Max's Blog

So we all survived dining week! My front staff worked so hard. Poor Ali has been married to the phone the whole month of February. I have barely had time to talk to her! The whole staff is so grateful to the restaurant and to all the customers. Thanks a million to all of those who came in to support us. We would also like to thank the Downtown Committee and and AmeriCU for arranging the most successful dining week ever, at least for "The Grass and our Elephant."

My kitchen staff was great too. We went through almost half a ton of Filet Mignon and chicken, 300 lbs. of fresh forest mushrooms, 250 lbs. of shrimp, 450 lbs. of raw jasmine rice and I don't even know how much salad!

March is always a slow month for us. We will see if this March will start like a lion and end like a lamb or finish up like a dragon...

I will let you know more about food in a couple of days.

Your Chef,

Max

Well we survived the first week of dining week. The staff is pretty tired but happy to be busy. The kitchen is bored with the menu already. It is so small and very predictable. Good thing we are changing it up a little this week. About 80% of our guests last week came in for the dining week menu which is great. We are so happy to see so many people come out to support us and our neighbors during this harsh winter stretch. Thank you to all those who make dining week such a success!

Now lets talk about food... I sat along with some old friends of mine on their 25th wedding anniversary dinner. I noticed a difference in our dry aged steak I didn't like it as much as I did before. So I decided to sell it on a big discount. We will go back to my guy in Rochester, he is the one who first got us the dry aged beef. He has made a strong commitment to me that our quality and price will not falter. They will send their first batch the first week in  March.

Your Chef,

Max

Sorry there were are lot of calls for the name of that Greek restaurant on my lasted post. It was called Taxim.

I did not get back to my blog last week. I was training staff in the kitchen almost the whole time.

This week we are gearing up for a very busy next couple of weeks. We have Valentine's Day weekend which we will be running a special menu combining Lemon Grass and Bistro Elephant Friday though Sunday. Then with no mercy we jump into two weeks of Downtown Dining. These are weeks that will separate my weak staff and my strong staff, the men from the boys and we will see who has real "True Blood!"

Downtown Dining Week(s) is a promotion we run with the Syracuse Downtown Committee running February 15th - 27th. Us and eighteen other area restaurants offer a three-course menu for $25. This is the time when we can't look at our profit margin, it is the time to recruit and build a new customer base for the upcoming year. We only wish that they will have a good time, enjoy the price, food, service and atmosphere.

The menu will include your choice of appetizer, salad and entree including and eight ounce filet mignon. We will also feature about eight different wines that will be so so so deeply on sale. We will run a different menu each week. Week 1 February 15 - 21, Week 2 February 22 - 27.

For the foodies out there we started to carry Foi Gras from France, not Hudson Valley (also very good too!) They are so light, fluffy and rich you will like them.

I got pork belly in and will start to cook it today. I will use five spices, molasses, some chili peppers and a lot more herbs. I'm going to see how my weird dipping sauce will work with this. If I like it maybe I will share with my customers.

Your Chef,

Max

Last Friday we were shipped a batch of scallops that were too small and some were broken. We had to send back the whole batch so we didn't have any to sell over the weekend... so bad! On Monday I called John our new seafood guy to get scallops from him instead of our regular supplier. The quality was better they are sweet and firm. When we started to pan sear them their sweet smell filled the kitchen up so quickly... good sign... bravo!

Monday I was swamped with work. We worked on staffing for the upcoming weeks, tasted wines for our new wine list, discussed changes for our dinner menus, talked to suppliers, etc, etc, etc. I think that I may be too old for this job. To run restaurant is easy, but to keep it running with quality is tough, tough and tough.

We ordered ten pounds of Manila Clams. They were shipped in on Tuesday and Pook, Ali and I tasted them together. They were wonderful we will special them this week.

We also got in some Sunhollow Oysters from the west coast to replace our Island Creek east coast oysters. Look how beautiful they look!

This week's fish will be Black Cod. We wanted something besides halibut . The halibut was sixty to eighty pounds which is too big for us. John is shipping in Atlantic Black Cod about twelve pounds a piece. So we are looking forward to trying something new!

So far this year has not been the greatest for fish. It is hard to find really good, eye catching product. This will be my only post this week. I will talk to you next week.

Your Chef,

Max

The weather in Boston this morning was terrible so there is no good seafood to report. We will let you know on Wednesday if we can get any goodies in.

But in the mean time I will fill you in on our chocolate challenge. One of our suppliers sent us a sample of Cordillera, a premium dark chocolate from Columbia to try for our famous warm chocolate cake. We substituted the Cordillera for Callebaut, our Belgium chocolate to compare the two. For this particular dessert and the way we prepare it the Cordillera didn't compare to our Callebaut. Because of the richness of cocoa the Cordillera plateaued and didn't have enough depth and finish. So at least for now our warm chocolate cake will stay the same.

Last week was a big prep week for us. The Red Balloon our newest dessert has been so popular we have had to triple its prep. We have to use a whole ten gallon tank of liquid nitrogen to make enough. We fill a balloon with raspberry puree then roll it in liquid nitrogen at negative 321°F rotating it to make a hollow sphere. It's a scary technique but its all worth it! The sphere is the placed on top of an almond cake filled with lemon and rose-lychee mousse and garnished with raspberry caviar.

Lastly, over the weekend we sampled some dungeness crab. It was fantastic! We ate it chilled served with chili coulis sauce. It was so good we ate all three. If you would like a copy of the recipe please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it It's never too early to start experimenting with menu items for the summer. We will order more this week to check the consistency of the product.