On a recent trip to Las Vegas we heard about the salt baked prime rib at Michael Mina's restaurant American Fish.  This inspired us to create a salt baked chicken. 

Ingredients:
10 pounds of kosher salt
1 whole fryer chicken
mixed herbs to season
butternut squash
3 Tbsp water
4 egg whites

Last night I was the guest chef at The Gallon Historical Art Gallery in Gettysburg, PA representing The Historic Fairfield Inn.  Many people requested my recipe for Bacon Peanut Brittle so here it is.

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water
1 cup peanuts
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon baking soda
5 slices of Bacon

Directions

1. Bake bacon until done.

2.Grease a large cookie sheet. Set aside.

3.In a heavy 2 quart saucepan, over medium heat, bring to a boil sugar, corn syrup, salt, and water. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Set candy thermometer in place, and continue cooking. Stir frequently until temperature reaches 310 degrees F (150 degrees C).  Add bacon, peanuts, and red pepper flakes.
4.Remove from heat; immediately stir in butter and baking soda; pour at once onto cookie sheet.


Warning:  DO NOT TOUCH HOT CANDY MIXTURE UNTIL IT COOLS.  IT WILL BURN YOU. 
Also, copper pots work best with making candy.

I was recently talking some business colleagues  at a marketing company called Xente Media about some ways restaurants can spend just a little bit of money and still find success in digital advertising.

We agreed that one area that businesses should look at are the review social media sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Zagat, UrbanSpoon etc.  The first thing many of these sites should do is to make sure their profile information is correct and up to date, and post quality pictures on their business page to attract customers. 

When using these sites businesses should also encourage customers that have had great experiences to share them on these sites (but only request the customer to do a review on one of them or you will sound desperate). 

The hardest part of reading reviews though are going through the negative writeups and personal attacks on a business.  This is a chance for a business to shine though.  Instead of being upset that a person gave you a bad review start a conversation with them to find out what the problem was.  Maybe they came in on a day that was busy and two of your servers called out, so they wrote a review complaining about your service.  Maybe they didn't like the food they got that night, but since then you decided to hire a new chef.  Or maybe they were so upset that you sold out of a menu item that Sysco Foods didn't have in stock for your order.  If it was a mistake on your businesses part, then send the customer an apology and offer to discount or comp a future meal and make sure when they come you have what they want. 

And if the customer has their head up their ass and nothing is good enough for them or they have a request that goes against your business model use it to make the customer look like an ass, similar to this video from Alamo Drafthouse Theater.