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July 2012

Features

What keeps the nation's fastest growing restaurants awake at night?
Never mind AUVs, ROI or LTOs. We wanted to know what REM sleep is like for CEOs of the Future 50 chains—what percolates up from their subconscious when they drift off to sleep. Then we submitted their recurring dreams to analysis by Dr. David Reiss, a San Diego-based psychiatrist with 30 years of experience in dream interpretation: “A dream is a symbol, so if you get caught up in the symbol you may miss what’s really behind it,” Reiss explains. Tim McEnery Founder and CEO of Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants...
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Cover Stories

Inside the Future 50 menus
The 2012 Future 50 has distinguished itself as being one of the most varied collections of menus we’ve ever featured in our annual ranking of the fastest growing small chains in the country. The largest menu category represented—“varied menu”—typifies this. Coming in second is the ever-evolving pizza category. The reports of the “family style” menu’s death were greatly exaggerated. Beyond that, 2012 was a throw-everything-in-the-pot kind of year for growing chains. The chart below lays out the Future 50 by menu category....
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The Future 50
The operators in our annual list of the Future 50—the fastest growing chains between $25 million and $50 million in annual sales—are well on their way to realizing their dreams Click this link for the full list.  ...
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Menu R&D

Street meats
Chefs continue to jump aboard food trucks, taking to the streets with moveable versions of their signature dishes. But the popularity of street foods is spawning a reverse trend, as restaurants adapt iconic items to tabletop dining. Grilled and spit-roasted meats seem to be leading the charge....
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Salad days
With a change in ownership in 2010, Daphne’s Greek Café became Daphne’s California Greek, a fresh, healthy Mediterranean-Californian concept. “It was important to build on our Greek roots, but this gives us more opportunity to grow,” says Christy Geiling, senior director of marketing for the 56-unit, fast-casual chain. Launching new salads—a category with built-in equity—is a perfect fit....
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Summer paradise
The Hudson Valley is on par with the Napa Valley when it comes to the local bounty of excellent ingredients, believes Eric Gabrynowicz, executive chef at Restaurant North in Armonk, New York. And he makes the most of it, especially when produce is at its peak in summer. Growing up in the area, he developed a personal connection to the land and its farmers—a connection that works in his favor to source the best....
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Pushing boundaries on the wine list
“Our decision to upscale the wine list was calculated to focus on creating unforgettable dining experiences,” says Monte Silva, GM of Bound’ry restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. Eighteen months ago, he was brought in to change the concept to attract a better-heeled customer and sell more wine. Now Bound’ry boasts some 300 bottles, including some first-growth Bordeaux priced as high as $800 for a 2007 Chateau Latour. Silva changes up the selections weekly....
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The healthy kitchen
With the push to offer healthier choices, restaurants must rethink not only how they prepare food but the equipment they use to prepare it. We asked a few chefs to share their favorite healthy cooking gear, and also checked the floor of this year’s NRA Show to find new products for “cooking lighter.”...
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Skills

Chefs' favorite apps
So many apps, so little time. Apple boasts there are more than 500,000 apps for its iPhone, which sounds great on paper, except it could take an inordinate amount of time to find the ones that are the most useful and/or fun. To narrow down the options, most of us have to rely on word of mouth. That being said, we asked chefs to name some of their favorites; as we would expect, apps that make chef’s lives in the kitchen easier are the most popular....
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Dendé Oil
At the Center for Foods of the Americas at the CIA San Antonio, our job is to capture and document the culinary traditions and ingredients that define Latin America’s diverse foodways. Not surprisingly, going to the source is an essential part of this process. During a survey of Brazil’s regional cuisines in 2008, we went to Salvador, Bahia and drove north to the rural hamlet of Imbassaí. We wanted to see firsthand how dendé oil, one of the hallmarks of Afro-Brazilian cuisine, is made....
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MonkeyDish

Food truck or food porn
The names of actual food trucks mixed in with the names of actual food-fetish porn movies we found online. Can you tell the difference?...
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Bread on the rise
The restaurant breadbasket has been evolving, moving away from a ho-hum selection of dinner rolls and baguette slices to more varied and unique items. Now a growing number of operators are elevating bread service even higher—and in some cases, charging for the goods....
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Stillpubs
A  whole new category of restaurant is springing up around the country, a hybrid of bar and distillery. Similar in concept to brewpubs, these newfangled establishments produce the spirits in-house that they mix into cocktails behind the bar....
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