I had dinner last night at the newest location of Kansas City’s best tapas restaurant, La Bodega. This was actually my second trip in as many weeks. I’ve always enjoyed the small plate concept and no one executes it better. It also led to a foodie discussion of the difference between the different pork products […]
Recommended Reading 11/1
In my continuing attempt to find a good Monday feature, I have decided to share some of the more fun or interesting things I have read over the last week. I’m not really putting a minimum number of in because I don’t want to ever post filler. These are just random restaurant related articles that […]
Tipping On To Go Orders
Part of writing a blog about the restaurant industry and serving is fielding questions from friends. Every couple of weeks I will field a question from a facebook friend regarding tipping. I consider this fair since I do link to this blog fairly often on my facebook. Most of these are pretty easy. I have […]
The Stumpers
I will admit it. I am a huge trivia fan. I collect random pieces of trivial information in hope that it one day might come in handy. This has led to an undefeated streak in Trivial Pursuit that began in the last millennium. It also leads to me seeking out opportunities to play trivia whenever […]
Lobster Facts and Trivia
My friend Marcy has been telling me for years that I need a dog. She thinks it would be good for me to have a pet for companionship. I have always avoided getting one based on the fact that my schedule prevents me from being home frequently enough to let it outside. I can see […]
Aspirational Dining in a Recession
(Note: In the previous post I defined the growing market segment of “aspirational dining†restaurants. This is valuable background to this post and merits a read.) What sets the “aspirational dining†market segment apart was their creation of the perception that their food cost more because it was worth more. This perception is what made […]
Aspirational Dining Defined
I am a Mac guy. This means only the occasional interruption for updates from Microsoft. These are most often for Word for Macs. Yet in none of these updates have they added to my spell check dictionary words like “Barack Obama, Al Qaeda, or Facebook.â€Â If they do implement this change they can use this […]
Searches Answered
So part of being the slightly neurotic blogger that I am is keeping an eye on what searches brought people here. Sometimes they are very specific searches. In those cases I stop and think, “Did I answer that?â€Â For some I am convinced that I not only answered the question, but did so thoroughly. For […]
Dr Strange Salmon
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Genetically Modified Salmon Earlier this week I posted a link to a story regarding the AquAdvantage genetically modified salmon. In the days since, I have become fascinated by this concept. I have consumed dozens of articles on the topic and several related topics. I have also […]
Ranch Dressing and Why We Love It
When Escoffier defined his five mother sauces, he did so based on a proud culinary tradition that dated back to Careme and others. These were flexible sauces that stood the test of time. Fortunately, he could not predict how boring the average consumer would become. In most modern chain restaurants the mother sauces would be […]
Wine Apps for your Phone
My posting has been pretty sporadic this week because I have been on vacation. Â A nice double awaited me upon my return. Â The good news is that lots of brainstorming took place on the flight out and roadtrip back. Â Tomorrow I will cover another controversial topic regarding servers. Â Memorizing orders is something everyone has an […]
About The Author
David Hayden was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He took his first serving job in 1996. Since that time, he has worked for over a dozen different restaurant companies. He has held both hourly and salaried positions at independent and corporate restaurants. He has waited on over 100,000 guests and trained hundreds of servers. He has been named "Best Server in Kansas City" the last three years by the local weekly paper.