A complete rundown on how successful restaurateurs, teaming up with architects and designers, ply their craft. Martin E. Dorf presents 18 in-depth case studies of such successful restaurants as Scoozi, Union Square Cafe, and Chinois, along with personal interviews with their owners, chefs, architects, designers, kitchen planners, and consultants. 168 illustrations.
'Kitchens' takes the reader into the robust, overheated, backstage world of the contemporary restaurant. In this portrait of the real lives of kitchen workers, the author brings their experiences, challenges, and satisfactions to life.
Featuring a new chapter on ten restaurants changing America today, a “fascinating . . . sweep through centuries of food culture” (Washington Post). Combining an historian’s rigor with a food enthusiast’s palate, Paul Freedman’s seminal and highly entertaining Ten Restaurants That Changed America reveals how the history of our restaurants reflects nothing less than the history of America itself. Whether charting the rise of our love affair with Chinese food through San Francisco’s fabled Mandarin; evoking the poignant nostalgia of Howard Johnson’s, the beloved roadside chain that foreshadowed the pandemic of McDonald’s; or chronicling the convivial lunchtime crowd at Schrafft’s, the first dining establishment to cater to women’s tastes, Freedman uses each restaurant to reveal a wider story of race and class, immigration and assimilation. “As much about the contradictions and contrasts in this country as it is about its places to eat” (The New Yorker), Ten Restaurants That Changed America is a “must-read” (Eater) that proves “essential for anyone who cares about where they go to dinner” (Wall Street Journal Magazine).
This book is about the creative work of chefs at top restaurants in New York and San Francisco. Based on interviews with chefs and observation in restaurant kitchens, the book explores the question of how and why chefs make choices about the dishes they put on their menus. It answers this question by examining a whole range of areas, including chefs' careers, restaurant ratings and reviews, social networks, how chefs think about food and go about creating new dishes, and how status influences their work and careers. Chefs at top restaurants face competing pressures to deliver complex and creative dishes, and navigate market forces to run a profitable business in an industry with exceptionally high costs and low profit margins. Creating a distinctive and original culinary style allows them to stand out in the market, but making the familiar food that many customers want ensures that they can stay in business. Chefs must make choices between these competing pressures. In explaining how they do so, this book uses the case study of high cuisine to analyze, more generally, how people in creative occupations navigate a context that is rife with uncertainty, high pressures, and contradicting forces.
The bestselling business book from award-winning restauranteur Danny Meyer, of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Shake Shack Seventy-five percent of all new restaurant ventures fail, and of those that do stick around, only a few become icons. Danny Meyer started Union Square Cafe when he was 27, with a good idea and hopeful investors. He is now the co-owner of a restaurant empire. How did he do it? How did he beat the odds in one of the toughest trades around? In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he learned developing the dynamic philosophy he calls Enlightened Hospitality. The tenets of that philosophy, which emphasize strong in-house relationships as well as customer satisfaction, are applicable to anyone who works in any business. Whether you are a manager, an executive, or a waiter, Danny’s story and philosophy will help you become more effective and productive, while deepening your understanding and appreciation of a job well done. Setting the Table is landmark a motivational work from one of our era’s most gifted and insightful business leaders.
The omnichannel disruption that upended retail has finally come to the restaurant industry. Restaurateurs must shift how they think, behave, and invest to survive and thrive. Today's consumers are well-conditioned in their expectations: they want the same tech-savvy, on-demand, and frictionless interactions with restaurants that they get in every other vertical. If you think your 1,000-unit restaurant chain is too big to fail, remember that 1,000-unit Sears closed nearly all of its stores after it filed for bankruptcy in February 2019. If you think your local family independent restaurant is too beloved to fail, remember the Amazon effect changed the face of main street and traditional retailing. Delivering the Digital Restaurant explores the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs innovating the future of food. Combining sociological observations, rich industry data, and insider knowledge, Delivering paints a picture of how food is evolving and how you as a leader, owner, or operator can successfully innovate and meet the new consumer demands to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Those who understand this digital disruption will be better positioned to embrace the innovation that consumers are demanding. Those who resist will surely be left behind.
An Eater Best Cookbook of Fall 2020 From caramelized onions to fruit preserves, make home cooking quick and easy with ten simple "kitchen heroes" in these 125 recipes from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Deep Run Roots. “I wrote this book to inspire you, and I promise it will change the way you cook, the way you think about what’s in your fridge, the way you see yourself in an apron.” Vivian Howard’s first cookbook chronicling the food of Eastern North Carolina, Deep Run Roots, was named one of the best of the year by 18 national publications, including the New York Times, USA Today, Bon Appetit, and Eater, and won an unprecedented four IACP awards, including Cookbook of the Year. Now, Vivian returns with an essential work of home-cooking genius that makes simple food exciting and accessible, no matter your skill level in the kitchen. Each chapter of This Will Make It Taste Good is built on a flavor hero—a simple but powerful recipe like her briny green sauce, spiced nuts, fruit preserves, deeply caramelized onions, and spicy pickled tomatoes. Like a belt that lends you a waist when you’re feeling baggy, these flavor heroes brighten, deepen, and define your food. Many of these recipes are kitchen crutches, dead-easy, super-quick meals to lean on when you’re limping toward dinner. There are also kitchen projects, adventures to bring some more joy into your life. Vivian’s mission is not to protect you from time in your kitchen, but to help you make the most of the time you’ve got. Nothing is complicated, and more than half the dishes are vegetarian, gluten-free, or both. These recipes use ingredients that are easy to find, keep around, and cook with—lots of chicken, prepared in a bevy of ways to keep it interesting, and common vegetables like broccoli, kale, squash, and sweet potatoes that look good no matter where you shop. And because food is the language Vivian uses to talk about her life, that’s what these recipes do, next to stories that offer a glimpse at the people, challenges, and lessons learned that stock the pantry of her life.
An “engrossing” history of the restaurant atop the World Trade Center “that ruled the New York City skyline from April 1976 until September 11, 2001” (Booklist, starred review). In the 1970s, New York City was plagued by crime, filth, and an ineffective government. The city was falling apart, and even the newly constructed World Trade Center threatened to be a fiasco. But in April 1976, a quarter-mile up on the 107th floor of the North Tower, a new restaurant called Windows on the World opened its doors—a glittering sign that New York wasn’t done just yet. In The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World, journalist Tom Roston tells the complete history of this incredible restaurant, from its stunning $14-million opening to 9/11 and its tragic end. There are stories of the people behind it, such as Joe Baum, the celebrated restaurateur, who was said to be the only man who could outspend an unlimited budget; the well-tipped waiters; and the cavalcade of famous guests as well as everyday people celebrating the key moments in their lives. Roston also charts the changes in American food, from baroque and theatrical to locally sourced and organic. Built on nearly 150 original interviews, The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World is the story of New York City’s restaurant culture and the quintessential American drive to succeed. “Roston also digs deeply into the history of New York restaurants, and how Windows on the World was shaped by the politics and social conditions of its era.” —The New York Times “The city’s premier celebration venue, deeply woven into its social, culinary and business fabrics, deserved a proper history. Roston delivers it with power, detail, humor and heartbreak to spare.” ?New York Post “A rich, complex account.” ?Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
It’s happening in attics, garages, living rooms, parking lots and wine cellars across the nation – underground restaurant chefs are taking the food scene by storm, one dinner at a time. They’re throwing fabulous dinner parties at the drop of a hat for a hodge-podge of guests in offbeat, roving locations. They’re evading the cops, enticing the food-obsessed, and making headlines ("Restaurants on the Fringe, and Thriving"!). In short, they’re reinventing the dining experience. No wonder foodies are falling hard for the underground eating experience. And in Secret Suppers, LA Times journalist Jenn Garbee takes readers into this underground gourmet world as it’s taking place in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Manhattan, Des Moines, Austin, and Sonoma County. Whether it’s steaks prepared in the parlor fireplace of a townhouse, or bacon-wrapped-bacon served on the deck of a charming little house in a sunny Seattle neighborhood, or a white-tablecloth affair set in an open field in Santa Barbara—chefs and food lovers are circumventing the restaurant altogether to cook what they want, to reinvent the serving ambiance whenever the whim strikes, and to attract the most adventurous diners. Sort of akin to speakeasies from an earlier era, some underground restaurants are the best-known secrets in town.
