That's the one I saw too. Maybe I'll check it out next time I'm in NYC. Looks like it's right in Gramercy. Can't beat the meat over there... they have access to all sorts of shit. And the buildings in NYC are crazy cool.
I adore the visuals this brings to mind and thank you for the day's big smile. I am curious: are onion rings financially viable or not? How (in one hundred words or less, please) did you change your business process to accommodate/eliminate/modify them? I'm not a business kind of person, so can't follow a lot of the language, but I do enjoy reading about your restaurants.
Hawksmoor do a pretty damn amazing steak. Worth looking up next time you're in London and feeling flush.
Yes, still viable, but, no, not at the classic price point that American restaurants have adhered to for years. Ditto for burgers, chicken wings, sodas, and other utilitarian quick service food items. You can't charge $3 for anything anymore. Everything starts at $5... doesn't matter what it is. That's not rocket science, but convincing an intransigent owner that diners would not revolt at $5 onion rings took me years to accomplish. My eureka moment was more about discovering the data set I could use to leverage the people who needed leveraging. It worked. For a year. Now everything is even more expensive and I have to pull another rabbit out my ass. Magic 8 Ball says, "Not a chance."
Personally, I find onion rings to be rather revolting regardless of their price, but differing tastes are what keep different restaurants in business.
Been meaning to ask you, are we still in the pepperoni apocalypse? My sole source (sliced, frozen, 1 kg/2.2lb bags) has gone up from around $9 a pound to $18 a pound. I know the dude is a bandit, but when you are the only company in the country to retail something, well....
Blasphemy! Supply, demand, extortion would be my guess, like you suggested. The Japanese have their own way of doing business. Sometimes they seem to know exactly what they're doing. Other times they're like Helen Keller trying to ride a unicycle through a blizzard. Nobody knows what they'll do or why.
They aren't too bad once you break a ring open, remove the limp piece of onion, and toss it in the garbage.
Dude is from the states though. I read a year or so ago that supply chain issues were killing pepperoni back home, just wondering if he decided to jack the price and keep it there.
Haha. People thank me for screwing them. As soon as people are unwilling to pay, I'll stop charging. (though I have very strong evidence that belt-tightening is in full effect... average ticket has dropped company wide for 8 straight weeks... the recession is coming... honestly, I don't think that's the worst thing, as we can't continue on our current path)
It's already here. It'll rear its unlike head as the quarter ends this week and then the real fun will begin.
If it craters the dollar against the yen I'm fine with it. 25 year low for what I earn in, and I'm going home in a while for a visit.
It’s not vinegar… or I should say it shouldn’t be vinegar. People say vinegar and some even use it, but the proper stuff - the stuff you get in chippies - is a different animal. I’m sure it’s vinegar based but they do something with it to take off that horrible sharp edge. Maybe they just water it down, I dunno, but what we put on our chips isn’t vinegar in the true sense. You can now buy it in the supermarket because people have started to recognise the difference, and they just label it ‘Chip shop vinegar’.
He's talking about malt vinegar, like we use on fish and chips. That would put his ass in my neck of the woods... every restaurant in Rhode Island keeps a bottle around for it. The rest of southern New England, too. Don't ever break one, though. It'll smell for months.
Oh, I knew he was talking about malt vinegar, but I’d always assumed vinegar on fish and chips was purely a British trait. Anyway, over here, what I said still stands. The stuff we have on the counter of our fish ‘n’ chips shops is not malt vinegar, but for a long time people when making their own chips would use malt vinegar and then wonder why their chips didn’t taste like chippy chips.
It is malt vinegar - the only difference is that chip shop vinegar is in limited use containers or single use sachets for food hygiene reasons, therefore it doesnt continue to oxidise for long after being opened...unlike the bottle of malt vinegar sat on the shelf at home... the longer vinegar oxidises the higher the ascetic acid content and the sharper it becomes. the 'chip shop vinegar' you can buy is marketting puff - it won't keep any better than standard malt does
Absolute twaddle! And who’s talking about how they keep? I’ve tried both standard malt vinegar and ‘chip shop vinegar’ on my chips and there’s a huge difference in taste. Malt vinegar is far far sharper. ETA - Oh and I’ve just remembered the proper term for chip shop vinegar. It’s ‘non brewed condiment’ and isn’t, in fact, vinegar at all. https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2073657/fish-and-chip-shop-vinegar-and-regular-vinegar-the-difference
That's a new one for me. Never seen or heard it before. Surprising, considering that's such a fun little word.
well you can put industrial acetic acid (which is still vinegar by the way) diluted with water and brown colouring on your chips if you want... although no decent chip shop will, i'll continue to use actual vinegar, like all the chip shops i know also do... the reason malt vinegar is sharper than the swill you're talking about is because in the stuff you're discussing the acid is diluted by the water... you could acheive the same by diluting malt vinegar with water...although god alone knows why you'd want to. whoever wrote that link doesnt know what they are talking about btw - malt vinegar is not made by mixing the maltings with acetic acid... the acetic acid component is created by the bacterial oxidation of the ethanol which is as i said why any kind of vinegar will get sharper over time https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-malt-vinegar-learn-how-malt-vinegar-is-used-in-cooking-with-4-recipe-ideas#how-is-malt-vinegar-made
It's like takeaway mayonnaise. I don't know what it is, but it's not mayonnaise. It's more like salad cream, but it's not that either.
