Best Kitchen Appliances

In planning the layout of your restaurant, one good place to start is with any franchise restaurant. These establishments spend a lot of time, and a money, and resources determining the most profitable ways to set up and run their restaurants. Using their layout suggestions in your sample restaurant floor plans is an excellent place to start. There are certain ways that the restaurant floor plan can be most optimized for drive through and for dine in traffic, and ways that the kitchen area floor plan can be used to maximum benefit. Some restaurants benefit from having their dine in areas strictly controlled, by using crowd control lines and the like, to restrict access by customers to the order and pick up areas. These are the kinds of restaurants that usually have at least one set of doors on each side, and a solid store front. These places are able to have many different kinds of seating configurations, benches, tables, and booths. Other restaurants are able to encoura...

Are your parents safe living at home? Are they mentally pretty clear, but beginning to have physical or judgment deficits which might impact their safety? Does your elderly parent have the judgment to safely handle a knife in the kitchen? Do you worry that Mom may fall down and not be able to get to the phone? According to The National Safety Council, falls are now the leading cause of injury deaths in people 65 years of age and older. Fall risk is just one of several safety issues specific to the kitchen. In this article, I will show you how to identify and reduce these hazards, keeping your elderly loved ones safer. Floors and floor coverings : Some floor cleaning solutions and floor wax leave the surface very slippery and should not be used. Throw rugs should be attached to the floor with double sided tape. If a cane or walker is used, throw rugs should be eliminated altogether. Lighting : Light switches need to be within easy reach. There should not be...

By Alice Lane While most of us love eating, few of us would ever think of making a career of it. Running a restaurant-or even just working in food service usually means long hours of slaving over a hot stove, chopping ingredients at a furious pace, and having the pressure of satisfying finicky customers on a nightly basis. With all that, you certainly deserve the status that a chef shirt brings with it, but is it worth it? Some would say no. They love going out to a restaurant because they get to eat wonderful, nutritious food without the hassle of preparation or cleanup. It's convenient and can be a great value. Others are passionate about the creation of the perfect meal. For those folks, if they can make a living out of doing something they love, why not? The why not comes with the trail of carnage that failed restaurants have left over the years. The restaurant business is a hard business with lots of competition. Knowing how to make great food is not enough. You...

By Brenda Hill and Maralyn When we're back in historic Jacksonville, Oregon, we will head straight to the Nunan Estate, a short walk from the town center. Then we will spend a t least a week enjoying the charming village, the many fine restaurants and a winery that captured our old fashioned hearts. Chef Tim Keller impressed the Hill Team, as well as the many travel writers who devoured Tim's amazingly delectable duck. Chef Keller, is one of the finest chefs from Northern California, now a rising star in Southern Oregon. I arrived early to the Nunan Estate, built in 1892, which has a story and history of its own.I began my journey along Oregon's wine trail with a local sip featured at the Nunan House newly opened Carriage House. As one of their first carriage House customers, I sat at the eye-popping, back lit golden onyx bar, and had a classic martini, straight up, icy cold, just perfect for an 80 degree day in October. Next time I will indulge in their sign...

By Nejla Turner Last week I was invited to review Topaz, a favorite restaurant haunt of Turkish businessmen, looking to entertain foreign associates; the elegant paired down interior design and the cleverly constructed menu that caters both to the more conservative Turkish customer with up to date versions of Ottoman classics and his/her more bold international counterpart with adventurous, playful and very modern creations built around the very best Mediterranean ingredients; everything at Topaz is beautifully geared towards providing flexible fine dining for the perfect business lunch. When I first visited Istanbul seven years ago; long before I made the move from London four years ago, a Turkish friend showed me several bars and restaurants that gave me an instant impression of Istanbul as an interesting stylish metropolis; the one thing that all of these places had in common was the Bosphorous view. When I went back to London recently the Thames looked so small and ...

Television these days is full of cooking shows. On channels like the Food Network, it is all cooking, all the time. This trend has bred a new kind of celebrity - the celebrity chef - and the popularity of cooking shows is at a fever pitch because of it. These celebrity chefs have helped create a renewed interest and focus on cooking and the kitchen, and people everywhere are scrambling to buy their branded cookware and remodel their kitchens to more closely resemble the professional kitchens of those celebrity chefs on TV. And why not? Those kitchens on TV are GREAT! But in actual practice, it is not always practical to have a huge professional range or a walk-in freezer in your 2 bedroom ranch house or 3rd floor walk-up. The good news is that you can find a happy medium that lets you get in on the action without creating a full scale restaurant grade kitchen in your own home. Enter the "prosumer" kitchen. The name "prosumer" is a combination of ...

A customer would like some extra salsa for his burrito. The server diligently goes to the kitchen and returns with a "monkey dish" (51/4 oz.) side of salsa. If you have stationed yourself as a trash picker for the day, you will see half of the salsa come back ready to be thrown away. This process is repeated consistently throughout the day with mayonnaise, sauces, butter, pickles and a dozen other customer requests. The waste is common and easily cured. If the server were trained to use a 2 ounce ramekin instead of the bowl twice that size, think how much you would have added to your bottom line in one day. Don't forget about the labor it takes to prepare the various condiments. The refrigeration space for the discarded extra products and energy for storage and equipment used. According to a highly regarded hospitality website, restaurants have a waste factor of 2 to 4 percent of unneeded or unwanted food and condiments regularly returned on plates. That is...