The importance of the product in the development of a menu for your restaurant concept
Creation of Food & Beverage concepts
Cooking Europe. Tilburg, May 23th 2022.
What we are feeling when we go to a restaurant and read the menu? What sensations does each dish or product transmit when we value a gastronomic experience?
When entering a restaurant we look at all those details that can make us shape our opinion about a gastronomic concept, we can feel every moment that we are in a restaurant, in a unique way and also move our senses with what we see. At the moment of reading the menu and seeing the different dishes and products that the establishment offers, we are also sending taste signals to our brain, and we imagine the taste of those products and ingredients since in our memory, we have tried them hundreds of times in other restaurants and gastronomic concepts. We constantly talk about what we want to eat today or about that ingredient that we would like to try sometime in any hospitality establishment, but do we give the same importance to where the product comes from? Or how has it been produced?
In this sense, when developing a menu for our restaurant or Food & Beverage concept, we have to assess many parameters since without the correct use of our culinary and gastronomic experience, the creation of the menu can become an empty job. We must take into account different points of view and use ingredients that will capture the senses of our guests and customers in the restaurant.
Several times we have entered into conversations about the importance of the product and how the hotel industry in general is focusing on the sustainable use of all these gastronomic resources that we have within reach of our senses and that we can perceive every time we enter a new establishment, or we see a new gastronomic concept. We know that each restaurant uses its ideas and creativity to develop a menu that all guests will like and that for this menu, the best available ingredients will be used. But we want to delve deeper into this, and take the development of the food & beverage concept hand in hand with the sustainability of the product, the quality of the ingredients, the interior design, the location, the culture and achieve a sensory experience without limits.
For us, all the ingredients have the same value and not because they are more expensive or unattainable, they are better for a restaurant. A pea or an onion has the same value as a lobster, or for example, a good hamburger deserves recognition compared to a classic like Beef Wellington.
All the ingredients and products that we use when developing a Food & Beverage concept must add that extra to the menu that will make our guests have a complete gastronomic experience.
What parameters are important when choosing the right proposal for our catering establishment?
- The location and the local product.
When we open a restaurant or gastronomic concept, we always have to assess where it is going to be located, what products are identified with the clientele that lives around us and what ingredients we have in the region.
- The quality.
The quality of the product makes a difference in the customers who come to our establishment and not by using a product from ‘next door’ we have to give up one with better quality that is further away. We must always seek that balance between what is ours and what is from outside, respecting the authenticity and quality of what we serve.
- The preparation and respect for the product.
Having a very good product does not mean that we are going to get the most out of it in our store. You have to know how to treat and respect the product in the best possible way, using those culinary techniques and explosive combinations for our senses, without covering up the flavor and texture that identify it.
Now we have some ideas and parameters to start developing our restaurant menu. We know the right gastronomic concept and we analyze the culture and tastes of our guests. We treat the product in the proper way and value all the ingredients equally.
Let the party begin!
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