Online Ingredients for Success

Waiter Develops Restaurant Reason to Help Others Who Are Sometimes Forgetful

Last summer, a diner at Eatery asked a waiter what is used to make the mascarpone dumpling filling.
The waiter at the Hell's Kitchen restaurant stared blankly before offering this insight: "Mascarpone." Then he made up nine other imaginary ingredients—right as the restaurant's owner walked by.


"He heard me totally lying to these people," the waiter, Michael Mignogna, said recently. "I totally botched it."
The aspiring stand-up comedian-turned-waiter was given an ultimatum: Learn the intricate menu—or lose his job.

He decided to stay. Over the course of two weeks, Mr. Mignogna snapped pictures of every dish, developed a system to categorize information, designed a set of icons to specify everything from potential allergens to temperature choices and cobbled together a rough website that was made available to other waiters at the restaurant.

Then, six weeks ago, the 28-year-old Mr. Mignogna launched Restaurant Reason, a social-networking site that enables restaurants to train staff, do on-line scheduling and provide an internal discussion forum.
Instead of firing him, Eatery became his first customer.

"A light bulb went off in his head," said owner Sean Connolly, who has since purchased a subscription for his second restaurant, Whym. "Michael's really surprised us."

 Gone are the days when a waiter could simply say he recommends the catch of the day with the chef's special sauce. An increasing level of sophistication among chefs is matched, if not surpassed, by demands from diners, who expect detailed descriptions of where the fish was caught, how it was prepared and even its transportation mode to the plate. An array of dietary restrictions and food allergies have complicated menus further, restaurant owners and managers said.

Waiters are drilled in which salads contain gluten, and which sauces harbor sugar; they are trained to decode mysterious descriptions such as "pastrami-style salmon" (it has to do with the spices) and tested on which dishes contain nuts.

"Some of the cooks don't know all the ingredients [if it's not their station]," said Eatery chef James Henderson. Waiters these days, he said, "have to know a lot."

Most restaurants rely on tastings and printed packets that can run into dozens of pages and need to be reprinted as menu items change.

"They're printing up all this paper," said Eatery waiter Jeff Davies, "and there's always something wrong with every one."

The most high-end establishments still tack up schedules on the walls, requiring staff to come to the restaurant to view their shifts and stations.

"We're still there—low-tech," said Kevin Mahan, the managing partner at Gramercy Tavern, who estimated that each employee packet can run to 50 pages. "There just hasn't been anything presented that would make some of this easier or less paper, which would be nice."

Read the rest of the story here.

In Afghanistan, This Is a Four Star Restaurant

Chowhall Chefs Include a Former Chef From Ritz Carlton

by KAREN RUSSO

Clouds of brown dust assault the soldiers' faces as they wait in line, but it's no deterrent. In just a few minutes they'll feel as close to home as they can get from half a world away.

It's lunchtime on "Soul Food Thursday" at the Containerized Kitchen for Task Force Saber on Kandahar Air Field in southern Afghanistan.

Unlike the oversized cafeteria-style dining facilities - better known as D-FACS in the military's world of acronyms  this small "CK" looks like a caboose abandoned by its train in the middle of the desert.

Inside, servers load paper plates full of fried chicken, catfish, mac and cheese, collard greens and Hop Bean John salad. The American southern-style menu was created with a focus on the familiar.

"It's such a moral boost having food that tastes like food from home here," said Capt. Alicia Stahlberg, 26, from Fairfax, Va.

With the main base located several miles down the dirt road, food - until recently  was often frustratingly far away. Meals were missed if a pilot's shift ended at an odd hour. Now, soldiers eat steps from their work on their nearby airfield.

In the military, life almost revolves around food. Chowhall is one of the few places where soldiers can decompress for a few moments each day. So if the meal is lousy, it ruins just about the only moment they can forget about work. Ask any soldier they'll tell you their favorite D-FAC or provide a list of favorite spots to eat on base.

In Kandahar, which has only one CK, it is getting a reputation.

"We face a lot of challenges," said Michael Mosley, 37, Senior Food Operations Sergeant. "We're dealing with the elements, sanitization, lots of dust and parasites and pests." But so far, they are succeeding. "We try to give them something to look forward to in the work week and getting them through these hard times," said Mosley.

For Travis Burton, one of the chefs, cooking for the Army is drastically different than his previous career at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Fla. If it weren't for his student loan debts from culinary school, Burton says he would still be at the Ritz, where he had more creative freedom.

Food Can Make or Ruin the Day for a Soldier in Afghanistan

"We're limited to what you can do, to what you can acquire here. The food is pre-packaged, pre-cooked, pre-seasoned so you need to be careful what you do to it," Burton said. Too much seasoning with prepared foods can contradict and destroy the dishes.

Limitations aside, the chefs are still experimenting.

Sgt Earl Lendore, 26, cooks Caribbean-style dishes from his home in Grenada islands. For dinner, he is preparing curried chicken.

"A lot of people don't know a lot of Caribbean dishes. They'll look at it and think it's different. But then they'll eat it and love it!" he said.