iSante Staff Writer

Famed chef Susan Spicer, owner of the award-winning Bayona restaurant in New Orleans, is suing BP and other companies over the catastrophic oil spill that is costing Gulf Coast restaurants other seafood businesses millions. Her message is simple: BP should pay. We applaud Chef Spicer.

There is no better time than now to celebrate Cajun cuisine. We love her take on this simple-to-make regional dish, full of fine flavors and textures:

Pecan-crusted Fish with Citrus Meuniére
Serves 4
Preparation time: 40 minutes

Four 6-ounce filets of snapper, redfish, drum, or trout
1/2 cup pecan pieces
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh
1 teaspoon orange zest, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 egg
1/2 cup milk or buttermilk
3 tablespoons oil or clarified butter

Season fillets with salt and pepper and set aside. Place nuts, flour, thyme, citrus zest, and cayenne pepper in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until well blended but not powdery. Transfer nut mixture to plate. In a shallow bowl or pie plate, whisk together the egg and milk. Dip fish into the egg mixture then into the nut-flour mixture. Press to coat the fillets, then set aside. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat, and when hot but not smoking, add the fish fillets. Reduce heat to medium or medium-low and cook for 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove to a platter or plates and keep warm while you make the sauce.

By Marian Betancourt

Jimmy Bradley understands the ups and downs inherent to the restaurant business. On September 13, 2001, he and his then partner Danny Abrams were planning to open The Harrison, an 85-seat venture in Tribeca with 30 seats outside and a wine room for private parties. When terrorists shook New York City to its core, the men were stuck. They had already hired staff and were putting the final touches on the place. "The air was thick with pulverized rock," Bradley remembers. Rather than become paralyzed, the rookie restaurant crew worked, providing meals for rescuers during the aftermath. "We kept going forward and paid the staff," Bradley says. "In five weeks, in addition to feeding the work crews, we trained 44 people." They got lucky when Mayor Giuliani urged New Yorkers to dine out downtown. "Journalists were kind to us," he remarks. Six weeks after its opening, William Grimes of the New York Times gave The Harrison a two-star review. Other restaurant critics deemed it among the city's best, and the public used Zagat to bestow an "excellent" rating. After three years of success the restaurant flattened. "We had become a little rigid, staid, lacking verve," Bradley says. The music was stale. The lights were not quite right. The food was a little fussy. "We were not making it current. It had become a place you bring your parents to dinner for a special occasion." The partners decided to pursue separate interests. Bradley kept the team's restaurant, The Red Cat, and The Harrison. He found a new partner in Steven Eckler, formerly associated with Wolfgang Puck, Danny Meyer, and Lever House.

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By Tony Conway

I'm no Harvard Business School grad, but in just ten years I have built a small special-events business from my own kitchen into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. The gradient has been steep, at times challenging, but I have certainly learned a thing or two about effective business practices along the way—from slicing avocados to managing a team of over 200 employees. Here are seven business strategies that have helped my company grow.

Refer to your mission statement. If an impending decision is leaving you stumped, refer to your mission statement. A mission statement embodies the spirit of your company, so referring to it can bring immediate clarity to otherwise difficult choices. Our mission states that we "promise to provide world-class cuisine, gracious service, and exquisite decor." If I refer to that statement when I'm at a crossroads, it acts as a compass, always setting me on the right path.

By Paul Suplee

Resources

acfchefs.org The official site of the American Culinary Federation. Certification guidelines can guide a kitchen manager to ideas on class topics.
chefspencil.com A consortium of chefs and their ideas, with recipes and articles dealing with many contemporary and classic dishes. Free sign-up.
ciaprochef.com The Culinary Institute of America's continuing education site, which offers classes and professional education. After you have completed courses, it is a natural leap to share this information with your staff.
gigachef.com An excellent professional chef networking site, with recipes, information on the business, training ideas, and an "Ask the Chef" function.

Deciding to train your staff formally in a structured, hands-on fashion can seem a daunting task for many chefs. Often we internalize, and sometimes even vocalize, such questions as, "Where would I find the time in my already overbooked schedule?" In-house training can contribute huge value to an operation and its leaders, since it can empower staff and often lighten the workload of the manager. But for many chefs this extra duty appears on the front end as an expenditure of precious time and money.

Building Leadership and Drive

The idea of an in-house culinary instructor brings forth some of the greatest traits in ourselves as leaders of kitchens. As Brad Barnes, CMC, CCA, AAC, and president of gigachef.com, states, "From the perspective of great leadership, you must position yourself as an expert and become the 'go-to' for training your employees." While chefs can claim the in-house culinary instructor title for themselves, the honors also can be bestowed upon sous chefs and qualified line employees. Not only will this help them grow and learn (we learn more as we teach), but it will give the staff a diverse educational platform.

By Evan Goldstein, MS

Whether the grievance arises from a guest who wants nothing but the unavailable 7:30 p.m. Saturday-night table, a diner who wants to graze on only an appetizer, or an unsatisfied customer who has written a complaint letter, there are ways to turn negatives into a win-win for you and your guests.

Reservation Redress

When customers call or use an online service to make a reservation and discover that their preferred seating time is unavailable, they may become aggressive when they speak to you. To turn this negative around, don't cave in. Be firm and cordial, and do your best to make them feel important—even as you offer less-desirable 5:30 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. options. If you do have some flexibility, of course, do what you can. But if you can't accommodate them, express your appreciation for the call, take their name and phone number, and offer to call back if a spot opens. Even if they don't take you up on your offer, they'll remember you as someone who went the extra mile.

By Richard Young

Restaurants face two new and unavoidable challenges: rising utility costs and the "greening" of foodservice. Fortunately, from an operations standpoint, these two issues are related, and tackling the energy and water bills rewards you with environmental brownie points. Its a win-win that's worth taking advantage of. Knowing where to start is the difficulty for most operators. The place to begin is with the simplest, most cost-effective actions - the no-brainers, the basics that are required of any restaurant that wants to call itself "green." Here are some examples.

Analyze your utility bills. A stuck valve on a water softener in the back room can hemorrhage 3,000 gallons of agua a day and go unnoticed for months, but it will be revealed by a bump in the water bill.

nrn.com – Executive chefs and pastry chefs saw significant increases in salaries last year, while sous chefs and hourly line cooks took a hit in pay, according to the annual salary survey by StarChefs.com. The survey of nearly 1,400 restaurant workers also found that male executive chefs made about 19 percent more than female executive chefs. White executive chefs made about 4 percent more than Asian executive chefs, 7 percent more than Hispanic- Latino executive chefs, and 31 percent more than African American executive chefs, the survey showed. Executive chefs made an average salary of $79,402 last year, an increase of 6.1 percent from the previous year. Pastry chefs' salaries rose an average of 5.7 percent to 448,861. Line cooks' wages fell 2.6 percent to a national average of $29,662, and sous chefs' average annual pay fell 4.4 percent to $42,266. Original Source>>

hotelschool.cornell.edu – Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration (SHA) has partnered with eCornell to launch four new online hospitality and foodservice certificate programs in Essentials of Hospitality Management, Managing People for Success, Restaurant Revenue Management and Foodservice Management. These new programs join five existing hospitality certificates: Strategic Hospitality, Hospitality Marketing, Hotel Revenue Management, Hospitality Real Estate and Asset Management, and Financial Management, all authored by leading SHA faculty and representing the cornerstones of Cornell's online hospitality curriculum. The School of Hotel Administration's programs are widely recognized as the world's premiere business education programs for hospitality professionals. The addition of new certificates and updated courses is in response to continued market demand for high-quality hospitality content that is relevant and based on the latest industry research. In keeping with the long-standing practices of SHA and eCornell to ensure quality and relevance for the ever-changing hospitality industry, many of the online courses that comprise each certificate program were also updated. Original Source>>

nrn.com – The National Restaurant Association projects the foodservice industry will add 428,000 jobs this summer. Restaurants are historically seen as being among the largest creators of summer jobs, ranking behind only the construction industry in terms of seasonal employment. The projected summer job tally is a 4.6-percent increase over the industry's March 2010 employment level, the NRA said. "In these tough economic times, restaurants are playing an ever-more important role in their communities, creating jobs and economic opportunity for our nation," said Dawn Sweeney, president and chief executive of the NRA. The NRA said the states expected to add the most eating-and-drinking-place jobs during the summer are New York, 38,300; California, 30,400; Texas, 28,100; Massachusetts, 24,800; New Jersey, 24,600; Illinois, 19,900; Ohio, 19,800; and Michigan, 18,600. The NRA also said states expected to register the largest proportional employment increase over the summer are Maine, 30.9 percent, and Alaska, 26.0 percent. The NRA calculates that the foodservice industry employs nearly 13 million people, a number that is expected to rise by more than one million in the next decade. Original Source>>

nrn.com – As the restaurant industry slogs its way out of the recession, other retail sectors are increasingly competing for and luring away trained and talented workers, experts said during the recent People Report Workforce Symposium. High unemployment and its resulting large pool of eager job candidates is actually masking intense competition for skilled and trained workers, panelists told nearly 200 restaurant recruiting and training executives attending the conference, which was held June 8-10 in Frisco, Texas. "We are already experiencing recruitment difficulty at both ends of the spectrum," said Joni Doolin, founder and chief executive of People Report, from the highly skilled positions like information technology and functional positions like human-resources and marketing executives to entry-level positions. The jobless rate has produced a large number of potential candidates, but finding the right match for skills is a challenge. Louis J. Basile Jr., president and chief executive of Wildflower Bread Co. of Scottsdale, Ariz., said he will open his 11th store on June 15, and he had 500 applicants for 50 available positions. Original Source>>