Now that the State Fair is over (see my earlier blog) and after splurging on some 60 foods on a stick, I can conclude that all but perhaps a handful of them are not good for the human body if consumed in large quantities.

In order to encourage our employees to eat healthier, I recently partnered with our human resources department to offer healthy recipes to team members. These recipes are easy to prepare and feature simple ingredients. Ninety percent of our team members are not culinary professionals, and everybody has a busy life. Therefore, I created recipes which anyone should be able to do in 30 minutes, with ingredients readily on hand. Read more of this >>

Do you have a gold mine in your F&B operations? You might if you were to avail yourself of all the collective information compiled from your frequent guests’ preferences, including catered events. Depending on the type of software you’re using for your customer relationship management (CRM), you could identify an enhanced information base that will highlight the types of menu item preferences which have reached their saturation point and are no longer effectively exceeding sales. Read more of this >>

State Fair History

The Wisconsin State Fair will mark 159 years this year, representing one of the most family-friendly and affordable entertainment experiences of Wisconsin’s summer season. Fairgoers of all ages will again come together to celebrate storied traditions and start new ones. In recent years, the Fair has drawn close to 900,000 people and was rated one of the Top 100 Destinations in North America by the American Bus Association. About 90 percent  of the visitors are Wisconsinites, while 10 percent are Flatlanders.

Memories and stories that have been established over generations are passed on, relived and celebrated at the tradition known as the Wisconsin State Fair. It takes place for 11 days each summer, usually in early August; it is truly the Grand Champion of summer featuring agriculture, horticulture, family attractions, and diverse food offerings.

There is the saying, “In Wisconsin (food) has got to be fried or on a stick; and people will eat it.” And the annual State Fair is the bellwether for food on a stick, the best opportunity to enjoy Wisconsin street food, ranging from longtime favorites to new culinary creations. While there are new introductions to each year’s Fair, some of the traditions of days past remain, becoming traditions for each new generation that experiences the Wisconsin State Fair. Some may only last one summer, while others spread throughout the country. Read more of this >>

About this time each year, experts scramble to beat each other to the punch and be the first to make predictions for the coming year. Some predictions deserve to be considered, while others are just plain common knowledge and are really not newsworthy. I have always believed that doing what you do best, while offering what your market demands, is a great start. Cutting-edge, hip and trendy restaurants will always have a place in the market. They are exciting, fun, and necessary. But remember that the majority of these restaurants created their own success by doing what they knew best, not by following trends. Following trends is a tricky game; if you’re reading about it, it’s probably too late to get on board. That being said, serious cooks and chefs should always be expanding their culinary horizons and repertoires. It is necessary to continually develop if you are to reach your potential. So here are my predictions for 2010. Take them for what they’re worth and add a few of your own. That’s what this whole blogging thing is about.

Menus Shall Be Streamlined
Eliminating costly slow-sellers, high-cost, and labor-intensive items may be necessary to survive. A smaller, more manageable lineup of killer items, rather than dozens of so-so dishes, will assist in controlling costs. Use daily specials to market higher cost items, limiting the amount of inventory on hand while satisfying that creative star demand.

Menus Shall Include More Customer-Driven Options
People love to customize their menu options without feeling as if it’s a burden on the staff. You don’t want to lose business because of inflexibility in preparation. Multiple portion size options on appetizers, entrees, and desserts will encourage guests to try additional items and, as a result, help to raise check averages.

Menus Shall Be Priced Fairly and Competitively
Minimize luxury ingredients to keep costs down without altering the essence of a dish. Experiment with lower cost center-of-the-plate options, try roasts and underutilized cuts of beef, pork, and lamb. Value drives loyalty. Charge what you have to, but be fair.

Business Will Never Be Turned Away
Restaurants that once shied away from kids’ birthday parties, civic events, and SMERF (social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal) business are now thinking twice. Regardless of the price point, find a way; offer alternatives to keep menu costs down. You never know who’s in the group or what future business will book as a result of it.  Savvy operators know that a dollar profit is a dollar profit! Forget the percent game for now. You can’t pay a bill with a percent or put a percent in the bank.

Higher Quality Provisions Shall Be Used
The world is so food savvy, expectations are high, and people know quality. Questionable fish, select meats, aging produce, and cheap groceries are a fast ticket to any empty dining room. It all starts with purchasing fresh, high-quality ingredients.

Job Descriptions and Station Boundaries within the Kitchen Shall Be Eliminated
Teamwork will rule the day. Associates hesitant to cross station borders and think globally may find them out of favor and possibly out of work. Just remember that this concept will apply to all levels within the organization, even yours. Walk the talk!

Chefs Shall Rethink Menu Balance
Foods such as updated retro style cold appetizers will increase in popularity among chefs as a strategy to balance work loads and productivity in the kitchen. Creative salads, cured and smoked meats and poultry, cheese flights, raw, marinated, and smoked seafood, upscale contemporary charcuterie, and Americanized sashimi-style and cooked sushi will be offered. Chilled items allow for greater menu and labor distribution, while introducing unlimited cutting-edge and pro-health related menu possibilities.

Chefs Shall and Will Execute at the Highest Level
Flawless execution is required at any price point. You can’t fool yourself or your customers. Your restaurant is not a test kitchen. Cook what you know and are good at. No one wants to eat an experiment.

Happy Holidays!

When I think back on my early days in the kitchen, a time before you could purchase pre-peeled, chopped, sliced, marinated, or cooked foods, restaurants worked on a cycle. Monday was the start of the prep cycle that would build through the week in order to bring you to full capacity for the weekend. You would spend a good part of each day completing your assigned components of “the never ending prep cycle.” Through repetition you became very proficient at the basics: peeling garlic and shallots, chopping herbs, making stocks, roasting ducks, filleting fish, and butchering everything including legs of veal. Knife skills became second nature as you raced to keep up with the frenzied pace of the kitchen.

In the ’70s, most cooks worked lunch and dinner service six days a week and were happy to be employed. The desire to improve skills and move up the ladder burned deeply within everyone in the kitchen. Dishwashers wanted to be pot washers, pot washers wanted to be prep cooks, prep cooks wanted to be line cooks and the aspirations continued right on up the line. Most cooks had earned the right to say they were a cook, having spent many years working their way up through the ranks learning the basics and building on the foundation which would carry them through their careers.

As our property grows services grow as well. The need to expand menus and increase seating capacity, only emphasizes the need for qualified, competent and passionate cooks. The search for identifying and recruiting cooks who have it and get it never ends. What I have found is that the largest applicant pool consists of “career changers.” Most are recent graduates from one of the many post-secondary culinary schools in existence today. So many, in fact, that I think the pool of prospective students necessary to keep the schools full and profitable is diluting the quality of the student population. I am not implying that these are not reputable schools; they are staffed by many fine chefs with good intentions and have acceptable facilities.

I am actually a huge fan of a quality culinary education. It’s not really the school’s fault, students either have the aptitude and skill needed for this kind of work or they don’t. You cannot teach inherent skills, stamina, and physical dexterity, which are needed to become a proficient cook/chef. Many applicants have never actually worked in a restaurant or have come up through fast food and mid level chain operations. Many have no relevant experience. Most have missed out on the early development stages that all competent cooks and chefs have in common, a strong foundation. I will admit that I have hired the wrong person more then once in my career and I have experienced the pain involved in correcting my poor decision. Your chances of identifying the best candidate are greatly increased with each additional interview, test, or audition that you conduct.

In addition to the standard interview questions, we administer a written test to measure basic culinary knowledge, kitchen math, and sanitation. This gives us a baseline and helps us to delve deeper into each area. If an applicant cannot write a basic recipe from memory, or give an opinion on food in America, we have to assume that he/she is not a serious cook or culinarian. In the second interview, the applicant will meet with Sous Chefs and FOH management for their analysis. If the consensus is favorable then he/she is asked to cook for us. The applicant is expected to prepare a soup and entrée in about an hour and half. We are looking for an organized, focused individual who can execute quality food under some level of pressure. In the last month I conducted six cook auditions and this is what I found:

• Two applicants came without a proper knife kit and would ask to borrow tools.
• Most had cavalier attitudes before they got started, but were soon making excuses why they couldn’t execute what they had planned.
• All but one produced a very safe and boring plate. This was an opportunity to show a little style and flair, it was an audition. With dozens of choices for a center of the plate protein, 3 picked a steak, 2 picked salmon and 1 picked swordfish.
• Most plates lacked balance and all the necessary components of a quality restaurant plate (no sauce or carbohydrate were common).
• Most applicants were unorganized, sloppy and displayed poor sanitation practices.
• All but a few could slice and dice like a kitchen pro and most seemed uncomfortable to actually be in the kitchen.

I would suggest to all who recruit, manage, and train cooks (if you are not doing so already) to incorporate a written and practical cooking test into the interview process. Invest the appropriate amount of time and take all the necessary steps to identify a qualified candidate and perhaps then you may have a 50/50 chance of success.

We have recently completed our vast expansion at Potawatomi Bingo Casino that started almost a year ago. You can read more about it in my earlier post, Opening Soon. Without a doubt, it has been very challenging and tiring at times. Busy periods have been followed by some slow times, but it all has been exciting and rewarding.

In March, we invited the public to our open house introducing them to Woodland Dreams, one of three new banquet spaces we have added. The theme of the event was “Treasures or the Caribbean” and had more than 500 guests in attendance, including potential future clients such as corporate meeting planners, Visit Milwaukee representatives, vendors, media partners, business owners, and others qualified by the catering sales team.

This expansion includes RuYi, the Asian concept opened on Memorial Day weekend, together with our focal point on the new casino floor, Bar 360. RuYi offers a Pan-Asian menu, with everything from Hmong to Vietnamese, from Japanese to Chinese, and even an item or two from Singapore as well as the Philippines.

RuYi is conveniently located in the heart of the casino complex. The dining space, while casual, is richly detailed. Curved walls and tables surfaced in gold and red-orange hues add to the experience. Of the two counters, both of which are topped with stone, one has kitchen views where the busy chefs can be glimpsed at work.

By June, we were busy putting final touches on our 7000-square foot production Kitchen. This new space includes a butcher shop, garde manger, hot kitchen, and a cook-chill operation with two 100-gallon kettles and a turbojet cook-chill tank, as well as a fully equipped pastry department to support our ten foodservice venues catering to the six million visitors we expect this year.

Our new buffet followed. Located adjacent to the production kitchen, we feature eight food stations offering salads, seafood, Latin, Mediterranean, Asian, American cuisine, and, of course, pastries and baked goods. These stations are more mini kitchens where our talented and friendly culinarians cook many dishes in front of the guest, where service is provided with a sassy but classy attitude.

June 11th kicked off the opening festivities with more than 3,000 visitors showing up for the open house. The F&B department was geared up to provide great foodservice. Grand Opening Day, June 19th, was the official opening of the new casino areas, now featuring over 750,000 square feet of gaming, entertainment, and F&B facilities. Close to 30,000 visitors showed and the casino gave away $1 million dollars in prizes that day.
Read more of this >>

About a month ago, I was able to get away on a cruise for a few days. I have been cruising before but, for some reason, this time I paid particular attention to the other passengers on the ship. Specifically, I paid particular attention to their eating habits.

For those of you who have not been on a cruise , the variety and volume of food is incredible. I personally enjoy the fact that I can try so many different things. On this trip I noticed that a number of my fellow passengers had an entirely different mindset when it came to this.

On the first day of the cruise, I enjoyed a buffet lunch. As I was in line, I noticed people in front of me piling food on their trays as though they were hibernating for the winter: two pounds of salad, a loaf of bread with a pound of butter, a pound of potatoes, two pounds of meat and some greens (probably so they felt as though they were eating healthy…you know…like someone ordering Diet Coke at McDonald’s). Besides the fact that they were consuming their daily-recommended caloric intake five times over, I thought to myself, “Do they know what they are eating?” “Do they appreciate the fact that they are trying dishes from all over the world?” “Do they appreciate the flavors, tastes and labor that went into making the dishes they are consuming?”

In our country, you notice that all-you-can-eat operations thrive in some parts of the country while they can’t keep their doors open for a few days in other parts of the country. This usually parallels to the parts of the country that ask for their steak to be cooked to a specific temperature versus other parts of the country where their meat is either cooked or not cooked. A lot of this really boils down to people being focused on the quantity of food versus the quality of food.

This is how I see it. I would be curious to hear from others as to what their experiences are with this. Are your customers concerned with the quality of food you put out, or are they more concerned with getting the most for their money?

I face the same challenges as most chefs: serving foods that are of the highest quality, “yummy tasting” (as our executive sous chef puts it), interesting, and have high customer demand while producing a profit.

I am also a consumer and frequent restaurants just like anyone else. I recently wrote negatively about cruise ships and Vegas buffets, so why not restaurants and hotels? For a number of reasons, I am usually disappointed with most freestanding and hotel restaurants. People who know me would be shocked if I didn’t find some level of discontent when dining out. My biggest complaints are that foods are often not hot, menu descriptions are inaccurate, and service is inconsistent. The reliance on and abuse of soup bases, dry herbs, low quality frozen seafood and vegetables, and packaged convenience foods is widespread. I realize that to execute consistently amidst the challenges of our industry, some speed scratch options are often necessary. I take advantage of one or two myself, but only if it’s top quality and will not disappoint even the most discriminating diner. Let’s face it: the proof is at the end of the fork. If the food doesn’t taste yummy, look appealing, have good mouth feel, and entice you with its aroma, you have failed.

Even good chefs have bad days, but too many chefs have not reached an acceptable level of proficiency. They have no one to blame but themselves. Cooking is a journey; great chefs and cooks never stop searching for knowledge and answers for how to reach the next level. If you don’t truly love cooking, I am sure you can find an easier way to make a living. If you are passionate about cooking or searching for ways to improve, here are a few suggestions.

• Make stocks. Have you ever wondered why your food isn’t as good as the restaurant down the street or why your soups and sauces are just okay? Properly prepared stocks are the foundation of everything else you will do and are worth the effort. Save beef, chicken, and vegetable trimmings, lobster bodies, and fish bones to aid in flavor enhancement; a good Chef can suck the flavor out of anything.
• Make reduction sauces. Take your time and let the process happen; lots of aromatics, a good wine, and the proper sachet will help ensure success. Bring the reduction to the flavor profile you desire and use a little cornstarch slurry for consistency adjustment if necessary. Don’t forget to skim and strain through a chinoise or cheesecloth several times during the reduction process.
• Use herbs and spices properly. This may sound a little basic, but I have seen massive abuse and the misuse of herbs and spices. Using herbs dry or fresh that complement the flavor profiles you are trying to achieve takes some thought. Don’t get weird; stick to the classics until you know the outcome. Even too much of a good thing can go south. The basic rule of thumb is dry for long cooking preparations and fresh for quick sautés or in the last few minutes of cooking.
• Keep it fresh. Fresh almost always wins out. In addition to seafood, produce, bread, and meats, we use a chicken purveyor. Fresh, unadulterated chicken is juicy, holds well, and is relatively cheap. Guests frequently comment on how good our chicken is and eat quite a bit as a result. I will sell chicken all day long; it’s a big money maker.
• Purchase quality meats. Let the chains and fast food world use select meats. If you can’t afford choice or better, cut your portion sizes. Most diners would derive greater satisfaction from a high-quality reasonable portion verses the larger poor-quality version.
• Keep hot food hot and cold food cold. This is one of the first things we learn as cooks but is without question the biggest problem I see. Keep plates under refrigeration, under a heat lamp, or in a low oven. Simmer soups before serving.
• Study, study, study. Devote time to self-improvement, eat at real restaurants, compete in culinary competitions, network with other chefs through professional organizations such as the American Culinary Federation, and read as much as you can. Most importantly, hold yourself responsible for your own success.