By the Numbers

 How many pies does it take? 

Before I resume recipe writing I'd like to get a few things out there on owning and running a restaurant. The first thing you should know is opening a restaurant is stupid. Its an easy way to lose money, or as I like to think of it, pay to work really really hard. If your friends ever say to you, "Everything you cook is so good, you should have a restaurant." slap them. Slap them hard. What they are really saying is, "Hey you should invest a lot of money/go into debt by opening one of the riskiest businesses there is, so I can maybe pay to eat your food every 2 months, or every month if I am actually a good friend." Or if they are really shitty friends, assume they can eat for free. There are lots of great ways to bring food to the world, catering, wholesale and retail food sales, dinner parties, dinner party clubs, fancy food markets and on. Taking care of a brick and mortar restaurant is just silliness. Sure it works some of the time, and who doesn't love a good meal in a nice restaurant, but do you really want to give up life as you know it to be the person who is that success? Let's take a moment to reflect and possibly high-five all the successful restaurant owners, managers, chefs, servers, dishwashers, delivery people, and one who are part of the food business. 

Numbers will rule your life when you own a restaurant. From little to small, you will be crunching and fighting all day long into your eyes retreat into your head. How many grams of salt in x food item, how many grams per serving in x food item, how many servings per batch in x food item, how many batches of in x food item can you fit in your not large enough fridge vs how often x food item goes bad, much should you sell x food item for, how many servings a week will you sell of x food item, how many servings do you need to sell to pay for rent utilities, food costs, and the salary of 5 people? How many pizzas do you have to sell to survive? If you're a bakery, how many cookie do you have to bake? There are more number questions and variables, but I'm boring myself just by writing this.

It is easy to lose interest in the actual cooking and creating part. Its a left brain vs right brain saga. For the first month Loft was open I basically lived in fear of the food both spoiling or running out not knowing how many people might come every night. I over-ordered a lot of ingredients to be sure no one would go for wanting. Managing all that food is tricky. Early mornings I would stand in front of my 4-door and ponder the power I was wielding by controlling all those kilos of meat and arugula which (sorry localvore movement) has to be flown in from France.

Weekly specials are a nice plan b. They are a great way to use up something extra, and breath a little fresh air into the menu. Staff meal is another reliable back up.  There is a limit to what your staff are willing to repeatedly eat. Creative handling can make it better. Eggs are super food, binding ingredients into limitless possibilities. Soups becomes a staple. Somehow cooking food and storing it slows the demise of otherwise fading foods. I also like turning everything into a salad. Since the majority of my staff is health-conscious, I don't hear many sighs on salad nights.

Oranges, so many....

So how does one keep track of all the numbers? Spreadsheets. That's right, its all plugged into boring spreadsheets and spit out on monthly finance reports. Spreadsheets are my least favorite thing on earth. Maybe violence, natural disasters, or traffic jams are worse. I have a massive spread sheet of how much each ingredient costs, from each supplier, the quantity the ingredient comes in and the price per piece, gram or milliliter here in Taiwan. After I write my recipes (in US measurement which is then translated into metric) I can calculate how much each dish will cost. After you crunch enough numbers you realize material value may not be dictated by price as much as fuel. Things imported items like baking soda, pasta, and bread flour are all the same price per gram.

Behold Taiwan late December tomatoes

Another interesting fact that turned up after I comparing ingredient prices is vendors in Taiwan are all pretty equally priced. Most oil, name-brand ketchup, sugar, salt, tomatoes, cucumbers all cost the same.  Service really defines a vendor. Taiwan has excellent service. My produce dealer used to teach me the Chinese names of my veggies when he first started delivering. The guy is busy, but he always has a minute to chat in Chinese about parsley. He once helped me with a chalk drawing on our street sign. He is at the top of our Rolodex.

Taiwan has pretty great agriculture. Our winter tomatoes do kick the East coast's water orange butt. Vegetable prices do go up in the winter, but some go down too. I am told that the summer's typhoons can seriously effect vegetables availability and price, but luckily I haven't been in business during a big one. When ingredients are in season they are really abundant. Oranges, have you ever seen so many kinds of oranges? Okay, I'm from NYC, some of you have, but this makes me happy. Strawberry time is here right now and its utterly fabulous. Little sweet strawberries they way you dream them to be. I can not wait for mangoes to come back.

Behold, Taiwan strawberries with frosting on top. I later found out I could get them with honey. 

Its not just a lot to manage, its a lot to learn. Thankfully I have some great guides here. Everyone around the world appreciates great food after all the boring shit is done. 

Where Did 2012 Go? Some Explaining.

The garden of my restaurant I share with my 2 Taiwanese partners

Over the last 6 months I have entered the crazy, exciting, and rewarding world of becoming a restaurant owner. I have remarkable less personal time. Some days I only have enough time to sleep, 7 hours maybe. And yet I still here from the peanut gallery that some of you I manage to see/email with want more blog posts. Thank you guys for your support! I like this blog, even if its been in the back seat for a while

Here it is, pretty right? We renovated and decorated it. 

Bar seating with open kitchen

Introducing Loft Wine Bar and Bistro in Taipei, Taiwan. We opened the first week of October 2012. You can check our contact and yadayada on our website. We serve a refined menu of New American classic dishes including BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches (a favorite with Taiwanese), a Lamb Burger (very popular with foreigners), sour dough Flatbread Pizzas, Bacon Mac and Cheese, Ribs with Sticky Sweet Balsamic Reduction, a Veggie Burger Tower, a Cheese Plate, Hummus, and Apple Pie (the best in Taiwan, I swear) among other delights. I could spend more time telling you whats NOT house made then what is but a few features are: house made cucumber pickles on the burger, pickled watermelon, house ground burgers, house made sauces, hand cut fries, and on and on.

 Apple pie a la mode

Bacon Mac and Cheese and big old side salad 

 Caramelized Onion and Sausage Flatbread Pizza

 Black Bean Veggie Burger Tower with triple battered onion rings

Our goal, my goal, was to bring higher quality of American food to Taiwan. There are a lot of American restaurants in Taipei. Burgers, pizzas, and pasta are all really trendy. Many are ok, many are mediocre. The challenge is make that goal profitable in a land of commercialized restaurants with 15 page menus of nonsense. Taiwanese people also have a specific palate, are sometimes less adventurous eaters. So I wanted to set a menu that really grabs Taiwanese people, but has complex and satisfying home cooked flavors to America. So I'm making things harder for myself then necessary, but for now I am sticking with it.

So now you know where I went. I have a million billions things to tell you about our first three months of business. Some of the bad things that have happened are: plumbing problems, difficulty placing ordering food in Chinese, expensive lettuces which must be ordered 2 weeks in advance and cost between $10 and $30 dollars wholesale, lack of staff and when finally finding good staff and training them for 2 months that staff member being bought away by another restaurant, lack of space for equipment, lack or refrigerator space. Some of the great things have been: people like our food! We are the #5 ranking Taipei restaurant on Trip Advisor. We will be featured in some publications this coming month. We have pulled off 2 successful holiday meals Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving at Loft

And we generally aren't failing. We aren't packed every night, yet, but we are ok. Whats more as we are all happy. Its really very crazy, stupid and problematic thing to go starting a restaurant, but its great.

More tales later, and recipes, I hope. Happy 2013!

Bangkok Food Tourism

I am a food tourist. Cultures have a lot to teach our taste buds. Bangkok is a dense sensory onslaught. Monks in rich saffron, tuk tuk drivers hanging, packs of students among hoards of international tourists and feral dogs weave and twist, elbow to elbow among hundreds of food stand lining every street, river, sidewalk, and corner during the daytime.  Stand in one spot, stretch out your arms and you'd be able to reach 5 different food carts all with several versions of some incredible dish you never knew existed. Its exciting. Mix with an enormous sweet icy Thai coffee and blast off.

I count 16 trays of... something.... curry? The variety is immense. And what's in each? Tens to hundreds of ingredients. You could spend a lifetime eating everything in Bangkok. 

Here is a great example of what the heck is that? I think its a banana leaf bowl with white congee looking stuff with more meaty brown good stuff. I didn't eat it. I want to go back and get it though.

Everything is neatly wrapped in plastic bags. Plastic bags may be an environmental scourge but they act as plates and bowls here. Its totally normal in Thailand (and here in Taiwan) to eat a bag of noodles. In hot subtropical climates plastic is reliably resistant to humidity, leaking, bugs, bad weather. I'm not sure what's in all the bags up there, but check out tiny white egg plants that look like eggs. 

Thai people are really laid back, and it makes eating strange and unusual foods all the more delightful. 

Food stand set up, functional, movable and interchangeable.

So let's look at what I ate. I woke up in Thailand after a late flight and 4 am hotel check in. I went straight for lunch finding a row of food stands between hotels and temples along a narrow river canal. Ordering food in Thailand is much easier than Taiwan. Only pointing is required where in Taiwan some questions usually need to be answered before you get your hands on the grub. I got this lovely bowl of fish stew adorned with scallion, steamed vegetables, rice and broth. Next to the food counter is usually a stand of 5-10 different condiments. I took some spicy soy sauce (the spicy table salt of Asia) and some brown sauce that turned out to be fermented peanuts. There are a ton of flavors to experience all at once. Due to the high quality and freshness you can pick each and everyone out. Sensory overload is no joke in Thailand. 

Most Thai menus state-side begin with pad thai. And it can be found everywhere in Bangkok, but mostly on the streets. Its a very casual food. Again it comes with a ton of stuff. What you have up top is noodles, cucumber shreds, bits of tomato, bean sprouts, and whole dried mini shrimp with a layer of scrambled egg on top. It is a perfect food. It also came with an entire scallion on the side, which I didn't know how to handle. Do you just chew it? See that lime? Its is not like any lime you have ever know, maybe. Its is the hulk of limes. It just dances sour and tingly lime flavor in your mouth. Oh that lime! I would tell you what this meal cost me, but you'd probably punch me.

A beautiful display of sushi. I will say the sushi in Taiwan champions this Thai sushi. But Thailand gets high marks for creativity, variety and presentation. From left to right, back to front: seaweed, tuna salad (with mayo, hey why not), something fishy covered in roe, salmon toro, squid, and quail eggs with mayo and row. Love egg sushi, its adorable.

Green papaya with tamarind and chili. Sour, salty and sweet flavors. It was okay. The long thin wood stick stands in as a fork.

This was a "Chinese style" meal, roasted duck over rice. I don't know why the rice is different in Thailand but its often larger, puffier and less soft with more of a ridgy texture. It reminds me of styrofoam. This meal came with some sauteed greens, pickled cucumbers and soup. The soup is just out of camera on the left. It was the simplified essence of what all soup should be. Hot clear water with animal fat, slices of onion and garlic. That's it, and grand it was.

Fried shrimp cake. Its 95% dried shrimp. Tastes great, but texture was gritty and dense. Came with pickled cukes. Always finish a meal with something pickled.

Its hot in Thailand. Cold drinks are needed. Here is a typical beverage cart with Thailand's typical 100 options. Lime juice and a tamarind drink are in the big containers. Did you spot the dog?

And Thailand makes great beers. Really nice pilsner and ale type beers. Refreshing and affordable. I fell in love with Leo beer not just because of its cheetah logo. It did have a smooth great taste. Thailand also makes Chang beer which might be the most popular. 

Club soda in a glass bottle. I inhaled it. Club soda I missed you so much. Taiwan needs to start making some Chang trade deals. 

More juices in squeeze-it style bottles. They sell a deep purple drink made from indigo colored flowers. Flowers can be seen in the bag at the right. It looks like kool-aid but tastes like fruity coconut water. Its hard to describe, but it was nutty and not too sweet. 

Food is constantly happening in Bangkok. Not just meals and snacks for sale but the actually ingredients in the said dishes too. Here you can see some chilies drying in the hot daylight. Who knows these chilies may be in a little glass bottle in your kitchen some day soon.

 

Ditto with the drying fish which is an important base ingredient in lots of Thai dishes is being made in the middle of a market. A little "street" flavor in every bite.

A first-timer in Bangkok I stayed in the Khao San Road, which is a popular backpacker neighborhood. Its a great place to meet other travelers while drinking beers on the side walk. This area is really touristy, and you will be bombarded by vendors trying to sell you embroidered bracelets with obscene phrases, fried insects, silly hats, LED toys, tailored suits, and passes to the ping pong show. The food in this area is not very good. Its only a 5 minute walk in any direction to quieter areas with less tourist oriented stands. Do not be afraid to eat off the streets and from open air restaurants. I have a sensitive stomach, and had zero problems. Be sure to carry some Imodium just in case.