That’s actually a good point. Efficiency must count for a lot in a restaurant type business.
Opening a restaurant is always a huge gamble, but at least $25 for a take-out dinner does not sound at all out-of-line for me. I don’t eat out very much, but when I do, I expect to spend about $40-$50 per person with drinks at anything bistro-level or above. Even dinner at a decent pub, with one beer ($5), one main, and one app is going to cost me at least $25. The main pricing disparity I see in the menu is that the appetizers and main courses seem to be priced too close together.
To start, I live in SF, land of truffle-oil mac 'n cheese. The prices seem reasonable for a foodie joint, and I’m comfortable with unusual menu items. But I think you’re not hitting the ‘comfort food with a twist’ note, and a lot of your menu items lack a strong focus. I’ll go item-by-item:
There’s some potential here, but I worry that pancetta’s gonna get lost.
As others have mentioned, banana chips are a little out of place here. Avocado and queso sounds pretty goopy, too.
I can buy chicken and apple dumplings, but I think it’s a mistake to label it soup, and mention the broth. It comes across as padding the description.
This sounds pretty good, actually.
If you’re going upscale ingredients, drop the cream cheese. Use something named, even if it’s a creamy cheese. Also, plum salsa sounds strong enough to overwhelm.
This isn’t fish and chips. Don’t call it that. And I’m very hesitant about salmon + pistachio. They’re both too strong of flavors.
Other than the $3 pancetta, this sounds fine to me.
No problems here, except I’ve never had a good taro root. Pretty is all well and good, but taro usually ends up feeling like undercooked potato. Starchy and dense. It’d fly if it wasn’t the only vegetable here, but if I don’t like that I’m left with just chicken.
I don’t know what’s driving the price up here, but it sounds way overpriced to me. It also sounds like a first - you’re presenting the pineapple as the main item, and I don’t want that much pineapple. I have a sweet tooth, but this sounds like there’s no savory (I know, the cornbread. I doubt it can stand up to the pineapple-peanut-tomato flavors).
Nothing here stands out as the lead. Chorizo is strong, but IMO doesn’t have the depth to stand alone. Throwing in spinach helps, but there’s no synergy. Couscous seems tossed in, and arbol-pineapple sauce sounds overpowering anyways. Yogurt and a salad are odd - the only thing here with real side dishes.
I’d use something stronger than farmer’s cheese, but almond pastry and lime peel don’t immediately turn me off.
Calling this milk and cookies is a stretch. You can get away with that if you’ve got a ‘milk’ analogue, but ice cream isn’t. Too solid. When you’ve also got faux fish and chips on the menu, you’re trying too hard. Also, cream-flavored ice cream is silly, and licorice + licorice is just bad. Use a mild ice cream, but do use a flavor. I’d maybe use hazelnut?
Rose-on-rose sounds excessively sweet for my tastes. And mousse is too soft and brittle is too hard to meld well.
I’m dubious about cashew and plums. I’d use hazelnut or almond. Biscuits and plums are a good lead, you don’t need the ice cream to upstage that.
This sounds very soggy. I’m also not a big fan of cream/sweet cream/sweeter cream, but that’s just me.
All in all, I think the biggest problem is that you’re trying to have all the ingredients be the star. You need some more extras - mashed potatoes, vanilla ice cream, lettuce. If you’re trying for comfort foods with a twist, you can’t twist everything and still have it be recognizable. Pick one or two ingredients for each dish, and work everything around those. Otherwise you end up with competing flavors.
As others have said, you need some more basic foods, too, but I think you can handle that.
Well, different strokes and all that, but over the past 10 years, I have eaten meals in San Francisco, NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Madrid, LA, Seattle, Washington DC, Chicago, Vancouver, Phoenix, Montreal, Barcelona, Minneapolis, Brussels, Louisville, Berlin, Denver, Amesterdam, Houston, Prague, San Diego, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia and several other various cities (some known for great food, some not so much) and I have only dropped 40 or 50 bucks for a single meal (not including drinks) a very small handfull of times.
I have spent the bulk of my time in Salt Lake City when not travelling, and at least around here, the proposed menu is just too expensive to anchor a successful new restaurant in this market (I haven’t been to Seattle for almost 5 years, so I am not sure how it’s economy is currently) but at least around these parts, even old, successful, established, upscale places (many which have been open for decades) are doing ANYTHING that they can to keep people coming in the door. 2 for 1 specials, dollar beer nights, early-bird or late-night discounts, extended happy hours, free appetizers, whatever. (and remember, these are places with an established customer base).
In my opinion, for a smart person who takes advantage of available deals, it is now cheaper to go out for a nice dinner and/or drinks than it has been for many, many years.
In fact, in an hour or two I will be headed down to take advantage of a special that a place I like has been running lately. They offer 2 dollar liters of draught domestic brew (Bud, Coors, etc.) and half price appetizers on saturday afternoons until 7 pm. I can drink out for about the same price that I would pay for a 12 pack at the corner store. I can then leave a generous tip and still have change from a twenty…
I think it seems like a decent price if it’s quality food. I agree with most others in saying this reflects a real tendency towards sweetness. If that’s too overbearing in every dish, I’m probably not going to like it.
Also, this does seem to be trying too hard to be intriguing with almost every dish. I’d hope for a new restaurant to have a few more solid dishes. Something that lets me know the chef has complete confidence in making a reliable quality dish that every one else makes.
I’ve rated these 1 to 5 (1 meaning would definitely not order, 5 meaning really want to try it)
Savory Black Bean Pastry
4 - Is actually pastry involved, or does this just refer to the layering (or is it some weird creation using black bean flour?). All the flavors sound good.
Avocado-Roasted Corn Salad
3 - I’m not an avocado fan, and a balsamic reduction doesn’t appeal to me in this. I’d want something fresher-tasting.
Dumpling Soup
2 - This doesn’t sound horrible, but it’s not too exciting. I suppose it makes some sense to keep it here if you do expand the menu.
Chile Pepper Fries
1 - The idea of mango mayonnaise just sounds disgusting to me, and pairing it with the peppers doesn’t help it out. Altogether too sweet.
Crab Empanadas
3 - This seems almost there, and if there are other ingredients that help out it could be okay. I wouldn’t take a risk on ordering this one.
Main
Fish and Chips
3 - This sounds exactly like the sort of dish that ought to be good at a place like this (although it’s just not personally appealing to me). I don’t mind that it’s a parody of “fish and chips” though that appears to have bothered some other posters so you may want to change it. One thing of note - if I ordered this — especially in Seattle — and got farm-raised salmon, I’d never eat here again. I’d assume it’s not mentioned because the question should not even have been raised. If you need to raise the price by a dollar, do it.
Veggie Burger
4 - This is highly dependent on whether the poblano relish is sweet. (Poblano mayo would be more comforting to me). If it’s sweet, I’d knock it down to a 3. The pancetta option seems decent, although having it there is making me think it’s a sweet relish.
Roasted Chicken and Savory Cranberries
4 - This sounds entirely appetizing. There should be one or two more reassuring dishes like this. (I’d actually try the veggie burger first before ordering this, but hope that someone else orders it so I can try it out. One of the problems with this menu is that I can’t be entirely certain if I’m going to be disappointed by this item.)
Pineapple Braise
2 - It sounds interesting, but not something I’d go for unless I’d tried everything else first. Is it vegan?
Spinach-Chorizo Sauté
3 - It sounds good up to the ‘yogurt & apple-walnut salad’. My mild nut allergy would probably rule it out anyway, but that part makes the dish seem unfocused. It’s like it needed something more but this was the best they could come up with.
Dessert
Cannoli
5 - Sounds fantastic.
Milk and Cookies
2 - I’m suspicious about “cream-flavored” ice cream. I’d rather have an actual flavor to balance the licorice. Leaving it be seems too simple and almost uncertain.
Rose Mousse
4 - This is intriguing, although I might be wary of ordering it as an after-meal dessert as it sounds kind of intense.
Plum Cobbler
2 - Initially thought this was more like a slump (“in plums” meaning mashed or even macerated plums), but if its cooked in a plum half that doesn’t sound cobbler-y enough. I guess I’m pickier about desserts than fish and chips.
Habanero Tres Leches
3 - This sounds intriguing but I’m not sure I’d want to try it. I’d probably be more confident ordering it from somewhere that seems more versed in Mexican flavors.
I’m glad you’ve traveled around (really, I don’t understand the point of you listing all the places you’ve eaten. You want me to list all the cities I’ve eaten in?) $25 without drinks is not out-of-line for a bistro-level and up establishment in a town like Seattle. Sure, you can eat for $25 and under all the time if you want to. I can go to Chinatown or hit any of the myriad of Mexican places around here or the ma-and-pop diners and do fine in the $25-and-under range. I know where I can find great bang-for-buck. But if I want a nice, sit-down meal with the type of menu in the OP, $25 for app + main is in line with my experiences. I would say the main dishes are actually a couple bucks too cheap.
ETA: Here’s a menu of what I would call an average-priced classic French-style bistro in Chicago.
Ah, I didn’t notice that. I just thought it was a classical cobbler preparation, using a slightly unusual fruit for the base. (Most people are familiar with peach, apple, or berry cobblers–I don’t think I’ve ever seen plum cobbler. The type of plum(s) used would be important in this preparation, and I’d like to know what kind it is in the menu description.) This is one I would definitely prefer a classical approach to. I think the choice of fruit and ice cream pairing (which, in retrospect, I think is unnecessary) should be strong enough to stand alone.
That was merely to illustrate that there are world-class “food” cities (San Francisco, Barcelona, New Orleans) universally renown for fine cuisine that have scads of places to eat that are much more affordable than the proposed prices would be in a start-up Seattle restaurant. (I really enjoy Seattle, but most serious foodies wouldn’t put it in the same league as NYC or Madrid, right?)
I am just trying to point out to OleOneEye that currently the service industry is doing whatever it can to keep people coming thru the door, and at least to me, that seems chiefly done by lowering prices.
ETA—I don’t want to hijack this thread, and wish OleOneEye every success—Next time I hit Seattle I hope to stop in for a beer!!!
Problem is, your menu needs to speak for itself. Let’s say you post the menu in your restaurant window and a bunch of people come by, do a collective :dubious:, and start to walk away. Are you gonna come rushing out to tell 'em, “No, trust me! It really is good!!!1!”?
On another note, it looks like you might have a grand total of one item that’s vegan-friendly. In Seattle, this is basically a guarantee that no groups of people will ever go there.
It depends on what market you’re aiming for. I think there’s enough high-income, high-tech people in the Seattle area to make something like this sustainable, provided the food is good enough to match. I personally haven’t seen much, if any, lowering of prices here with that sort of mid-level establishment. Here’s Goose Island brewery’s menu. Apps are in the $6-$9 range, and mains are in the $10-$15 range (I’m not counting the $16 cheese sampler or the $20 for 2# of mussels.) And that’s just the menu for a nice brew pub, not a classy bistro.
ETA: As for Seattle, I found it a pretty decent city for food, especially seafood and Vietnamese. The best mussels I’ve ever had were the Penn Cove mussels at Toby’s Tavern. I think it’s a respectable city food-wise.
sorry pulykamell but i’m shocked that you’re so well traveled and “well-eatened” and think the menu is UNDERPRICED!
$17 salmonand chips, $15 pineapple/cornbread platters, and $14 dollar VEGGIE burgers? i’d say the typical price for food with those ingredients would run… $12, $11, and $9 respectively at a BISTRO. for the 17/15/14 prices i’d expect Lobster+truffle oiled fries, duck with the pineapple, and kobe beef sliders.
even in the “average-priced classic french-styled bistro” menu you cited, the brie sandwich WITH prosciutto is $12 (as oppsed to $17 with pancetta), the catch of the day is $15 compared to $17 for salmon/chips, and the meat hodgepodge is only $1 more than the vegetarian (and rather unimpressive) pineapple dish.
simply put, you get better food for comparable (or less) cost. if you want to jack up the prices, you’re saying you’re willing to pay $20 for salmon/fries?
EDIT: were others fooled by the phrasing of the french fries as i was? they’re french fried PEPPERS. not french fries with peppers…
Crab Empanadas
Roasted Chicken and Savory Cranberries
Rose Mousse
I think your restaurant menu sounds interesting and the prices in-line with what’s typical in the Dallas area. If it were good, I’d definitely come back and bring friends.
Hunh. Yeah, hadn’t noticed that. For comparison purposes, I can get an order of “Hot Chillis Pakoras” at a popular local Indian restaurant for $4.29.
It’s either slightly underpriced, or slightly overpriced, depending on what you’re going for. Fish and chips is $14 at a brewpub in Chicago. A $3 premium for a slightly nicer restaurant is not out-of-line. For a nice (special occasion) restaurant, I’d expect it to be in the $30-35 range. And cost of living is slightly higher in Seattle than Chicago.
Ooh, this sounds promising. I love Thai. Which restaurant?
It’s not that the prices are too high for any restaurant. It’s just too high for this one. If you look at the menus of restaurants at a comparable price-point, they focus on high-quality ingredients…duck fat, truffle oil, imported cheeses, prociutto, quality stocks, pricey mushrooms, sushi-quality seafood, and above all fine cuts of meat. All this stuff costs money. They then prepare these ingredients through cooking processes- like beef bouruignon- that take an exceptional amount of time and effort and are not really the sorts of things a home cook could make.
THe current menu doesn’t have these things- it’s mostly relatively lightly processed produce, which can’t possibly cost much. The pepper fries sound good, but you realize you are paying eight bucks for nothing more than a couple of deep fried peppers. Two peppers. There is nothing you can do to two peppers to make them worth that kind of money.
Nothing on the menu seems to involve particularly difficult or time-consuming preparations- it’s all stuff a moderately skilled home cook could easily make at home.
Plum salsa is not the equivalent of chantrelle risotto. Taro cubes are not equivalent to duck fat fries in truffle oil. Farmers cheese is not equivalent to fine roquefort. Lentils are not lamb. Avocados are not micro-greens. Peppers are cheap. Fruit is cheap. Root vegetables are cheap.
And that’s fine- restaurants with a focus on simple produce-based flavors can be exceptional. But it needs a lower price point.
It’s more that it’s just outdated. I think it was the early 90s that we started seeing lots of habanero-orange sauces, mango salsas, raspberry sauces etc. It was hip and trendy then. Now it’s the sort of thing you find at Applebees.
Now there are some classic meat-fruit combinations- pork and apples, duck and plum, etc. This is some pretty fertile ground to play on. But the trick is to let the meat do the talking. Let the fruit flavors come out of what the meat needs. Crab does not call out for plumbs. Chorizo doesn’t call out for pineapple. The fruit is being forced on them, not married to them.
I disagree, provided that the ingredients being used are high quality ones. Note that the simple fish & chips dinner at the brewpub is $14, and that’s just walleye and some nice fries. The fish & chips in the OP’s menu is a little fancier than that.
No kidding. Look at the bar menu I posted. Pretzels: $9. No truffles, chanterelles, or caviar to be found. Sweet potato fritters: also $9. Nothing fancy in there either. Bratwurst: $13. It’s just a good brat with good cheese on a pretzel roll. Once again, nothing “fancy” but the quality of ingredients.
Beef bourguignon is neither a difficult nor an expensive dish to make.
Is it just two peppers? If so, then, yeah, a little on the pricey side. I assumed it was a big basket of deep-fried peppers strips.
I could say that about most restaurant menus. Most classic preparations are not “difficult” per se, but do require a skilled cook and utmost quality of ingredients.
Listen, given the menu, I’d be hesitant to check the place out, but it’s not because of the prices.
I haven’t finished reading the first page yet, but this touches on my impressions of the menu:
I agree with others who take exception to the ingredients. What you have is ‘Food as Art’. I don’t mean to offend, but to me it comes off as a bit pretentious. It’s like ‘Ooh, I have this Magical Ingredient specifically chosen for this dish that makes it the Ultimate Taste Experience!’
I know that comes off as offensive and snarky. Again, I don’t intend it to be. As a diner, there are things I look for in food:
[ul][li]Fuel. I think everyone knows I like to cook. But most of what I eat is simply to fuel the machine. Overall, I’m not looking for an ‘experience’.[/li][li]Authenticity. If I’m eating Vietnamese food, I want it to be prepared as Mama Nguyen makes it at home. If I’m eating Italian, I want it to be representative of its region. I do enjoy Fusion dishes, but too often they are gimmicky.[/li][li]Simplicity. I’ve had honey-and-hazelnut-encrusted salmon, and it’s good (though a bit on the sweet side for me). But I prefer a wild salmon fillet simply seasoned with a little kosher salt and some dill, with a lemon-dill Béchamel sauce. Too many ingredients tend to lessen the effect of them. Fewer ingredients, carefully balanced, is what I like.[/ul][/li]I want a restauranteur to present me with a dish he’s proud of, but not so proud that he thinks he’s doing me a favour by serving it. It can be a fine line, especially when dealing with ‘artistic’ recipes.
In looking over the menu, it all looks pretty good. But it doesn’t look like something that would draw me to a particular restaurant. None of the starters really pop out at me. Maybe the empanadas, since I like dungeness crab. Or possibly the avocado-corn salad – but without the banana chips. The balsamic dressing is sweet enough.
For the main dish I’d choose the salmon – although as I said in another thread, ‘fish & chips’ are not pan-fried. The spinach-chorizo sounds more like a side dish. I seldom order chicken in a restaurant, since it’s a bit dull. ISTR a comedian who said that people order chicken because they can’t make up their minds. Pineapple as a main dish? I’m not seeing it. I don’t order veggie burgers at a restaurant. If I want a veggie burger, I make it at home. If you want a ‘different’ burger, I’d suggest a lamburger. Not an option for vegetarians of course, but a burger made of ground lamb offers the chef the opportunity to ‘spice it up’ according to his ‘vision’, and is more ‘special’ than beef. And you get to eat lamb.
I’m not a big dessert eater. Of your offerings I’d choose the plumb cobbler, because I like cobbler and I like plums. Second choice would be the cannoli.
Again: I don’t mean to offend you, or to imply that you’re a pretentious person. It’s just that the offerings themselves seem a bit precious.
Very, very little, frankly. A lot of the dishes include at least one ingredient that I really, really hate, and I’m not paying that kind of money for food I have to pick apart to make edible. Also, I’m pretty lukewarm on the whole hot pepper thing at best, so there’s really nothing but the dumpling soup and the empanada that actively sounds good to me.
Also, I will never, ever order anything that is described merely as having “herbs” or “spices” again. The last time I made that mistake, I wound up having what is known in our house as “the ass duck.” Specify the herbs in the herb-roasted chicken.
At first glance the item I’d be most likely to order would be the “Savory Black Bean Pastry”, but although this may be a fine dish it would be a mistake for me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of “pancetta” before, but since several of the listed ingredients have Spanish names, I know “pan” is Spanish for “bread”, and nothing else bread-like is mentioned, then I would have incorrectly assumed this meant the pastry itself. I’m semi-vegetarian and would have been annoyed to learn only after receiving the dish that pancetta is actually a type of Italian bacon. This term (the only one on the menu that was wholly unfamiliar to me) might for all I know be well-known to most of the people likely to visit your restaurant, but I suspect there are a fair number of people in Seattle who aren’t up on their meat-related terms because they don’t eat meat to begin with.
That’s my big problem with this menu. I agree with those who’ve said there doesn’t seem to be any unifying theme here, many items seem to be different just for the sake of being different, and that there need to be some more “ordinary” dishes to balance things out, but my #1 issue with this menu isn’t the food, it’s the menu itself.
I’m not a big salmon fan so I wouldn’t order “Pan-fried pistachio-encrusted salmon fillets, served with blue potato wedges and red cabbage slaw”, but I can think of at least two people I’d be likely to be out to dinner with who probably would enjoy this. But while it sounds like a nice enough fish entree, it ain’t “Fish and chips”. Most people have a pretty clear idea of what things like fish and chips, fries, milk and cookies, and veggie burgers are supposed to be, but the items by these names on this menu bear very little resemblance to what most people are going to expect.
This leaves me feeling suspicious of the entire menu. Does the veggie burger come on a bun? I’d normally feel this went without saying, but at a place where “Milk and Cookies” can mean “licorice cookies with licorice ice cream” I’m less inclined to take it on faith that a burger is going to be served on some sort of bread. Are the yam fries actual yams or are they sweet potatoes? I would normally expect the latter in the US and I’ve had sweet potato fries at other restaurants before, but again this menu makes me feel I’m dealing with a someone who’s going to replace the expected ingredient with something more exotic just because he can. I can’t even figure out what the “Dumpling soup” is supposed to be – the name suggests a soup with Chinese dumplings, but there isn’t anything else on the menu that seems Asian-influenced. The dish is also described as “Chicken and apple dumplings” which sounds like a mixture of this and this in one bowl. I would not usually consider it plausible that a restaurant would make chicken and dumplings using apple dumplings, but since that wouldn’t be the weirdest thing on this menu I really don’t know.
I do not want to eat at a restaurant where the menu makes me feel confused or like someone is trying to trick me. This could easily be avoided with some rewriting. I would not be puzzled by “Fried Chile Peppers” or “Pistachio Salmon”, but “Chile Pepper Fries” and “Fish and Chips” are misleading names for what is actually being offered.