Bahaatalis Blog

Melanie Young asked:




Do you love Cheddar’s Restaurants? You’re not alone! Since 1978, when Aubrey Good and Doug Rogers opened the first Cheddar’s outlet outside of Six Flags in Arlington, Texas, Cheddar’s restaurants have become an American institution. It is a constant favorite of hundreds of thousands of families, many of whom eat there once a week or even more!

Particularly since their commitment is to fresh food and recipes made from scratch, it is no wonder that their restaurant outlets and their style of cooking has swept the nation. They are well-known for their friendly, attentive staff and their mouth-watering and affordable cuisine. In the thirty years since the opening of that first restaurant, more than sixty additional Cheddar’s outlets have opened across the country.

I know that I, for one, greatly enjoyed my trip to Cheddar’s when I was visiting a friend back east. We ate at no less than ten restaurants during my week-long trip, and Cheddar’s was by far the best. In fact, we ate there three times! You really can’t beat the gourmet-style food and family-style prices. Also, the atmosphere was happy and fun and the wait staff was friendly and attentive.

Cheddar’s menu focuses on family-style cooking, much like their atmosphere focuses on being family-friendly, as well. They have appetizers ranging from Chicken Tenders to Nachos to Cheese Fries. The entrees are equally appetizing, including such items as Key West Chicken and Shrimp, Grilled Tilapia with Mango Salsa, Dijon Chicken and Mushrooms, and Honey Barbecue Baby Back Ribs. Don’t forget to save room for dessert. Their specialty is the Cookie Monster Wow! and it is described as legendary. It’s made to order, and it consists of a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie, made in a skillet, topped with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, chopped nuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

Doesn’t that sound mouth watering?

Ryan Bifulco asked:




Okay, seriously, we are not suggesting that somebody from London or New York or anywhere really is going to drop everything and plan a vacation to Atlanta. But it is a city on the rise with a ton to offer. So, if you’re coming down here for business or to see friends and family, you now have a lot more upscale options. Actually it makes for a great road trip or weekend getaway if you are in the Southeast. To some people Atlanta is their New York when it comes to shopping and nightlife. I mean, we do have the only IKEA for miles and miles…

So what’s new in Atlanta? For starters nobody down here ever says Hotlanta. So please check that phrase at the city limits. Head downtown to the new trendy Glenn Hotel and you’ll discover b.e.d. b.e.d. is a restaurant/lounge combo great for people watching and sipping cocktails with friends. Other b.e.d.s are in NY and Miami, but somehow Atlanta is lucky enough to get the third one. Not sure who we bribed to jump ahead of Vegas and other cities, but we are damn glad your’re here. The VIP rooftop bar has the best views in town.

Checkout the largest aquarium in the world only a few blocks down the road. Waste the afternoon away in Piedmont Park and then grab a drink at the Park Tavern. Hike up Stone Mountain if you need to get away from it all.

Here are our journeyPod picks to give you some ideas:

Restaurants

Antica Posta: the best Italian in the city offering authentic upscale Tuscan dishes in a romantic redone house in Buckhead.

Haven : everything on the menu will tempt you…walk down to their sister lounge, Mix, for a drink afterwards….located in Brookhaven.

b.e.d.: food fit for a king - dine like royalty in your own private bed in Downtown…what to do after dinner? two words- VIP rooftop.

Rathbun’s: remember how hot Bluepointe was when it opened back in 1999? Well the magician has done it again with his own place in Inman Park. Chef Kevin Rathbun will blow you away with his innovative cuisine that is as tasty as it is eccentric. From the eggplant fries to Elvis’ favorite Banana Peanut Butter Cream Pie, you’ll have to show some serious indulgence control to even leave your table.

MidCity Cuisine: consistently dishes out fabulous plates in Midtown.

Nuevo Laredo: yes you can drink your margarita pitcher in the parking lot while you wait for your table…authentic Mexican with the best carne asada in the city and located on the West Side.

Apres Diem: cosmopoliton eatery and people watching with a great vibe in Midtown…perfect Sunday brunch to cure that hangover…the only place that is good every night of the week.

the globe : fusion food meets euro cafe in Midtown. Great little plates like tuna and tempura frites will hold your attention all night long.

Nan: rumor has it that Gwenyth fancies their trendy Thai treats in Midtown.

Aiko: sushi hits the dance floor at this hip Buckhead eatery.

Melanie Young asked:




When you get all dressed up and excited to go out to eat, a big part of what adds to the excitement is the anticipation of the food. Food just tastes better when you’re eating out - and that includes restaurant salad dressing recipes. Whether it’s ranch or french or balsamic, it doesn’t matter. It never tastes quite the same out of the bottle you got from the grocery store shelf as it does when you’re munching on a salad in your favorite restaurant.

There are several reasons why the restaurant salad dressing recipes might taste a bit more sweet, a bit more tangy, well - just a bit more special, when it comes right down to it.

First, at many restaurants they make the salad dressing fresh from scratch. Fresh ingredients, with no preservatives, that have not been transported in a bottle on a truck and then sat on a grocery store shelf for possibly weeks before being purchased, are necessarily going to taste fuller, richer, and more delicious than bottled dressing.

Secondly, dressing in the bottle is going to be formulated with a recipe that was created to appeal to the widest variety of tastes possible. It’s going to be designed to be middle of the road, with no overly bold flavor choices, nothing too far out of the ordinary. So, by the same token, it’s not going to be anything special, taste wise.

Restaurants want to develop a flavor profile that is distinct in the minds of their customers, so they will take their flavor choices closer to the edge - spicier, sweeter, tangier, zestier, and all around edgier.

Sunil Tanna asked:




Most of us have particular restaurants that we love going to. Sure we love going to a restaurant as a social event and for the atmosphere, but if we are honest about it, I think you would agree that for the most part we go for the food. When there is choice of excellent dishes on the menu, many of which we love eating, who wouldn’t want to go a restaurant?

Sometimes when you to a restaurant there are apparently exotic dishes that you’ve never eaten home. Other times, you might want to choose a dish that you have in the past prepared at home, but typically you might choose because the restaurants have a particular variation of the recipe that you love - whether it’s because of a different combination of ingredients, herbs, sauces, flavorings, or just the way that the dish is prepared.

Of course many of us are not able to go to restaurants as often as we might like. It might be because of the cost, it might be because it’s not always possible because of family or work considerations, or it may simply be that our favorite restaurant chain doesn’t have an outlet within a convenient distance of our home. But what if you could bring a little bit of that restaurant magic into your home? That would be great wouldn’t it? It might also be a lot easier than you might think… Nowadays there are quite a few different web sites which contain instructions and recipes for preparing food in the style of famous restaurants. Such recipes aren’t of course exact duplicates of the originals, since famous restaurants tend not to give out their recipes, but usually contain “copy cat recipes”, specifically devised to be prepared at home. Why not take a look at such sites - you might be surprised at the range of recipes of that they offer - and indeed you may find these recipes a wonderful way of livening up meals at home.

Brian Patton asked:




After many years of taste bud deprivation by Portabella’s fans, Michael Field, operator of the former Portabella’s Pantry in downtown Alpharetta, is opening a new restaurant in the Roswell Mill area.

For the past two years, Field has been searching for the right location to open another boutique restaurant catering to his gourmet touch in bakery, sandwich, and soup cuisines.

His new restaurant will be called Wildflour, and is at 555 South Atlanta St., in the Founder’s Square Shopping Center in Roswell. He plans to open Oct. 1st. You can expect similar taste with an upscale décor of crisp and refreshing colors; and of course, Mr. Field’s usual friendly smile to greet you at the door.

Field describes the restaurant’s name as denoting “where flavor blooms.”

“The name fits my personality,” he said. “My goal is to make my customers’ hour of lunch refreshing so they can return to the work place with a great attitude.”

Wildflour will offer the bakery items of Field’s past success, but with some possible new twists. He has been experimenting with pulled sugar designs. The process involves heating sugar to a high temperature and then creating artful designs to adorn his bakery creations. He plans to integrate this artwork into some of his bakery items to create some winning concepts.

Open for lunch at the beginning, and later for breakfast, Field also envisions doing dinner if his customers demand it. And judging by his last location, his customers will demand it quite often.

Ally Azoss asked:




There are many different slang words and phrases that help a restaurant become more efficient. I work at Perkins as a cook and if I was coming in as a new cook than I would be lost. People throw out words that aren’t what people use in everyday life. The answer of why the restaurant business does this is simple, its time. Cooks and servers don’t have time to sit there and explain what they need because it is wasting time, especially when the restaurant is busy. Not just cooks and servers do this; people in school and work do this as well. For example, a college student listening to a lecture and the teacher talks way to fast, to write everything down they abbreviate. Cooks and servers do this to have faster and more efficient service.

There are typical words you here in the restaurant business. To start off the day I hear things like can you grab me a baker, this simply means can you grab me a baked potato. So in return I go to grab a baker and I find that there are none left. So I run back to the kitchen and yell 86 bakers. 86 bakers mean there are no longer any more baked potatoes in the building and the servers have to tell the customers to order something else. 86 something can also be used with any other kind of food. I then get back to my station and I ask the wheel which is the person reading of the tickets to the cooks, how many cakes I have all day. A cake is another word for a pancake and all day is how many cakes all together are on the tickets. The person in charge up front then comes back and says I have a fourteen, twelve, and an eight top. This means there is a dining party of fourteen, twelve, and eight at separate tables. In other words these are going to long tickets, on separate trays, and we should get prepared and stocked.

When the parties are ready to be served we will say hot food in the window. The window is a heat lamp where food transitions from the kitchen to the dining room. Hot food also means that the servers need to get the food out to the customers as soon as possible. Occasionally, a server will ask for a small or medium round, this could be confusing to some but means they want a small or medium plate. Also if the person in charge up front isn’t telling the cooks how many tops we have then I can ask for a menu count. They may say 5 open menus. A menu count is simply just counting how many menus people are looking at in the dining room so the cooks can know if they can take a break, let people off, start cleaning or start closing. There are a lot slang words for food or instruments like, CFS, Scrambler set up, or a spat. These are pretty easy to interpret, a CFS is a country fried steak, scrambler set up is a little bowl that holds breakfast potatoes and a spat is a spatula.

To end the day I might ask someone if I can clock out. In return they might say sure if you got all your side-work done. Words like clock out or side-work might be confusing to some but clocking out is signing out on the computer so you can get off work and leave and side-work is s seemingly list of preparatory tasks like taking out the trash, stocking my area, or sweeping the floor.

Shorting up words in the restaurant business can be very helpful to speed up the process of getting food out to the customers. In my opinion, I think that these words are very creative and when you start working in this business it starts making sense of why they use them. It’s hard to tell who made up the words but I’m sure they just evolved over time.

Rikki Quay asked:




Locating decent Temecula restaurants are both easy and tricky at the same time. While there are plenty of delicious options to consider, you’ll face delightful difficulty settling on the perfect match. Some people may start out the day with a taste for Mexican, but then pass by the Temecula Peruvian restaurant called Lucho’s and decide to explore the Ceviche de Pescado (marinated fish in spicy lemon juice).

Lively Caribbean delights, addicting French pastries, tantalizing Thai cuisine and much more represent just some of the possibilities you will encounter when looking for Temecula restaurants to explore. What’s even better about dining in Temecula is that each experience is fresh and accompanied by the soothing blue skies and the excellent temperatures of Southern California weather.

Aiyara Thai Cuisine (41533 Margarita Rd, Suite M102): During the mid-day, why not stop by this Temecula restaurant to enjoy tasty lunch specials, including Gra-Praw (minced garlic, fresh chili, basil leaves, bell peppers, and bamboo shoots) or other selections, such as Veggie Delight, Red Curry, and coconut curry dishes? Dine on appetizers called ***** Wings, Angel Wings, and Lady Fingers. Salads with shrimp, calamari, and chicken may accompany any entr