The ritual of serving food well is our blog focus, its center, and its purpose. Dining is a meaningful part of loving life. It awakens our senses in making eating, drinking and the art of serving, more of a captivating ceremony that heightens our pleasures.
We inspire positive aspects of serving food and beverages, by promoting and fostering an "Atticus Finch" code of work ethics. Meaning, work right! Our blog is meant to "stir things up" and get the creative juices flowing. We provide “Shop Talk” for Food & Beverage, Catering & Banquets, Restaurants, Hospitality, Cafe's, and Deli's and Fast Fooderies.
Our audience are those who make their living by serving (dishing or pouring it out). Far more important to us is how paying customers want to be served their food. We listen.
For those needing fast cash in a bad economy our information can assist greatly in earning better gratuities for wait staff, college students, desperate housewives and even rotten politicians, voted out of office.
As our nations economy grips tighter, the forecast is expected to remain below par in many sectors. By learning the art of serving well, fooderies can provide legendary service. Customer satisfaction is what drives business through the door, and remains the highest priority to survival.
“Even if you serve still water, serve it well.”
P. Tsaldari & Gabriella are wrapping up the writing of a great food service tutorial and provide service training and coaching.
Special Foodie Bonus Feature: “How To Organize Recipes” (noted at the end of this blog)
Part I. Restaurant Warriors
Today I took a drive down the main strip and counted seventeen restaurant/cafe foodery closings within the last five weeks. My feelings ranged from anger to rage, then anger again. Names like Orwell, Machiavelli, Rand, and especially Schumpeter (pronounced SHOOM-pay-ter) toyed with my consciousness. Fearful that my brain would sizzle like a Bromo, I banished them. I don’t want to ghettoize this post, with even a hint of politics. Even though it hangs over us, like a dimly lit rusty chandelier amidst an earthquake of decisions waiting to be made, like yesterday. We all know the score. The shop keeper who is niggling over how to make payroll. The restaurateur who can’t shrink the 80 tables down to 40, and the employee who's hanging on by a thread. So what’s this post really about? It’s about “changing to meet the challenges.” It’s about us foodies, who eat, drink, prepare, buy, sell, and work with food. It’s about not using a mallet to pulverize a business or an employee, that is obviously going through some hard times. It’s about being a bit more sparing, with the extra hot chili peppered criticism. I’m asking us to be more of a compassionate conscious observer rather than an unconscionable deserver. What it boils down to is curbing the “I wanna, wanna’s” be they employers, guests, or employees who regretfully may have larceny in their hearts. Or bullying someone you know can’t fight back, without losing their job. The answer, is to say, what you have to say, with compassion! It legitimizes everything and turns the receiver of your complaint, into your advocate.In my vain attempt to help purge the toxic effects of these economic doldrums, I decided to convert the doldrums into possible opportunities for our audience and try to make it entertaining at the same time. Something to redirect the negativity swirling around us that’s become a narcotic. This post may not resolve anything. If it sets you to thinking about taking action or inspires you. Or helps you inspire someone else, then it has accomplished its purpose. Within this mayhem we may even discover constructive alternatives, while helping each other to get through this. I’ve divided this post into 4 (hopefully entertaining) segments: Song time (one time whinge allowed). I’ve taken the liberty of playfully dubbing the song, “Only The Lonely” as the anthem for empty restaurant tables everywhere! Play time(playful positive attitude), Story time(inspirational), and finally, let’s show everyone how we entrepreneurs and employees collaborate in kicking some creative small-business butt. It’s impossible for me to hit all the high notes. Must reserve some things for our book! By the way it’s finally finished ... just wrapping things up!As of this writing, I imagine us as "Restaurant Warriors!!! " We are not going to take this economic downturn lying down. In the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “Never! Never! Never give up!”
Song Time: Let’s kick it off with Roy Orbison’s song, “Only The Lonely.” Dedicated to empty restaurant tables wherever they may be silently sitting idle. We shall make light of it in a constructive way!
Play Time: You know the game every time you see a VW drive by, you punch a friend. Now, every time we pass a new food business that has closed, we punch a friend. Heads up everyone!!! This posting is to signify, there is a new sheriff in town (or rather in your kitchen or cafe). Take heart... IT’S A WHOLE NEW GAME!!! (best part is at the end of this video)
Story Time: Close friend and confidant, Caterina Borg had this to say: “When I think of giving up the struggle, I think of the story about the little mouse who was snooping around the kitchen and fell into a pot of heavy cream...he tried and tried to get out...his little feet were going a mile a minute ... and when he was ready to give up, something magical happened...the cream turned to whipped cream and it helped him to climb out of the pot...so, I spend my days trying to whip my cream!! LOL”
Foodie Lovers whom we adore. Here is a wonderful gift for all of you, compliments
Culinary Information for Professional Chefs, Foodies and Culinarians. Organizing your recipes on your computer can be a little daunting but ultimately is well worth the time to do. Once you have set-up yourrecipe organizational system it becomes very easy to both save and to find recipes. I used to labor over "under what category should I save this recipe so I can find it later? Should I save it under the entrée name or the sauce name?" Now I do both. That way when I go to my Halibut recipes, I can see what sauces I have specifically paired with Halibut in the past. Or I can go to my Beurre Blanc sauce file and see all my Beurre Blancs to pick one for the Halibut, which I used for a different application but may not have used for Halibut yet.
Most of my recipes are in an Excel format, but some are in Word and a few are even html web pages I have saved to a folder. I prefer Excel because it is easy to scale a recipe to feed 20 people or 2000. And Excel also allows me to put costing right into the recipe format to calculate my food cost % and appropriate sales price.
* Extra-extra Bonus Feature: "Wagyu Beef" created byAdam with Truffle Shuffle
* Special Congratulations to Renee Restivo, New York and Noto, Sicily.
Featured in the New York TimesLetter: Italy’s Home CooksPublished: April 25, 2010 To the Editor: Regarding “Mangia, Mangia!” (April 11): So good to see Italy’s home cooks — mostly women behind the scenes in Italy’s homes — finally getting the recognition they deserve! In a world where five-star chefs and celebrity chefs often get most of the attention, this is a refreshing article. I have worked very hard over the past decade to create Sicilian home cooking programs — soulofsicily.com — in Noto (in the province of Siracusa) where I live for part of the year. Mammas and nonnas have so much tradition to share, and we must taste it and learn from it before it disappears. Grazie mille for this article. Bravo! Renee Restivo New York and Noto, Sicily Facebook Link: http://www.facebook.com/Reneerestivo
* A Special Thank You: On July 10th, we received a personal email from a member of the NYT’s telling us that they were a new fan on our website and they were sending it around to other “cronies and near-cronies.” It was an euphoric email!!! We are so grateful to everyone! Thank you again for your congratulations!
Please continue writing as to what ails you, along with your suggestions. Hope to be able to get back to visiting your blogs and commenting as soon as is possible. I really miss it!
We personally respond to all of our emails!
Cheers, Penelope
Battle Stations Part II in our next blog
(c) 2010 ptsaldari.posterous.com : PTsaldari Group Inc. | The Art of Serving Well | Serve Me Well Inc. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared on ptsaldari.posterous.com blog authored by PTsaldari. This article may be shared and reprinted as long as this entire copyright message accompanies it. Email: ptsaldari@gmail.com
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