No clue about dinner, but I'm baking white chocolate macadamia M&M cookies to take to the neighbors for their flight tomorrow as a thank you for a favor. ETA: Flatbread pizza: olive oil, garlic, mozzarella, sweet onions, black olives, a few strips of green bell pepper, red pepper flakes, salt, drizzle of olive oil on top, bake til melted, then toss on a handful of baby spinach and the leaves of broccoli rabe, throw it back in the oven 'til it's wilted.
Not 100% sure what'll come of it, but I've got a pack of chicken breasts, a brand new meat hammer, and a crack load of pent up aggro. We shall see what we shall see.
Just made something resembling tabbouleh, but with added mixed beans, sweet corn, a preserved lemon cuz I was out of the regular kind and the little juice things both, some capers, threw half the spice rack at the mess, not sure if it was the right half though, and I've got some nice pork chops that I'm going to soak in some rum for a little bit and chuck on the fish grill or possibly into a fry pan. Yeah, that.
This is what my beloved made for me last night Never dated anyone who could actually cook, so this is the most amazing thing anyone ever cooked for me. Tonight will probably be something made out of left over zucchini and mushrooms.
Asahi Super Dry would be a good place to try. If beer can beer doesn't work, Matryoshka beer is certainly an option:
Arrrgh I hate when I was the last to post in a thread and the first on a new day, but...fuck it. I had dinner at the beach for the first time in over a year and thoroughly enjoyed it and am posting it. I had: Clam chowder (homemade, garnished with crispy bacon), grilled scallops with grilled vegetables, and a glass of lemonade. (It came with rice but I didn't eat it.) Unfortunately there was nothing good on the desert menu (chocolate cake, cheesecake, or key lime pie). I skipped lunch and had an early dinner, so I was prepared to get dessert "to go"but ended up having chocolate ice cream at home instead. Dinner was on the patio by the ocean, and I saw a baby pelican, which was too cute for words.
Yeah, sort of. I brewed up a quick batch, which is fairly similar to making soup I guess. Nothing fancy... straight pale ale. Might add some wood chips into the secondary to simulate barrel aging, but not going nuts. Haven't done it in awhile but got the urge.
Nice! Not a beer drinker, but I can appreciate the effort of it and understand the appeal of home brewing. ETA: Hey, what's on the dessert menu at your joint?
Nothing special. Desserts aren't a big seller. Less than 10% of diners will buy dessert, so it's kind of become an obligatory thing these days. I've worked at places that don't even offer them and nobody was terribly disappointed. ETA: now that I think about it, the only place I ever worked in that made their own desserts went broke over food costs. They had a pastry chef who made awesome desserts, but nobody bought them. Desserts and appetizers tend to be mutually exclusive... people will buy one or the other based on basic stomach capacity, and apps almost always win.
I am. I ask what's on the dessert menu first and plan dinner around it. Is that based on polling or sales? If it's based on sales, I wonder if there was something tasty available, if people would go for it. Know what's funny? In L.A. people tend to go for desserts more than appetizers. That town loves dessert on cheat day! If there's nothing worthwhile on the dessert menu, people go to a second location for coffee and dessert. Bakeries focusing on individual portions of desserts do surprisingly well in L.A..
Le sigh... This is inspired, though. God bless Wolfgang Puck and his sweet tooth: https://wolfgangpuck.com/dining/spago/ ETA: And of course I know I'm not getting anything like this outside of fine dining. I'm just saying, I like the variety of flavors and textures he's offering.
Yeah, I've heard that about the LA market. And any massive urban area. You can definitely specialize in them if you have ten-plus million people within driving range. In general, though, desserts are the last thing on the menu that draw people. And you don't make any money off of them. So if people have "saved room for dessert" you've fucked up all the courses that came before it. And if you're serving people who only go out for dessert, you've fucked up by having an empty available for them to sit at. Don't get me wrong, I love desserts, but they don't sell compared to the other menu pages, so they get less love. Bakeries are a different story. Bakeries don't have astronomical labor costs and depreciation rates. They're more in the grocery store model and don't have to account for ambiance and dining experience, which adds a shit ton of expenses and labor. It's all about labor.
I never thought about that about bakeries before, but yeah, I can now see the grocery store model comparison. What if a place were just to have one unique but not too costly (for the restaurant) thing? Like, what about one featured housemade ice cream, and then if necessary the rest of the dessert menu could be that stale crap everyone buys from somewhere else? Or do something creative with the one ice cream that isn't labor intensive? I dunno...a housemade sauce to go with? Because my palate is not happy without a good finish to the meal. Especially if there's been steak or a lot of garlic.
I'd like to see desserts designed and advertised less as unnecessary, saccharine, sugar concoctions, and more like an extra nutritional, semi sweet dish. Bread puddings, dark chocolate molten cake, taro coconut tapioca, and all these things would go with milk. Also, they have to compliment the meal you had. But if you don't serve the dessert with milk I'm just going to wait until I get home where I can do it that way...
Totally agree with this. But I need to know I'm just not getting some random crap. It has be advertised as "special."
Doing a quick count, there's 60+ items on that menu and only 6 of them are desserts. That's less than 10%. And it's the last link on the menu (re: afterthought). He goes from Wolfgang Puck to Wolfgang Fucked if the butts in his seats come in for $16 desserts instead of the $20-$30 apps. Ditto for the salads (maybe 6 or 7? Again, not a priority of menu engineering). Same argument. Homemade ice cream is expensive and requires a fuck ton of labor. And anyone who comes in just for that instead of the $145 tasting menu (add $95 for wine... God bless you, Wolfgang) is a wasted seat. Not that it can't be a draw, or that restaurants shouldn't apply the same dedication to their desserts as they do to the rest of the menu, but it'll never be make or break for enough people to be economically significant. ETA: oh, yeah, forgot to add that you don't want tables hanging around to order desserts. You want their butts out of the chairs to get new butts in to spend real money. Turn and burn... go home to have cake and cookies.
Interesting. Thanks for explaining the economics of it, Homes. Especially after you've probably just finished a shift and would probably prefer not to think about work. Another time, I'll ask you about two of my favorite places. ETA: I don't know if they still do it (probably not) but years ago, if you came into Spago after a certain time of night (9:30? 10?) desserts were half price. It was back when Gail Gand was pastry chef. My impression was that it was because LA is such an early town, it kept the place from being dead at the end of the night.
