"Potentially Paralyzing"

Spring will come.

Gotta love it. The forecast for the weekend predicts a winter weather event that will be not only paralyzing, but "disruptive" and "difficult" and "historic". We are not pleased. We hope it stays far to the west. That being said, we are also being practical. Someone asked me recently how Kevin does his ordering - how he decides how much of what to order when. It was a good idea for a blog post, and no time like the present situation to bring it up. What to do when you think you might suffer from a loss of business due to a situation that is way out of your control and not totally predictable? What if it does pass us by - we need to have food for the guests who show up expecting to be fed on Friday and Saturday.

Usually it's not too difficult - you've got history on your side and you know which items are going to be popular and which might not: you order accordingly. This weekend's weather issue also made it sort of easy - don't order much seafood, especially fin-fish. We'll be serving rainbow trout. We might get in trouble if the weather doesn't materialize, but we would rather run out of a good menu item than serve a bad one next week. So, what happens when you order too much rockfish and you aren't as busy as you thought you'd be? The rockfish that comes in for Thursday night's menu becomes a rockfish cake special at lunch on Friday and on Friday night it becomes the staff meal. Too much broccoli is turned into soup; the slightly tired looking parsley goes into the stock pot. The freezer might be the receptacle for the bread that wasn't used by the end of the week, to be made into croutons for the salads of the future. We all eat a lot of left overs and spare parts- either that last piece of cake or the wings from the chickens or the trimmings from the salmon. You might not be surprised that Kevin can make a pretty tasty meal out of not so much!

Every now and then you just get too much product - the bane of every restaurant - and you just can't use it. It is discarded. In other words, you take cash out of your pocket and throw it into the trash. No one likes to do this, in any kitchen, professional or personal. That fear is what keeps your ordering in check. It is better, in our opinion, to run out of a fresh item than to sell an old one. The fish special is really popular, you didn't order enough, you run out, you disappoint someone, but that is much more acceptable that trying to unload something that is past it's prime. That is the kiss of death.

Most of this is not rocket science, it is how most of us run our own households. A restaurant just happens to be a big household with lots of expected house guests whose tastes are not predictable but whose expectations are. We try to be ready, and we always try to have a back-up plan!

All that being said, if this weather that they are trying (successfully) to terrorize us all with materializes, we will be having on hell of a Super Bowl Party!!