While in Chicago for the St. Patrick weekend celebrations I noticed many restaurants doing FLIGHTS of food or wine. A flight is three or four tastings of a similar product.

One restaurant, oENOlogy, offered wine, cheese, and chocolate flights. Unfortunately, we passed by this restaurant since it was going to be open until 11PM and didn't feel like going after dinner from a day full of seeing everything we could in Chicago. The menu was consisted entirely of flights. You could order wines, cheeses, and chocolate in flights. Each wine flight consisted of three wines themed around an idea such as location, style, pairing similarities, etc., a fancy name was chosen on the concept of the flight. Cheese and chocolates were served in the same way. By doing this you could learn how the flavors of the wine change with different cheeses and chocolates.

Before we left we went to a brunch restaurant called Orange, one of their specialties is the pancake flight which changes every week. Ordering this you get four stacks of three silver dollar pancakes, each with different toppings. This week included pancakes with lucky charms and cream, Guinness yogurt with cantaloupe, bacon and orange marmalade, and Irish cream pancakes. While not all of these pancakes tasted as great as other options available, I enjoyed the concept.

As a chef you must constantly create 4 unique recipes based on one common recipe, but the possibilities are endless for a restaurant that wants to try this. I believe this would be a great way to promote holiday and seasonal foods on a menu, and provides the stability and change of a menu that customers love. Still haven't seen this in Baltimore yet, if you do, please send me a message about who is doing this style of dining on their menu.