Except there is. I guess you could call it comfort food - you’ve got fried fish, a burger, a stew, pasta, roasted meat. These are things Joe Sixpack and the rest of us grew up eating.
For the same reason you don’t just dump the food on a plate - you plate the components. Food should taste good, above all else, but it should look interesting too. You have the whitish meat of the chicken and the red cranberries - and then you have the flesh of the taro roots that’s white with red lines.
But that’s not what it is. Think of what the melting pot is. Over time, people become exposed to elements of other cuisines, and those elements become assimilated into “American” cuisine. If you go back far enough, nearly any “American” food was once an immigrant food.
Not a single beef dish? I’d be high tailing it for the door.
This is useful feedback. There are probably others who feel the same way. There’s a good chance I’ll incorporate at least one beef dish in later versions of the menu.
I’m a pretty sophisticated foodie, I lived in Seattle for 4 years so I understand the people and I cook a lot and I gotta say, this menu is a mess. I know it’s hard to hear but this is not coming from me personally but me telling you very few people are likely to enjoy this food. There’s different which is good and different for the sake of being different and this falls squarely in the latter.
Almost every item on the menu has a dissonant note that totally jars the dish. Nothing really immediately stands out as an interesting or innovative flavor pairing that I would be excited about trying. After a quick scan through, I started looking for the least offensive dish to at least have the hope of something simple, prepared correctly but I couldn’t even find that in here.
I’m being brutally frank because future plans are potentially on the line and I think it does nobody any favors to invest blood sweat & tears based on apparent enthusiasm only to discover it doesn’t materialize in real life.
Can I ask, what your experience in the restaurant industry is and how far along in the planning stages this restaurant concept has gone?
I’d order the dumpling soup and either the fish and chips or the roasted chicken. I’m lactose intolerant so I can’t eat anything with cheese or ice cream.
Also, the only dish on that menu that might even slightly appeal to me is the Fish and Chips, and then I see the description and it completely turns me off. It’s not deep-fried, it’s nut crusted and it’s salmon. None of those things are traditional, and while I can understand the urge to be eclectic and put a twist on a classic, you’ve instead twisted EVERY SINGLE aspect to the point that the dish is unrecognizable. Use a pistachio crust on cod with normal potato wedges and you might have something. Use salmon instead of whitefish and maybe you can make it work if you have a traditional beer batter and fries (though using such a oily and distinctive tasting fish strikes me as ALL wrong). Use blue potato fries with a normal fried fish and you might have something. Contorting every aspect takes me from curious to completely put off.
Look at you main dish sides: Taro root, blue potato, yam fries, couscous…talk about trying too hard and coming across all wrong. Be inventive in one spot, and pair it with traditional items if you want any hope of capturing customers. All it takes is one meat and potatoes diner and the entire party is going elsewhere.
Thanks - this is definitely something I’ll consider for future revisions. The dessert menu is a bit dairy-heavy.
Well, if I were the chef I would detonate on a regular basis and provide a submariner’s officer menu, maybe some seaman gruel.
Fine naval dinin’.
I’ll certainly consider a more standard meat-‘n’-potatoes.
Also, I might offer a choice of sides in future revisions.
I’m going to have to demur on this question for now, but I will say that it’s still very early.
And speaking of early - I need to be up in about 6 hours. I look forward to checking this thread again Friday afternoon - all the feedback is just invaluable!
Edited to add: About my background, I will say this - my grandfather owned a restaurant for over 50 years. If he were still around, I’d love to ask him what concerns and objections he encountered in the planning stages.
My thing isn’t that I wouldn’t want to try this stuff, but that I’d be afraid I wouldn’t find something I liked. And the last thing I ever want to do at a sit-down restaurant is buy food that I don’t like. I’m also not a big fan of spice.
That out of the way, I’d probably order the dumpling soup, Fish 'n chips or maybe the burger, and I guess the plum cobbler. But those are pretty much all I could ever order. (The Mousse doesn’t look bad, but sounds insignificant, and the Canoli seems like it would be better as an appetizer.)
I really would like to see twists on more Southern comfort food. And like Askance, I’d like to see a little less sweet–save it for the dessert.
In my opinion, Tapioca Dextrin, Shalmanese and Omniscient have hit the nail on the head.
Frankly, I can’t imagine a restaurant with a menu limited to these items succeeding at all…anywhere. It might be okay to offer these items in your restaurant, but they’d need to make up a very small percentage of the total items offered. Nothing to me looks particularly compelling (save the avacado-corn dish, which I would like to try but without the banana chips), nor does it look particularly sating. I have a hard time imagining people leaving there feeling well fed and anxious to return.
Thomas Keller has been very successful with his Ad Hoc restaurant (food examples here, scroll down a bit). It focuses on a clientele that is neither trendy nor in the market for $8 lunches and has has a fixed price of $49 (more or less in your price range). It focuses on comfort food, extraordinarily well prepared, and people can’t wait to come back for more.
Now, I’m not saying you should focus primarily on dishes like meatloaf and fried chicken, but IMO you need to offer dishes with a wider and more satisfying appeal that are going to keep people wanting to come back again and again, and then present the items in the OP as specialty fare for the more adventurous types who might want to try them.
There are artists who create for themselves and there are artists who create for their audience. I think you are coming up with dishes that satisfy your own artistic desires but which aren’t going to generate enough of a following to keep yourself in business.
You obviously have talent, and I don’t mean anything I’ve said here as anything but constructive criticism. I love to see new businesses succeed, and I hate to see them start up - full of optimism, hope for the future and a with a considerable financial investment - only to flounder and go out of business a few months later. The only reason I’ve said what I have is in the hope that if and when you do go into business, you will succeed. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you ultimately decide to do.
The style of cooking is familiar to Joe Schmoe, but not the right flavor profile which makes a huge difference. He will sit there and either bitch outright all evening or passive-aggressively poke at his food and make annoying little quips about it.
Frankly, way too chichi niche market. I forsee people surfing past, looking at the menu and wondering 1 where is a steak, bake and veg 3 plop, 2 where is the plain broiled white fish fillet, plain veg and salad with dressing on the side fancy out to dinner diet food and 3 Aunt Harriet is wondering where her shrimp cocktail and banquet food surrogate are.
More people are unimaginative foodwise than are to be perfectly honest. Just because you may live in a large population area of 500 000 people with a large artsy fartsy metrosexual subgroup doesn’t mean that the place will take off. More restaurants fail than make it.
To be honest, whilst there’s nothing on this menu that appeals to me, if I heard someone say that they’d been to the restaurant and the food was fantastic, then I’d happily go along and try something to see what it’s like.
That’s probably more down to me being a New Zealand and not being familiar with many of the combinations in your dishes.
I’m a pretty serious foodie, and I eat everything.
I would pass this restaurant up. I’ll be frank here. It’s not an attack on you, just encouragement to refine your ideas.
To begin with, it’s too expensive. I’ll spend that kind of money on a meal, sure. But that meal is going to be sushi, or a plate of expertly cooked meat, or perhaps a really authentic Ethiopian meal. I’m certainly not spending fifteen bucks on a piece of pineapple.
For two or three bucks less, I’m be happy to think of your restaurant as some sort of happy hour joint. For two bucks more you can give me some serious quality ingredients and I’ll think of you as a real restaurant. But at the prices you have now, with that menu, it’s the sort of place where middle aged ladies go after book club because they imagine that’s the kind of food upper-class people eat based on the food network. The real foodies are going to be at the serious no-frills Mexican restaurant down the street.
It reminds me of food you’d find in an international airport bar.
You need to have two or three items on the menu that play it straight, that make it look like you really actually know how to cook. Right now, all I see is gimmick. It makes me think you have no idea how to actually just grab a piece of meat and cook it until it’s good. Once you can convince me that you can do that, I’ll be willing to see where it goes when you get creative. You can keep your taro fries or whatever if you must, but make sure you have a couple solid perfectly cooked main dishes.
You rely on the “Ooooh unexpected fruit!” thing a bit too much. It’s a neat twist on one or two things, but it gets dull when that’s the only note you know how to hit. If you are serious about pushing limits, you have to do better than the old pineapple salsa trick.
And the whole thing does sound overly sweet. 3 out of 5 entrees have major sweet elements. Play around with spicy, tangy, bitter, and even a little bit of bland. Practice balance to go with the contrasts you clearly love. Develop the art of the subtle surprise.
My advice? You seem attracted to the South-West. Take a serious chunk of time off and mosey down to the South, eating at top Southwest restaurants along the way. See how other people are doing it. Take notes and steal ideas, especially the ones that draw customers in. Then, go down into Mexico and learn the roots of the cuisine. Learn the philosophies behind the different regional styles. Consider it a business investment. Taste all those peppers and fruits in their native cuisines. Learn from the food. Don’t impose yourself on it or use it as a tool. Let the dish come from the ingredients, let your meat talk.
Then give it a shot.
I consider myself a serious foodie. I cook and eat out often and there’s not much I wouldn’t try and not much I don’t like (except lima beans. I mean really, who eats those?). I’d love to try the bean pastry, the chile pepper fries, and the turkey. I’m not big on sweets, so I probably wouldn’t order dessert, just a nice glass of wine or coffee. Can a brother get a nice fruit and cheese plate?
My biggest gripe with the menu is that I can’t figure out what the restaurant wants to be. You mention it’s all comfort food, but then it’s changed into something I don’t recognize. If you’re doing comfort food, do a gourmet mac n’ cheese or a meatloaf and mashed potatoes. If you want to go chile-heavy, both can be enhanced quite nicely with chiles.
Don’t underestimate the importance of the customer understanding what the “idea” of the restaurant is. I’m reminded of a restaurant we went to a couple of times in Miami that failed because of something similar. The food was excellent, but they couldn’t figure out if they wanted to be a bar that served high-end food, or a white linen restaurant that served a lot of drinks. Their $26 fried shrimp baskets were served in faux bamboo bowls, and the tables were covered with brown paper.
When I hear about a new restaurant in town from friends, it’s always something like, “Man, you gotta try this great new deli I found,” or “Have you been to the new steak place,” or “The chile relleno at the new Mexican place are awesome.” With all of those examples, I know when I walk in what to expect. Even before I get there I know what I’m going to be looking for on the menu. I’m trying to figure out how someone would explain your restaurant to me based on your menu. “A place that serves comfort food, but with a twist”? Too vague for me. Comfort food should make you feel comfortable when ordering it as well as eating it, not nervous that though you really, really like normally like meatloaf, you’re afraid you’ll be put off by the veal and ostrich loaf, that’s smothered in a habanero, honey, and shiitake glaze.
Just my 2 cents. Don’t mean to come of sounding snarky.
+1 on the “lack of identity”. for example, you have cannolis and fish/chips in the same menu. yet, there is obviously a SW trend with all the beans, corn, avacados, and peppers in CERTAIN dishes. then you toss in a pretty standard chicken/dumplings. what’s up with that? also, you said pasta? is couscous supposed to be your “pasta” dish? i really don’t see the “comfort food” theme at all. i see a SW theme, a “fusion-bar food” theme, and maybe an italian theme with the cannoli, chorizo, and pancetta…
+1 for the odd pricing. i don’t know about Seattle but for DC your menu seems to be uniformly overpriced by $1.50-$2.00 especially if you have modest portions. I mean… in what ridiculously inflated market can you sell a medium sized plate of fish/chips for $17? salmon, potatoes, and red cabbage! or chicken and taro for $16? adding a slice of pancetta to a burger is $3?
also, the menu seems to be oddly proportioned. 5 apps, 5 entrees, and 5 desserts? it’s kind of a small menu, except with a [relatively] huge dessert selection. maybe you’re better off opening a pastry shop? your desserts are the only ones that really look interesting and marketable [to me] anyway.
Like others, I am also a serious foodie; to the extent of having edited cookbooks and written reviews for many Bay Area and international restaurants and articles for a handful of prominent magazines.
Sven, Shark and Pancake have put much in mind about what I was going to say except the pricepoint. In San Francisco, that sort of menu is almost in line on the appetizer portion of starters, but still under what entrées are going for.
There is nothing I won’t try at least once but I agree, there is nothing on the menu that I find particularly appealing. And I am genuinely engaged by weird and unusual combinations but I am having a hard time seeing the viable connections between the ingredients. I am not seeing cohesiveness in thought or intent.
The concept of menu development prior to opening a restaurant is one of the hardest aspects of establishing a restaurant. You have to do considerable research into your demographic; look at who you want at your restaurant, go to similar restaurants and see what is working for them. You can emulate without copying.
I have worked with new restaurants in R&D and what I can’t emphasize enough is research, research, research. Then offer to do lots and lots of taste tests with lots of people.