It's the Economy ....

It will come as no surprise to anybody that along with the rest of the world, the “downturn” (nice euphemism, eh?) in the economy has affected the food service industry along with everybody else. Starbucks closing faster than you can keep track of; and those that are open offering value breakfast menus. Outback’s numbers plummeting, everybody is getting hurt. It’s interesting how that word “value” is creeping more and more into our lexicon. A synonym for inexpensive (or the shorter word that starts with “ch”). I’ve noticed that the food magazines have started adding that word along with the easy and fast stuff. Articles appearing on how to find the “best value wines”, how to find “value on a wine list” one had an article on how to make three meals out of a single purchase (guess what, it started with a chicken). The January bon appétit is: “The Value Issue – Eat Better for Less”, and contains an article called (despite the apparent oxymoron): “Dinner Party of the Year – Luxury for Less”, and centers on Roast Beef with Dijon Caper Sauce. The lead in for the recipe says, “Eye of Round isn’t as expensive as prime rib, but it’s packed with flavor. Right. The first step is to get a 3 Lb. eye of round and “trim it of excess fat and sinew”. That is, if there is any fat. You brown it, and roast at 350˚ till 130 deg and let rest. That basically is how I did my last eye, and it turned out dense as a Yule log and zero flavor. A telling feature is that at the end of the recipe in the “Test-Kitchen Tip” it advises you that the eye of the round “is not the most tender cut of beef. Be sure to slice it very thinly”. Please don’t invite me to that Luxury dinner.

But, I digress. Restaurants, as I’ve said before, are a business. They need to make money, and unlike us wage slaves where our rewards are generally in our own hands (work hard or be fired), they depend on “us” to come to them. In times of tightened budgets, they are looking for ways to supply you with restaurant quality food that might fall within your depleted budget for eating out. Thus locally, we see the Dry Dock offering those Lobster/Steak/Meat Loaf Nights and Café Des Artists is providing (at least this week) an all inclusive $10.00 Lunch, and Corbels has begun (Tuesday thru Thursday for the month of March) a - Soup or Salad, Entree, and Dessert for $24.99. Any menu entree included - steak is just $2.00 more. Those are pretty good deals. I suspect there will be more of these opportunities to keep eating out in tough times (or retirement!), and it does let you dine at places you might not have tried yet.

Had nice recorded message during the snow on Monday from the fine folks at Waste Management. They wanted me to know that our pickup day would “be delayed by one day” because of the weather. “Remember things will be delayed by ONE DAY”. Then they very carefully went on to say, “That means, if your normal pickup day would is Tuesday, your trash would be picked up on Wednesday”. Nobody went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public I guess.

Still DFD