A smattering of ideas for you to chew on. After my last post I felt a need to balance the scales a bit.
I’ve had three great restaurant experiences in the last ten days, and there were some consistent reasons. Some of these may not be applicable to your establishment, but I think a bit of [...]
Filed under: Ideas - Restaurants, Wine Business | 2 Comments »
It’s February 2009. We’re in an economic slump the likes of which is scaring many people. Last weekend was Valentine’s Day, and I’m happy to report that many restaurants were full and did several turns. In other words, they got a little (much needed) money in the bank.
Last night my wife and [...]
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Many of you have read Frank Bruni’s wonderful article in this week’s New York Times regarding the current state of restaurant business in NYC. Besides wondering how they got the big three to pose for the photo, I was wondering what stones have been left unturned in the quest for customers at restaurants. My thought [...]
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Do you ever catch yourself listening to a conversation (or, in this example, the radio) and something is said that grabs you and sticks in your brain and you can’t shake it out?
On Sunday August 3rd, on Sound Opinions (Sunday nights on The Current … quite possibly the best music show on the radio today), [...]
Filed under: Ideas - Restaurants, Ideas - Retail | Tagged: sound opinions, the current, wine list pricing | Leave a Comment »
Want to out geek the wine geeks in the room? Start tossing around your ability to sense the umami in a wine. Introduced to me first by Terry Theise, who describes it as “the taste of yourself tasting”, umami has a legitimate role in the world of wine tasting, and definitely in the [...]
Filed under: General wine information, Ideas - Restaurants | Tagged: food and wine pairings, savory, Umami | Leave a Comment »
In an article in this morning’s New York Times, Open Table has announced plans to integrate suggestions and discussion into their site, emulating the popular Chowhound.com and Yelp.com formats.
This plays directly into Jermey Iggers and Andrew Zimmern’s recents posts regarding the role of the critic in restaurant decisions. If you use Open Table, and [...]
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(photo: City of Oporto by Flickr member Francisco-PortoNorte)
It’s late June and here in Minnesota the bugs are starting to come out and pretty soon by 3:00 in the afternoon that heat will start to be a bit too much for most people. Or maybe it’s the humidity … that magical invisible meteorological condition [...]
Filed under: Ideas - Restaurants, Ideas - Retail, Portugal | 1 Comment »
Before diving into this post, take at look at the wine list from The Slanted Door in San Francisco (arguably one of the better restaurants in that great city). They identify their organic and biodynamic selections with nice subtle icons. A moon, a star, etc.
The organic/sustainable/biodynamic issue is hot at the moment, and [...]
Filed under: Ideas - Restaurants, Ideas - Retail | Tagged: Biodynamic, Organic, Sustainable, winelist | Leave a Comment »
“As a wine retailer/winebar/restaurant, do I need a website and how do I make good use of it?”
Before answering the questions, keep in mind I just read a local newspaper article saying that 85% of people who receive the yellow pages never open it and proceed to (illegally) throw it in the garbage. (Recycling [...]
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Yesterday we did a wonderful tasting of spring and summer selections. Chris Griese and I attacked the bottles to open them for the event and we realized something astounding: 15 of the 21 whites were finished with the Stelvin closure. There was a dramatic pause while we thought the same thing: what a [...]
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