1,607 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

The ideal restaurant

Like all passionate cooks (I suppose), from time to time I dream of opening my own restaurant.

I imagine loads of things: it will be like this or like that, we'll do this, I'll cook that, the room will have this or that – in short, I dream.

18 K 4.4/5 (18 reviews)

Last modified on: October 15^th 2012

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

But now I have a son who's in the trade (cook-in-exile in Brussels as I write), and another who, even with a Master's in Biology, passed several summers as “chef de commis” in a restaurant on the coast, I've been able to see what a real restaurant kitchen is like and how it functions. This (alas) brought me back down to earth with a bump…

But no matter, I'll carry on as if the two lads I've just mentioned are still little and we're playing games, of the sort that start with “Let's say that…” or “What if…”

So, let's say that:

- It would be a small, even very small restaurant, about twenty covers. One person serving, two at most in the kitchen.

- There will be a bread oven with the door opening in one inside walls of the main room. We'd bake a batch of levain-raised bread for the evening service, which will come out of the oven (the timing is crucial) while customers are arriving. There would be a batch of plain bread rolls and various specials. They'd be served fresh and still hot from the oven, and everyone would be offered one in a paper bag to take away when they pay the bill.

bread

- From time to time, there would be pizza or flammenkueche days, or for any other dish that can be cooked on an open fire, but no fresh bread on those days.

- No menus on paper, just a flat screen (or more than one depending on the room layout) on which photos of the dishes of the day would scroll through. Tablets (iPad style) would be passed around to diners so that they could consult the menu electronically. This would effectively be a mini-website in the language of their choice, diffused by wi-fi through the restaurant. Customers mobile phones and smartphones could log onto it or access the internet while they are waiting for food to be served. Diners could even order themselves, or call the waiter, who would also take the order in electronic form. This would then appear directly on a screen in the kitchen.

- The style of cooking would be simple, not a huge menu, but everything with plenty of flavour, properly cooked, as much fresh local produce as possible, preferably organic. One fixed midday menu, with just 2 choices of main course and dessert. Dishes would always vary according to the season, the market and events.

- Themed meals : Sushi, Spain, Mexico, Slow Food, etc.

- Some "core dishes", easy to prepare in advance and store, would always be available, winter and summer: Pâté de campagne, assiette de cochonnaille (selection of cold pork meats), crème brulée, tiramisu, etc.

- At the end of the meal, a choice of 2 coffees: classic espresso, or a “longer” coffee in a cafetière served at the table with (free, maybe?) top-ups. In both cases, these would be served with a little home-made treat: meringues, financiers, chocolate, etc. which would change every day.

Right, now all I have to do is come up with the name …

Lasts posts

Season to the right level

When you need to salt something—for example, fish fillets before cooking them—you’ll naturally sprinkle them with a pinch of salt using your fingers. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this very ordinary gesture, which is done all the time in the kitchen, and yet there’s a...
October 14^th 2026836

How to Properly Fill a Jar

When you have a jar in your kitchen that’s almost empty—flour or almond flour, for example—you’ll probably refill it before it’s completely empty. And that’s a great way to go about it—no one wants to run out of an ingredient right in the middle of a recipe. Once you’ve...
October 2^nd 20268575

Serving Temperature for Wine

When it comes to serving wine, you may (like me) have a fairly simple rule of thumb: red wine at room temperature, and white, rosé, and yellow wines in the fridge until it’s time to serve them. It’s very easy to remember, but it’s a bit simplistic, and you’ll see that there’s a much...
September 23^th 20269685

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20261,3855

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20261,1213

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other articles you might also like

How to zest a fruit?

You will have no doubt noticed that many recipes call for the zest of citrus fruit. The zest is that outer layer of the skin which adds so much flavour to a dish. There are many different ways to peel off the zest and various tools are available. Here is a summary of the “dos and don'ts” of...
November 5^th 201350 K3.8

Raising (or leavening) agents

When we want to make a dough or batter rise when baking, either in patisserie or bread-making, we need to use a raising agent or leavening agent, one of which is called leaven. In the context of baking, a raising agent is simply what "makes something rise". It is a substance which, when added to...
June 16^th 202160 K4.8

Herbs and temperature

I have already talked to you about herbs in cooking, and about their great power of "seduction". The example of a salad is a great classic: on its own, it's a salad, which is normal, but the same salad in which you have added finely chopped fresh herbs, just before serving, you have much more than a...
April 25^th 202013 K4.8

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

When preparing a sauce or a cream, there's always a (small) risk that the creamy preparation you're working on will suddenly separate into two parts of different textures: a liquid part, for example, and a more or less solid part, or even become lumpy. It's terribly frustrating, but we'll see...
June 19^th 202316 K5

Preservative oil, an asset for taste

When you prepare a dish using an ingredient that has been preserved in fat, for example a springtime mixed salad with tuna in oil or sun-dried tomatoes, you're probably going to make a french dressing (vinaigrette) next. In that case, why not use the preserved oil from the tuna or tomatoes?
June 5^th 20249,1535