Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

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Bartenders raid the kitchen fridge

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Bar managers are getting creative with their cocktail concoctions, and it’s giving hotel bars a good name, says Dave Kelleher, Washington, D.C., area general manager for Kimpton Hotels. He oversees Bar Rouge, the Helix Lounge, and the Topaz Bar in Washington, D.C., each named for their Kimpton host hotels.

With Kimpton chefs painstakingly creating menus for the dining room, Kelleher says bar managers are looking to complement the food instead of overpower it. “Bar managers are bringing ingredients from the kitchen into the bars to make the drinks more palatable,” he says. “They’re trying to get away from sugared down drinks. They are pushing the envelope to find things in the kitchen that will enhance the flavor of the drinks.”

Many of his bar managers are mixing their own syrups to create natural flavors to add to their cocktails. “I see a lot of the bar guys actually making syrups with mint or ginger clove. They are using coconut milk, which will be big this year,” Kelleher says. “They are infusing tequila with jalapeños, things like that.”

Lodging Magazine

Scotsman.com News – Latest News – Taiwanese Restaurateur Flushed with Success

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Taiwanese restaurateur Eric Wang has given new meaning to the traditional revellers’ cry of bottoms up.
His Marton eatery in the southern city of Kaohsiung delivers its food not on conventional plates and dishes, but in miniature Western and Asian style toilets, both the flush and non-flush variety.

For anyone missing the point, diners are encouraged to stir up mushy, earth-coloured offerings like curry chicken rice and chocolate ice cream to conjure up – well, the real thing.
Located in a downtown area with a variety of competing eateries, Marton – the name means toilet in Chinese – attracts its customers through its some dazzling bathroom decor.

https://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4641255]Full article

French Food Safari Day 2

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Today we head of to visit the Moulin Jean-Marie Cornille

Following that we shall visitMas Doutreleau in St. Martin de Crau (Claudine & Yves) who produce some fabulous goats cheese.

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Luch today will be at Restaurant Alexandre.

“Par un coup de baguette magique Monique et Michel Kayser ont transformé cette belle maison en un petit royaume où simplicité et fantaisie se côtoient paisiblement.”

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From there we shall drive to Montpelier. And after a city walk we shall visit La Companie des Comptoires for dinner in their charming courtyard.

Customer Service: Training for Excellence

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Education, in all its forms, pays off when it is focused, sincere, and ongoing. Most world-class organizations quickly indicate training and education as keys to their success. However, it isn’t simply a matter of sending employees to classes and checking training off your to-do list. It is about using educational opportunities to strategically deepen the culture of the organization. The information in this article is applicable to all training efforts including orientation, on-the-job training, and ongoing training efforts.

Effective education/training in an organization should accomplish three objectives:

Read the full article

French Food Safari day 1

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Today we embark on the fist day of our French Food Safari.
A group of 12 Chefs and F&B managers will join us on this 3 day total immersion in the delights of the Provence cuisine.

The group will arrive in Marseilles Airport this afternoon and the first stop will be Oustau de Baumaniere .

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Tonnie gives the participants the final briefing before departure from Copenhagen

Life and Death in Haute Cuisine

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A new book, “The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine,” released in the United States last month, Rudolph Chelminski, a journalist friend of Loiseau’s, outlines the tragic story that may be increasingly relevant to Americans watching their own chefs ascend the ladder of celebrity.What the book does not cover is the reaction to Loiseau’s suicide among the French culinary elite. Some of the country’s most revered chefs have recently condemned the system that many believe led to Loiseau’s death — the critics and the obsessive cultivation of Michelin’s top ranking. Three chefs have renounced the Michelin rating system this year, giving up their stars or asking not to be rated.

Washingtonpost

the "sustainable" menu at Yale's Berkeley College

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Yalie Cuisine. “We don’t want students to feel that eating well is suffering,” says Josh Viertel, explaining the philosophy behind the “sustainable” menu at Yale’s Berkeley College dining hall, as reported by Alison Leigh Cowan in The New York Times. Twist is, it’s the Yale students who can’t have Berkeley’s experimental organic meals who are suffering. They’ll do just about anything to have at the burgers of “grass-fed lamb and freshly picked mint … chicken brodo with pasta and greens and pork loin with fennel … They try to slip fake identification cards past the Yale employees stationed at the entrance. They don sweatshirts with the Berkeley insignia to make it look as if they belong …”

“Whatever they can get away with,” says Catherine Jones, Berkeley’s executive chef. It sure beats “picking from the same old nonorganic salad bars, scooping out the sugary cereals and chewing on chuck-patty hamburgers slipped into white bread rolls” like they do at Yale’s 11 other dining halls. The idea for this “sustainable” dining hall, yale.edu/sustainablefood, was hatched four years by Alice Waters, a chef, “when her daughter Fanny became a freshman.” The project started by turning “a vacant lot into a lush vegetable garden that doubles as a laboratory … The three-meal-a-day rollout came in September 2003.” The thinking is “that people and communities thrive when meals consist of locally produced, seasonal ingredients, rather than food that is shipped long distance or processed so it keeps.”

Reveries

Spicing Up the Food Scene

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Much of PF Chang’s success comes from its operations practices, analysts say. Restaurant managers are partial owners in the eateries they run. This helps reduce turnover — the bane of the industry — allowing the company to deliver the key factor in a restaurant’s success: a consistent customer experience in food and service, says Sharon Zackfia, an analyst with William Blair & Co. in Chicago, who rates PF Chang’s stock outperform.

What also helps, says PF Chang Chief Executive Richard Federico, is that his places offer extras not found at many mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants: upscale decor, dessert menus, cappuccino, and a 50-bottle wine list. “PF Chang’s has offered an alternative without compromising product quality,” he says.

Business Week