What Is In A Name?

Have you ever wondered: What were they thinking? when reading a menu? I certainly have:

Traditional Italian restaurants in Chicago are famous for selling “Garbage Salads”. Last I checked, most people wouldn’t think of eating Garbage.

I Recently saw a restaurant promoting their weekly fish special as their “Deadliest Catch”. Of course, it is a play on the TV show, but who would want to eat something linked to death and dying?

It’s all about promotion. When you are writing a menu you are trying to get your guests attention, but more importantly, you our trying to whet their appetites. Some tricks of the menu writing trade include:

Using French…calling something a hors d’oeuvre sound a little better than an app.
Citing an ingredient as Organic appeals to some. I see Organic and think that without the use of pesticides there is a better chance that it has bugs in it.
Today Local is overused. My favorite was hearing a “Citi-ot” (Idiot from NY City) ask a farmer at a farm stand in Eastport NY if his pineapple was local. Granted Long Island is an island, but winters there are not quite the same as the Hawaiian islands.
Quite a few things are promoted as Heirloom. I see something being promoted as an Heirloom tomato and I wonder if the tomato will be left in someone’s will?
Using Italian always works. Quite a few cuisines are polarizing, (Not everyone likes Korean kimchi) but just about everyone loves Italian food.

Then again what do I know? I learned about marketing working for Maxwell House Coffee back in the day when we used the same actress that played the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz as Cora to promote coffee. As a kid, that Wicked witch scared the heck out of me. She still scares me. It could explain why I don’t drink coffee 40 years after working for Maxwell House.

I wonder how many consumers saw the connection?

The moral of this story is that you might want to stick to terminology that has food appeal when writing menus. For me, the thought of eating garbage or risking death, simply doesn’t work when making a menu choice. Then again blood sausage has been around for a long time

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Featured Image is of Ela and Lucien Vendome with Susan Kenny in front of the Ugly Mug coffee shop in Memphis…PS they don’t sell Maxwell House Coffee

It’s All About The Sauce

The key to French cuisine is in the sauce. You can have the simplest of ingredients, you don’t even need the best quality ingredients, but if you have a great sauce, you will have a great meal. Sauces can be complicated, but they don’t need to be. The Secret Sauce to a good dinner party is the combination of good friends, good food, good conversation and a few glasses of wine doesn’t hurt.

My friend Lucien Vendome once took me to a very old restaurant on the Ile de la Cite in Paris. Lucien is a world renown French Chef. That night we had a wonderful meal highlighted by fantastic sauces. Lucien explained that there is a chef working in the basement kitchen of the restaurant that makes the same sauces night after night for years. Those same sauces have been made in that restaurant for over 100 years. There is something to be said about tradition and great sauces. The lesson is that with repetition, even the most complex task becomes simple.

We had a great sauce and the secret sauce working this week. Lucien and Ela Vendome visited Memphis from Poland and we took advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with a few old friends from Kraft Food Ingredients. Lucien Vendome, Mike Taylor, Jody Driver, Pam Gray and I got together along with our significant others. It was a perfect forum to tell a few of our favorite stories:

Mike Taylor, Lucien and I were driving from Frankfort Germany to Reims France several years ago. I am driving and struggling to stay awake. To keep a conversation going, I asked my car-mates to describe what their mothers cooked for meals on a daily basis.

Lucien growing up in the south of France, started with: The day would begin with a baguette and confiture…

Mike growing up in east Texas, started with: We had beans and then we had beans and if times were really good we had beans and tamales…

As the French would say “Viva La Difference!”

Jody Driver and I were at the IFT trade show quite awhile back. Jody did a masterful job of managing and enormous enterprise-wide effort. One year I can remember her being 9 months pregnant with her son Gregory (Now 25) and sneaking off to a quiet corner of the booth to sing Happy Birthday to her then 3-year-old daughter Lindsey.

Pam Gray was always our style guru. Back in the day when Manolo Blahnik shoes were all the rage, Mike Strauch and I would have an annual over/under bet on how many pairs of shoes Pam would bring to the week-long IFT event.

The over/under was 12 and the safe bet was the over

The KFI Team back in the day

The meal we had Thursday night was a lot of fun. The old joke is: How do you cook for a world renown French Chef…You let them cook. Lucien and I have been cooking together for years. When it comes to sauces, he is the master and our meal this week was All About The Sauce!

Le Menu

Entrée

Citrus Melon Napoléon

Le Plat Principal

Rack of Lamb Provençal
Pommes Frites
Haricot Verts

La Sauce

Roasted Garlic a la Vendome

Dessert

Peach Cobbler A La Mode with Raspberries

(Note: Citrus, Melon Napoleon)

Le Plat Principal – Rack of Lamb, Pommes Frites and Haricot Verts

Lucien and I doing the “Culinary Shuffle”

The KFI Alumnus…Pam, Jody Lucien, Mike & Paul

Click here to watch the Culinary Master At Work

Lucien called it a simple sauce. I counted over 15 ingredients and close to 7 processes. Of course, for Lucien it was simple, but the flavor was amazingly complex. By layering in flavor with:

Sautéing the mirepoix with herbs
Reducing the stock, wine and base with tomato paste
Roasting the garlic
Sautéing the shallots
Adding the roux
Condensing with immersion blender
Top noting with mustard and butter

The lesson is that with repetition, even the most complex task becomes simple. The sauce was magical and the evening, with its Special Sauce was memorable

Don’t Let A Few Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Story

Everyone loves a good story. Particularly one that will make you laugh. Somehow, in today’s world, the art of story-telling, isn’t what it used to be. There is nothing more engaging at a dinner party than a good story. And, as my wife accuses me of quite often, you don’t need to let a few facts get in the way of a good story.

January 26, 2020 would have been my father’s 100th birthday. He was an excellent story teller and the master of the clever one-liner. Dad was a college professor and dean. My father had a doctorate in rhetoric, the written and spoken word. (His smart-ass son once teased him by saying he had a doctorate in BS). His passion was the art of communication and at the cornerstone of his belief was one of the best ways to communicate with people is to tell them a story. A piece of me believes one reason he enjoyed teaching was that it guaranteed him a captive audience for his stories.

My father used to claim that we are part Jewish. My grandfather’s aunt, whose name was Selma Diamond, was his sponsor that helped him to emigrate from Ireland to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. My father told the story that his brother, who was catholic priest, had to come home from the monastery in prewar Germany because of this Jewish ancestry. What a story it is to say I had an uncle who was a Catholic priest on the Jewish side of our family.

Before my dad passed away, I did an oral history where I documented several of his stories. After he died, I went to visit my uncle who was then retired and living in a monastery at Villanova University in Philadelphia. My uncle, who we called Rev, (Short for Reverend) read the story about our Jewish ancestry and his having to come home from Germany and he asked me: “Who told you that?”. I told him that my father, his brother Ed had told me the story. To which he complained: “I didn’t come because I was Jewish. I was a Catholic priest. I came home because it was time to come home”.

Since then I have asked my mother (97) and other relatives about my father’s story. It is true that my grandfather had an aunt named Selma Diamond from Brooklyn who might have been Jewish, but she may have been an aunt through marriage. Recently my son Brian has taken a DNA test. He may not have Jewish markers in his DNA, but you know what, he is a good story teller, and his sister Jennifer has a clever wit, just like their grandfather.

(Brian on the Swilken Bridge in St. Andrews Scotland)

Jennifer with her “pose” at the after-party on her wedding day

A good story that people can connect with will always be a hit at a supper club dinner party. Throw in a little humor and a bottle of good wine and you will have good evening.

Dad passed away 25 years ago, but his stories, and humor, live on. Yes his son loves to tell a good story and now his grandchildren and soon his great grandchildren will be telling those same stories and one liners. Let’s just hope, they don’t let a few facts get in the way of a good story.