2011 Looking Into the Future

By Ray  

Pearly Cocktail Mix

I just got back from the National Restaurant Show in Chicago. I always go looking for new items and ideas for our restaurant and to attend the many interesting seminars relating to our industry. If there are changes that effect all of our lives when it comes to eating, drinking, or dining you will find it here. I also like to look into the future and here is what my crystal ball is telling me. Some of these things are just plain wacky, others I am sure you will see soon. Here is my report from the 2011 show.

I-Pad Everything - The use of iPads will be a big thing in all food service. They were being used for a very nice and graphic wine list. I

A Chork

saw applications that used them for menus also. Some point of sales (a restaurant ordering computer) companies were actually using them as their terminals. I really think the applications for these are endless.  

Self Service Kiosks - In the on-going trend to cut labor costs, self service terminals in fast food I think will be a big thing in the future. Not only will it save labor, it might actually improve service. We see it in many forms of retail now. Instead of ordering your number 3, all you will have to do is press the

Beef Straw

number 3 button and swipe. I don't think this will ever creep into our segment of the industry.  

Brewed to Order - It seems like with the advent of single service brewing coffee machines, the old drip method will become obsolute. Improvements in technology and the mechanics will mean these machines that brew coffee to order will become a staple in our industry. The advantage is a completely fresh cup of coffee every time with no waste. The disadvantages are re-pouring coffee at the table and that the machines are very expensive  

The Chork - One more useless utensil for utensily impaired. A chork is a

Olive Oil

combination of chop sticks and a fork, second cousin to the spork.    

Breastaurant Uniforms - The Wonderbra company of the restaurant industry.   

Smoked Olive Oil - This small start up company has the best olive oil I have ever tasted. His technique is patented. Look for it at the Uptown soon.

Food Truck

Food Trucks - The food truck industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Here is my dream car. I am not sure why I am so intrigued by this. I must have some carny in me. 

Edible Silverware - Don't worry about doing the dishes.

Benny's Beef Straws - Basically this is a hollowed out Slim-Jim. Great with a bloody mary. 

Pearly Cocktails Mixes - These cocktail mixes had a sheen that was

The Wonder Noodle

so alluring it was hypnotizing.

Gourmet Biodiesel - Old fryer grease in. Fuel usable in any diesel vehicle out. He claimed the return on investment was 5 months. I am waiting for my quote.    

The Wonder Noodle - No fat, no carbs, no calories, no gluten, no soy and no preservatives. No taste? Actually it was not great but it was not terrible. Is it the miracle food?

Artisan Maple Syrup - Yes there is a world champion of maple syrup. These syrups are amazing. Not for pancakes only.

Wine Gauge

I Wish I Had Thought of That - With larger wine glasses becoming much more popular in restaurants, it makes it very hard to measure the proper amount of wine. This is why we use the carafes for example. This adjustable gauge takes care of this for you. 

BioDiesel

Next week I will tell you about 2 interesting seminars I went to. One was a very contentious with restaurant owners and chefs grapling with yelp reviewers. The other was relating to the impact of changes in credit card fees vs debit card fees in light of the upcoming institution of the Durbin Amendment to the Financial Reform Act coming this summer.

The First Taste 

By Andrew 

I recently received an email from Laphroaig with a link to a new animated sketch they have online. I checked it out and soon found myself literally laughing out loud in the office here.  The sketch is about the way people react to their first taste of Laphroaig Single Malt Scotch, but I think it would be fair to say that most of these jokes could apply to one's first taste of any single malt scotch. Anyone that has ever been a bartender, a scotch drinker, or even a friend of a scotch drinker (or all three) might get a kick out of this.

To Our Graduates 

By Aly and Nikki

Brett Witek - We are proud to announce the graduation of our front of the house right hand man, host extraordinaire, Brett! Brett has successfully completed his high school education at St. Bede Academy. There he has excelled academically and in extra curricular activities in which he was involved in golf, tennis and stage crew. Brett has also donated 100+ hours of community service while in attendance at St. Bede Academy.

Uptown is fortunate to have an employee like Brett for the last three years and to have seen him grow into the young man that he is today. Brett will further his education by attending and obtaining his Associates Degree at Illinois Valley Community College. He plans on majoring in either graphic design, business or possibly restaurant management (watch out Ray!) After Brett's completion of his associates program at IVCC he plans on attending a four year university. 

Ani Craig - Ani is another graduate we are honored to have working here. She receieved both her GED and CNA at IVCC in Oglesby. She says she took the CNA course because she likes helping and caring for others, especially older people. She used to take care of her Grandma when she was sick. When she signed up for the nursing program at IVCC, they found her high school diploma from her country (Indonesia) did not have enough credits. The counselor suggested her to take the GED test, and she passed it.

Her goal is to be an interpreter so she can work at home without leaving her kids when she has some. (Which she currently is working on.) She speaks Sundanese (West Java Island Native Language), Indonesian, English and she is working on Arabic at the moment. She enrolled at JJC for summer classes. She says she still sees her English Tutor twice a week in order to try to make her accent go away. She says it's hard!

Ani also says, "Five years from now, I'd like to settle down in the city of Chicago, raising my kids, working from home either for the law firm, the Government, or some kind of Arabic community. I am going fishing in Florida in the summer, and leaving USA for Bali Island after Christmas until the rest of winter. I plan on saving some money to open my own Nursing Home, and helping my husband with his Music Event since he's pursuing his Master of Audio Arts and Acoustic right now. Hopefully, we could retire early." 

Jake Krolak - Last but not least, we have Jake. Jake has attended Lasalle-Peru highschool, and recently has graduated. He has been working here for over two years and has been a wonderful employee. He has dishwashed for a couple years, and has now also started cooking.  

Jake is planning on attending IVCC in the fall. He is going there to take classes to become a police officer. His future goals are to finish up here, and go away to school, possibly to Western Illinois he says. 

All of us here at the Uptown would like to congratulate Brett, Ani, and Jake. We wish you best of luck with your future goals and aspirations and are confident you will take the experience learned here with you!

Checking the Schedule 

By Jim

One of the most important decisions we have to make each day is how to staff for a particular shift. These decisions affect everything from the service we provide for our customers, to the morale of the staff, to the money we make. Food, liquor, and labor are 3 of the largest costs in running a restaurant. Most of the time, food and liquor costs can be very hard to control. Although we can comparison shop for the best price on most food or operating items, there are products that we are stuck with what the distributor wants to charge. One example is liquor, according to Illinois law, we can only buy a particular brand of liquor from one distributor who has jurisdiction to sell to a certain area. Our hands are tied, we have to pay their price and look for other ways to control costs. Labor is one of the more controllable costs we have. Although we would like to flood our guests with the best possible service one can experience here, it is not the most efficient way to run a business. Just throwing labor on a shift does not do anyone any good. Sometimes the more people you have on a shift, the more non-productive they are and more of the attitude of "someone else will do it" comes out. This then affects customers and business. Through our employee training to provide the most efficient staff is one way we try to control these costs. The Uptown has done this for 25 years so we have pretty much seen it all. Adapting to each shift by adjusting schedules is a very important procedure for each manager to review each day.

The restaurant world has to be one of the most difficult occupations to put together a schedule for. There are several different factors that come into play each and every day. What is one of the most important tools in helping to put together a staff that is prepared for the expected business is by logging the history of anything that has affected a particular shift. We keep what is called our "shift log" for every shift, for every day of the year. We keep this in email form in order for it to circulate amongst all managers to keep them up to date on what is going on. This log is a detailed description of what happened on a particular shift. It starts with everything related to the business for the day; how many reservations, weather, holidays, larger parties, important TV or sports related events and local events. Not only is what is going on important with each of those listed above, but even more importantly, how it had affected business for that day. These affects that are logged, allow us to look back and be able to gauge what business we had with the events that had taken place on a particular day. We also use this log to communicate everything from future scheduling issues, things we may be out of, maintenance items we have to take care of, how a particular staff member is doing or other things we may need to relay to the next shift.

A few examples:

Stage 212 play going on down the street - We get quite a bit of business before and after these shows. But what time does the play get out and what did we receive from it? 9:30, 10:00, 10:30? By knowing this, we can make decisions how much staff we need to keep late in order to provide the service for those that come in for a dessert after the performance.

Teacher Institute Day - When all local schools will be dismissing early for a teachers institute day, we know lunch will be busy. We may put on an extra server or 2 that lunch because about noon, it is more like a cafeteria in here with all the teachers that come in.

Mothers Day and Easter - These are obviously two of the busiest lunches of the year. How do you know how many people to have here to serve 400 people in 5 hours? By closely monitoring each year how reservations are coming in each day as we get closer to the holiday allows us to adjust each department to what we feel we need.

Even days that we are closed - We keep a shift log, we want to know by closing, how many calls did we get to see if we were open. If we feel we have enough interest in us being open, we may decide next year we should stay open.

So when we sit down 5 days in advance to make a schedule, we pull up all of last years information for each day we make the schedule for. By analyzing all of the information, we put together what we feel is the right amount of staff for each shift for the next week. Not only are we dealing with last years info, we have to take in account anything new this year that did not happen last year or even putting together a staff with different strengths and weaknesses. Once the schedule is posted, each day we spend at least 20-30 minutes looking at the schedule for adjustments. Some days it may mean calling off or adding a staff member because of the reservations we have. Sometimes we have to move scheduled times to come in earlier or later, or if you're lucky the schedule may look good as is. Overall, like I said, it is one of the most important daily tasks in running a business. We have to be able to control what affects so many different areas of the restaurant.

Memorial Day is a United States Federal holiday. You will find it on the last Monday in May every year. This holiday was put together to remember and honor U.S. soldiers who died while in the military service in any war.

Friday and Saturday ~ 11am - 11pm  

Sunday ~ 12pm - 10pm

Memorial Day Monday ~ 4pm - 10pm

Here are three things picked by our staff, the people who know our menus the best, that they think stand out from the more than 500 items you will find on our food and drink menu. 

From Nikki - Wedged Romaine Salad - This week I'm recommending one of our salads we always have featured on our menu. The wedged romaine salad is a very popular one we have here. The romaine lettuce is so fresh and it tastes wonderful with the gorgonzola cheese. It is also served with eggs, grape tomatoes, and blanched slivered almonds. This salad has a wonderful summery taste for a warm day. It is served with our housemade red wine garlic vinnaigrette. As with other dark leafy greens, the antioxidants within romaine lettuce are believed to help prevent cancer. So come in and try this salad if you haven't, because it is one of the most delicious healthy meals I have ever tried.

From Ryan- Colonial Apple Pie - Just like Grandma makes. There just isn't quite anything like a nice warm apple pie. The colonial apple pie we have on special this week is a little different from other apple pies in that the crust almost wraps all the way around the top of the pie. It's almost like an apple pot pie. The crust is wonderful along with some warm apple and sislers french vanilla ice cream, this dessert is the perfect end to any meal.

From Jim - Bay Scallop and Yellow fin Tuna Tower - It's Back!!!!!! Yes, for all of those that love this dish, now is your chance to get it. We feature this dish every once in a while due to all of the requests for it. This time though, there is a twist. We have added bay scallops along with the fresh ground sashimi grade tuna tartar and mixed it with sushi rice, cucumbers, capers, caviar, lime and soy sauce. It is also served with what I think makes the dish, wasabi arugula. (Ray says you could eat a hand full of the wasabi!) This peppery field greens has a wasabi flavor to it. Make sure you stop in this week and try the tower. Before you know it, it will be gone again.

sauteed soft shell crab

lightly breaded and sauteed soft shell crab served with garlic butter. 10.25

oysters on the half shell  

gooseberry point oysters from baynes sound, canada. small to medium size with a medium salt content and a sweet finish. served with a mignonette. 10.75

artisanal cheese sampler

1. Castelinhos (Portugal) 2. Pinna Brigante (Italy) 3. Soignon Buche Goat Log (France) 4. Idiazabal, sheep cheese (Navarra-Spain) 5. Life Prov Velours Bleu (France) 6. Sap Sago, Switzerland. serves 2 to 4 people. 19.75

wedged boston bib salad 

wedged boston bib lettuce, vine ripened tomatoes, applewood smoked bacon and fried leeks with salemville bleu cheese dressing. 13.50

mesculyn salad & panini combo  

turkey, avocado, alfalfa sprouts and brie cheese. served with a mesculyn, walnut and gorgonzola salad. balsamic vinaigrette dressing 10.75 with cup of soup of the day 12.25

orange roughy oscar 

broiled orange roughy filet with lump crabmeat, roasted asparagus and hollandaise sauce. served with wehani rice pilaf. 19.50

sauteed soft shell crabs

2 lightly breaded and sauteed soft shell crabs served with garlic butter. served with fried shoestring potatoes 23.75

capellini and clams   

one pound of whole clams in a lemon, shallot, wine broth tossed with fresh thyme and capellini pasta. served with Le Pain Fusette bread. 15.75

chargrilled flat iron steak

10 oz. center cut, garlic and herb marinated flat iron steak served with broccolini and sauteed shiitake, oyster and portobello mushrooms 21.50

infused chicken  

two six ounce butter garlic chicken breasts served with white wine cream sauce and our seasoned rice blend 13.75

sauteed broccolini  

fresh broccolini sauteed with white wine and plugra butter with a touch of cracked red pepper 5.75

colonial apple pie 

warmed apple pie, served with sisler's french vanilla icecream. 6.75