5 Ideas for Cool New Restaurants

Posted bysamantics 11 Comments on 5 Ideas for Cool New Restaurants

As anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows, I love food. I’ve eaten at hundreds of different restaurants, and tasted thousands of different dishes. So, after much eating and thinking, I’ve come up with a few ideas for some very innovative end awesome restaurants.

I have no intention of starting a restaurant of my own, but if anyone chooses to use one of these ideas to start one, all I ask is that you invite me in for a free meal 🙂

  1. Reverse – I’ve decided to call this one Reverse because I thinks things should be backwards. After an appetizer and an entrée, there never seems to be any room for dessert, and dessert is my favorite part of a meal! So, why not do dessert first? Dessert, followed by entrées, and then if you have room you could snack on an appetizer while chatting with your eating companions. I though about just calling it Dessert First, but Reverse sounds cooler 🙂
  2. Simple – Have you noticed that the more expensive the restaurant, the more impossible to pronounce the menu becomes? Why not have a restaurant that makes only the simplest of dishes, but with the best most out-of-this-world ingredients available? I’m thinking things like Macaroni and Cheese, but with some unique hand-made pasta dough, apple walnut smoked cheddar and a hint of truffle. Or maybe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but made on fresh potato bread, lightly toasted, with fresh ground peanut and almond butter, with passion fruit and pomegranate jelly…great, now my mouth is watering!
  3. Sweet РI have a killer sweet tooth, so why not a restaurant where all the dishes are sweet? You can do killer things with agave nectar, honey, fruits, cane sugar, etc. Think layers and gradients of different kinds of sweetness, from appetizer to entr̩e to dessert.
  4. Weekly – While rotating your menu each week is nothing new, what about rotating the menu each week around one common ingredient? Perhaps even use whatever the ingredient was the previous Sunday on Iron Chef America. Then, all week, everything on the menu is centered around that one ingredient. Truffle or butter week anybody?
  5. Assemble – What about a restaurant that, instead of a menu of dishes, gives you a menu of ingredients on hand? You pick the ingredients you like, and the chef offers you some possible dishes from those ingredients. Sort of like the show Chopped. Prices would be based on the number and type of ingredients selected.

So that’s it, my 5 amazing restaurant ideas. Pretty please, someone open one of these restaurants and invite me to eat there! (I apologize if any of these exist and I’m simply not aware. If that is the case, let me know where the offending restaurant is so I can go eat there 🙂 )

UPDATE: So I thought of another good idea for a restaurant today. I was at the bookstore, and I found a book about crème brûlée, and there was a section in there with savory versions which sounded amazing, using things like cheese, chorizo, mushrooms, etc. So, why not have a restaurant called Brûlée, that serves just awesome variations of crème brûlée. You could have a variety of appetizer, entrée and dessert versions…anywho, just one more idea 🙂

11 replies on “5 Ideas for Cool New Restaurants”

      1. If you don’t want to tip then don’t eat out… servers make a living on tips. the min wage for a server is 2.13 a hour.

        1. Yup, well aware of wages for servers and the importance of tips for them. And I think it’s fair to point out that the restaurant is required to ensure minimum wage is earned if tips don’t cover it.

          Still, why is it fair for restaurant goers to not only pay the restaurant for the food, but to separately pay the servers? Restaurants should just pay servers a fair wage, and roll the cost into the menu prices, much like Ãœber has done with car services.

          On top of that, far too many servers seem to think they are entitled to tips, which they are not. A tip is meant to be a reward for good to great service, not an obligatory payment regardless of the quality of the service. Tips need to be earned.

          1. You’ve obviously never been in the service industry then. Do you tip people that wash your car? How about the people at a valet service? It’s common courtesy. People are SERVING you. If you don’t want to be waited on hand and foot, then I agree with Ronnie, stay home.

          2. They’re performing a job, with an expectation of pay. Customers pay employers, employers pay employees. Tips are for exceptional service, above and beyond, not for the bare minimum (which is what you often get.)

            Though you seem to think of tips as your due, neither you nor anyone else in the “service” industry are automatically entitled to tips…you need to EARN them. Bad service or barely passable service does not = tips.

            When I go to a nice restaurant and receive excellent service, I tip very well (20-30%.) Obviously my expectations are less at lesser establishments, in which case I usually give 15% for good service. But if the service isn’t at least good, I won’t give a damn thing.

            People need to stop being entitled. You get what you EARN. If you don’t like the amount of effort required to earn something, find a different job. I’ve increased my personal income over 600% in the last 6 years, simply because I grasp that I’m entitled to nothing, and I’m willing to work my ass off for everything I get.

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