, and inside you’ll find the precious fava beans nestled inside. But the work doesn’t stop there. There’s still a heavy, protective skin to remove before you get to the precious kidney-shaped nuggets of delicious emerald green. What a luxury fava beans are; I marvel at their simple elegance every time.

Lately, I can’t help but admire the wonderful little things about my job at Mozza.

It took countless years of shedding through inconsequential restaurant positions to find a job studded with rewards. I pitched the notion of the power of a flashy title and began to celebrate the good, humble work of service. I zipped past months catering, peeled back the years of meaningless beer-tap pulling, and stored away my management jobs, to uncover the simple joy of waiting tables and making drinks at Osteria and Pizzeria Mozza.

Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali, and Joe Bastianich’s world-class restaurant is a place where there is no such thing as a meaningless job.

From the prep cook shelling fava beans, the dishwasher cleaning off plates, the receptionist taking calls, the pasta cook dropping fresh pasta into the boiling water, the waiter explaining the menu, to the chef in pristine whites calling out orders —we all make a difference to the experience of everyone that steps into the restaurant.

Continue for a delicious Fava Bean Puree and Pasta Recipe »

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Service 101: Stay Out of the Kitchen!

Yesterday in the New York Time’s “Diner’s Journal,” New York Times’ “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber wrote a brief dispatch about getting kicked out of Restaurant Marc Forgione in Tribeca in his post entitled “Why I got Kicked Out of a Restaurant on Saturday Night.” It’s a simple tale of customer vs. chef, clashing cultures, big egos, and differing points of view.

The abridged version of the story begins with journalist Lieber as diner. The writer was eating at Forgione’s restaurant this weekend when—during the height of service—Chef Forgione began berating one of his employees for talking back to him in, what I must assume to be, an open kitchen. The verbal attacks were so loud—Leiber wrote in his “Diner’s Journal” post—that many in the dining room were visually disturbed.

So enraged by the outburst’s effect on his appetite, Lieber marched into Forgione’s kitchen and scolded the chef for his behavior. When Lieber returned to his table to continue his meal, Chef Forgione followed him into the dining room to speak with the writer about the inappropriateness of his actions. No customer, Forgione said, has the right to reprimand the chef in his kitchen. Even if he was screaming bloody murder.

After a brief back and forth about unsuitable behaviors, Forgione demanded that Lieber (and his guests) leave immediately. Lieber did, in fact, exit the restaurant but departed with a burning desire to tell his story.

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