If you could create restaurant menu, what would you choose?

[Tab]

I've spent enough time in restaurants to know the "romance" of it is quickly overshadowed by long hours and hard work.

Regardless, if you were designing your own restaurant, what would you pick?

I'd personally go for creative, but reasonably easy, dishes. Homemade pizzas, with unusual combinations, interesting panini sandwiches, properly cooked chicken and steaks, and fish, and unusual combinations. I assume I'm homing in on the stuff I personally like. In that vein, the best frickin' french fries for miles around, plus cider fries (my invention (ask if interested)), a damned good tomato-basil soup, great seafood and, if I can master it, a proper sea salt calamari. Also, nothing like a damned good pastrami.

And Key Lime Pie. If you don't have Key Lime Pie, I'm not interested. But it better be good.

In lieu of that, though, I'd settle for a real New York bagel, the kind I used to get when visiting relatives on Long Island. The stuff you buy in stores and Dunkin Donuts is crap. If you had the real thing, you'd know what I was talking about. If you never did, you can't imagine.

[Stinky The Clown]

1. I would have to do pretty much Mario Batali is doing ......

.... Italian, but jazzed up and contemporized. Honor and respect the traditional ingredients and methods, but trending to trendy.

[hippywife]

2. I mentioned this not too long ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=236&topic_id=52460&mesg_id=52479

I want a place where you come in, get your food, and get outta my face, ya know? I'm getting very sick of people IRL and don't like to be around them any longer than I absolutely have to.

[Tab]

3. It sounds to me that your ideal kitchen would consist of:

- An Automat (remember those?)

and

- A garbage disposal (or large trash can).

[Warpy]

4. Fresh bagels in NM are stale soft rolls with a hole in the middle

I want bagels, I get the frozen Lender's plain. That's the closest I can come in this town and I'm grateful.

Although I'd be tempted to do deli in this town, I'm not sure there would be enough clientele to support it. This is tortilla country, they just don't understand pastrami on rye with caraway coleslaw and a pickle.

If I lost my senses and opened a place, it would be a limited menu, knock your socks off vegetarian cusisine using all fresh foods.

[Tesha]

5. oh, a little cafe

I'd make the menu depending on what's fresh and what I feel like.

Home cooking kind of stuff, soup and chili, salads and casseroles.
And desserts - mmmm chocolates, cakes, cookies...
Oh and breads, lovely breads....
maybe with a dim sum day and tapas day and a pasta day..

oh, wait! that's my kitchen I'm describing!

[Tsiyu]

6. I'm glad I've mastered key lime pie!

it's pretty easy or I might be in trouble with you lol.

This is a great question, Tab. My friends and I sit around and do this all the time, especially after we make something we really think would sell.

It's amazed me how half a dozen people I've talked to lately want the same thing: a cafe in the middle of a veggie farm, where you have greenhouses so herbs and tomatoes grow year round ( perhaps like the restaurant in NY I believe that vents their bakery heat up to a rooftop greenhouse), and of course its own bakery, and as much as you can get is locally, ethically grown, raised, harvested.

The menu then would be seasonal to a large degree (you could freeze your proteins at butcher time for year round use I guess.)

I am really into cooking healthy and creating dishes that people on all types of diets can eat. I'm also into Native American foods, adapted to today's taste.

One dish I made that would be on my menu: baked chicken breast in herb/citrus/cream sauce, sweet potato garnished with toasted pecans and honey, kale tossed with hot cranberry wine vinegar dressing. It was nice, not too heavy but lots of flavor.

I'd do stuff with squash, rabbit, hickory nuts, fish

Okay now I have gone on too long.... :blush:

[sandnsea]

7. 20 kinds of soup

great sandwiches with fresh veggie sides, and fruit desserts. Organic, healthy, quick, and delicious.

[Tesha]

8. "Loaf and Ladle" of Exeter, NH! (NT)