We got Spirit! (or, What’s with the Gift Certificate sale?)

Published December 9, 2009 Promotions , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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 I’ve been doing some Christmas shopping…… Stressed out by hearing of those who are done I actually took a whole day to make a big dent in my list.  (It was fun!).  I got totally caught up in “spirit” of everything being on sale. Figuring  I wasn’t the only one, and really wanting to justify my time away from the restaurant as “research and development,” I reckoned we ought to hop on the holiday sale bandwagon with a deal of our own. 

So we made bundles of 2 $50 Gift Certificates (yes an actual Gift Certificate in a classy black envelope with a menu …. Not a plastic Gift Card.) and put them on sale for $80 a package.   Good deal right!?  We think so!  Great for teacher gifts, the hair dresser, yoga instructor, clients, colleagues…… perfect for just about everyone.  Always a good fit.

The 2 $50 Gift Certificates for $80 bundles are available for purchase in person at The Frog and The Peach, over the phone with a credit card and we will mail them to you (or to someone you specify), 732-846-3216 x 0.  We charge $5 to process the phone orders. (Sorry, we can’t sell these on line, but all other amounts are available as always on-line, in person and over the phone.)  

Holiday decorations are over the top this year!

F&P in Holiday Splender

Sure, we would prefer to sell you a Gift Certificate for $150 and are happy to handle that on-line (as well as in person or over the phone). But we get that stocking stuffers are in, small gifts are needed, and we very much want to get into the holiday spirit and have a big sale just like Bloomingdales, Restoration Hardware and J Crew.  So, it might seem out of character, but we are doing it because we what to.  We are in the spirit!

Wishing you Holiday Joy, including a Happy Shopping Experience.

PS:   One guy bought 6 bundles while eating lunch at the bar.  How’s that for multi tasking!  He said that took care of his entire Christmas List!

The Cocktail Craze: Bee’s Knees and other Classics.

Published November 17, 2009 Food and Wine , The Frog Bar Leave a Comment
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As previously mentioned, several months ago we kicked up our cocktail program a notch and introduced a Classic Cocktail of the Week.  I know it’s not an original idea.  Places have been doing this for years. (A colleague accused me of stealing the idea from him. LOL!)  Not original but still a good idea for a whole bunch of reasons.

We decided to do it because we thought our Bartenders could use some training in everyone making the same drinks the same way.  There is a lot of ego in drink making!  Not wanting to bruise any, and still knowing that just like with the food menu, cocktail consistency matters.  Also, as with cuisine, being grounded in the basics is necessary before a cook/chef can go off and improvise (I say).  A bartender (aka “Bar Chef”) needs grounding in classic technique and combinations before they can go off and be a credible improvisational mixologist (I say). Finally, I don’t want my bartenders using our expensive ingredients to experiment on the public. Knowledge is power. Power to the bartender!  Okay…. I am getting a little out there with this…back on track.

So we are working our way through Classic Cocktails, one week at a time.  It goes pretty much like this: One week something fairly common (Daiquiri, Tom Collins, Whiskey Sour), one week something obscure (Aviation, Silver Fizz), or in between (Negroni, Rob Roy, Zombie), throw in an occasional forgotten cocktail (Pompadour) and before know it we have perfected at least a dozen cocktails, all classics. We have a long way to go. It’s fun!  Our bartenders are better for it. Our guests more cocktail savvy too. It’s a win-win

This week we are mixing up a somewhat obscure classic cocktail Winnie-the-Pooh would love; Bee’s Knees. Not many cocktails feature honey as a sweetener; generally it would muck-up the purity of drinks with distinct flavors (Think margaritas and daiquiris. Honey? Yuck!) However, Bee’s Knees is all about the warm, floral flavors of honey.  Honey always works well with lemon, and combined with the herbal tones of Gin, it’s a match! 

Classic Cocktail

A Classic Cocktail Winnie-the-Pooh would love!

Bee’s Knees Recipe

  • 2 ounces Gin
  • 3/4 ounce Lemon Juice
  • 3/4 ounce Honey Syrup
  • Lemon peel

 Combine the Gin, Lemon juice, and Honey is a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake.  Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a lemon peel.  Want to get fancy? Flame the lemon peel (not essential).

Not the Whiskey Sour of my Childhood!

Published November 6, 2009 Recollections , The Frog Bar Leave a Comment
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Who else watches Mad Men? There is a scene (maybe more than one) where little Sally Draper is making cocktails for her parents. That took me back to my childhood; same era more or less, the 60’s. My brother and I would occasionally make Whiskey Sours for our parents. A shot of Canadian Club, some ice cubes, an envelope of powdered whisky sour mix; blend in the blender, pour into a tallish thin stem glass (whisky sour glass) add a maraschino cherry. Voila! It was sweet and sour and boozy. Something in the magic powder made it foamy. That and the blender I guess.

About 2 months ago we started doing a Cocktail of the Week here at the F&P. Mostly we are mixing up classics the way they were meant to be, no shortcuts. Recently we featured the Whiskey Sour. It had that foam of my childhood but not from magic white powder and/or a whirl in the blender, but from egg whites and a good shake in a cocktail shaker. Amazing! A drink I had as an adult written off as “garbage, made from a mix,” when made as its creator intended, is delicious, fresh, fruity…and foamy!

Here it is and you can do it to!  

Whisky Sour

Whisky Sour

The Original Whiskey Sour
• 2 ounce Canadian club whiskey
• 1 ounce simple syrup*
• 3/4 ounce lemon juice (fresh squeezed to order!)
• 1/2 ounce egg white

1. Shake with ice and pour into a rocks glass. (strained)
2. Garnish w/ an orange and a cherry.

The proper ratio, of sweet and sour, is what makes this drink!

* Simple syrup: Bring equal amounts of water and sugar to a boil. Dissolve sugar. Cool. Use for cocktails as directed. You can make a batch and keep it in the refrigerator.

Who put eggs in my omelet?!

Published November 5, 2009 Stuff happens Leave a Comment
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Most restaurant guests are nice people. Sometimes you get someone who’s having a bad day and takes it out on the server/host/manager or all of the above. You learn not to take anything personally and treat them with an extra dose of kindness. Other times someone says something that just leaves you dumbfounded. Like a couple of weeks ago a guy was in for lunch. He and his dining companions ordered. The food arrived. He called the manager over to the table and complained that the server “misrepresented the omelet. He didn’t say there were eggs in it!” He told the manager that he doesn’t eat eggs! Startled but well trained, the manager’s response was, “what else can I bring you sir?” He had the ravioli.

This one is going in the book we might someday write!

Ranting about on-line ranting

Published August 4, 2009 Stuff happens 9 Comments
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What’s up with on-line restaurant forums? Does anyone read them other than the handful of people who post on them? Do they influence anyone? How is it that a person can hide behind a fake name and post things that are mean, vindictive, inaccurate and untrue, like they are fact, and a restaurateur, the one with factual information, and upfront about who they are, is not allowed!

Sound like something hit a nerve? Yes it did, and as much as I can generally not take things personally, or better, learn something from them, or dismiss them, this one just has me (and our general manager) seething! And, since this is My Blog this is my forum to say what’s there for me! So here’s what happened:

Late in the morning on Monday I checked the few boards I audit from time to time to see what foodies are saying about The F&P as well as other restaurants in the area; taking a pulse on the industry. There is a post from a guest who dined here on Saturday. Not a good experience! Then I get an email from the poster telling me that she posted something and here it is (cut and pasted the post….. with one significant change.) It had the tone of a childhood taunt “Na-na-na-na-na, I got you! So there! Phughhhh!” Full of rage and mis-spellings the poster did not like her eggplant tart appetizer (a stack of eggplant and unremarkable other ingredients…… puff pastry, tomato confit, diced heirloom tomatoes and a sherry vinegar reduction), main course lamb (overcooked/ sauce horrible), dessert (not what she expected/ dry/“discuting.” Yes, spelled that way). There were service issues: wine was not poured, server did not check up with her and the manager’s attempt at appeasing the guest was inadequate. In addition the guest was put off because the wine was too expensive and $300 was too much for a sub-par experience (note: $300 on the public on-line post and changed to $200 in the email to me. Wine in a later post cited at $75 was actually $61). Well I would have been pissed off too if that was my experience! So get to the bottom or this!….pull the guest check, talk to the staff and the GM, reply to the guest.

Here is our version of the story;
A couple arrives at the restaurant for their reservation and opts to have a drink at the bar. They had already had a cocktail at another establishment (found out subsequently after reading chowhound post). Our bar is busy. The bartender greats them. They say they are not sure what they want yet. He says he will check back with them in a minute. The woman in the party says “So you’re going to make us wait!” This might have been a Red Flag; but the bartender never shares that remark with anyone until days later. He just lets it roll off his back and goes on being the great bartender he is, ultimately getting back to them and serving them their drinks in a timely manner despite the quip.

The couple is seated, server greats them, they order; normal sequence, nothing out of the ordinary. The server has tables upstairs (where the couple is seated) and downstairs. Not the most ideal station; with the layout of the F&P this happens. Management knows it is difficult, so one of the 2 managers on duty is stationed upstairs assisting with service, which basically means pouring wine and water, directing service and being available when the server is in the other part of her station. Server pours wine initially. Server checks back with each course (appetizer and main course). Pleasant exchange; guests indicate all is well. Manager pours wine twice. No apparent food issues or any other issues. Guests are eating. Main courses are cleared. Guest orders apricot dessert with olive oil cake garnish (mint oil and Riesling reduction). Server serves dessert. Guest is not happy with dessert (dry, green sauce, “discusting”). Server offers to remove the item from the guest check. Server alerts the manager that the guest is not happy with the dessert. (Cake was indeed dry! Our mistake.) Manager stops by the table to apologize. Out of left field, WAM!, guest goes off about how terrible everything was and how they had to pour their own wine. Manager, startled, stutters, “I, I, I poured your wine twice.” Guest says “So you’re right and I’m wrong!” Manager steps away, sort of shell shocked like what-just-happened!?…..Surreal. Manager composes himself and returns to the table, apologizes again, offers his business card asking guests to let him know when they return and he will take care of them. Guest pushes card away, smirks at managers and says “Not a chance!”

What’s the truth? The truth is that we are not mind readers! The truth is that if we screw up on the doneness of the meat, we re-cook it, or get whatever else the guest wants. If the guest doesn’t like an appetizer, or a sauce or whatever, we offer something else. We had no indication that there was a problem until the guest flipped on the evil switch. What ever happened to personal responsibility? Don’t you think the guest should have said something? Subsequent posters suggested this. Seems like the reasonable thing to do. Yet, back to the point of this post, one can go off on a public web site, hide behind a pseudonym, and use the power words, to trash an establishment including saying things that are absolutely not true! Yuck! Despicable behavior! (By the way the very expensive bottle of wine was $61 and the guest check before tip was $158.). Is this the intention of the internet? I don’t think so.

So, I email the guest, further apologizing and refund her wine. I post the reply on the on-line forum and it is deleted as inappropriate within the half hour. I then got to poking around other sites, looking for ones I don’t know about or only occasionally check out, and landed on one where there is a thread about our very strict dress code. We don’t have a dress code! What is the motivation for going on line and saying untrue or mean things? I don’t get it. Got an ax to grind, go on-line! Get a life!

In the mean time we continue to set our standards high. When we miss the mark, which will happen when the bar is high, we will continue to own our mistakes, make up for them and learn from them. We will never hide behind our failings and certainly not behind a fake name on an internet forum!

Rant over.

Sincerely, Betsy Alger
Proprietor of The Frog and The Peach

Employee Profile

Published May 27, 2009 Recollections 1 Comment
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Restaurant staffs are communities unto themselves. Each has its characters and they have roles they play based on seniority, personality, physical characteristics or some dumb thing they did when they were training for their position. Kind of like the kid who passed gas in first grade and lives the rest of his life with the nick name “Stinky.”

At The Frog and The Peach we are family and we basically love each other even in the moments when we aren’t liking each other very much. One character in our F&P play is Rick. Rick is a Professional Server. Not an actor or an artist waiting tables waiting to be discovered. Not a college student earning beer money or a college graduate waiting tables because he doesn’t want to take a pay cut and get an entry level position in whatever it was he majored in. Nope, Rick is a Pro, and he sometimes takes a ribbing for that. 10 years at The F&P, time in NYC at Windows on the World, Daniel, and Aurora, Rick knows all there is to know about top notch service and he doesn’t hesitate to tell his less experienced co-workers what it takes to be Rick. Catch this tongue in cheek video, a collaboration of his co-workers, a tribute to Rick of The Frog!

Check out Axe Taxes Not Jobs

Published May 26, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I want you to take a look at: Axe Taxes Not Jobs 

Wines for Budget-Conscious Times: What’s a wine guy to do?

Published April 6, 2009 Food and Wine Leave a Comment
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Posted by Jim Mullen, General Manager and Wine Director for The Frog and The Peach
4/2/2009

Our Walk-Around tasting series began in March of 2005, so we are now moving into our fifth year. The collected tasting notes on the wines that we’ve featured now runs to eighty pages. For those of us who love wine, the topic is endless; there’s always a new hot winery, a previously un-explored growing region; this years new vintage. And since the inception, we’ve really only had one theme: interesting new things that have been added to the wine list.

But these days, the times are different. People have one thing on their mind: what’s a good value? It’s a subject dear to my heart. At any time, finding a delicious wine for a less-than-expected price is one of life’s small pleasures. There have times in my life where I have had to really tighten my belt, but how can you end your day without good food and a decent bottle of wine? So both personally and professionally, I’ve developed strategies to face this dilemma.

So over the next few tastings, we’ll look into wines for challenging (aka “bad”) times. There are hundreds of wines readily available that are not only reasonable but well worth buying. And by that I mean, not just passable, but that have real character; a wine that over the course of a meal and into the evening, will continue to reveal itself. And here are some ideas upfront:

• Pay attention to the importer. If you find a wine you particularly like, take note of the people who brought it to you. Importers who bring in some of the great wines of the world, will almost always also import lesser, known, less expensive things. Importers like Kermit Lynch, Louis/Dressner, Pasternak just don’t carry bad wines-they’re obsessed (in a good way). You can trust their inexpensive bottles.

• In New Jersey, because on antiquated laws, the sale of wine is dominated by a few very large distributors. The good news is that these big guys have a blind spot for the value of older vintages. They make a practice of dumping things not of the most recent vintage to make way for the new, and, sometimes, this can be a gift to the consumer. Savvy restaurants and retail shops can often find great deals on slightly older vintages. Find one who will pass those deals on to you.

• Be adventurous. The art and science of winemaking has evolved leaps and bounds in the past couple of decades. Regions of the world that no one ever thought of now make wines that can sometimes rival many California Cabernets or even classified Bordeaux, where prices since 2005 have gone through the roof.

In our first tasting in this series, as sort of an over-view, we’ll be focusing on three of those regions: Spain, Argentina and the Rhone. There’s enough here to keep us happy well into the next bubble. Walk Around Tastings at The Frog and The Peach are scheduled for Friday May 15, September 11 and November 13. Additional information is available by calling the restaurant, 732-846-3216.

Green Garlic: Menu Inspiration Over and Over again, and a Recipe to Share

Published April 1, 2009 Food and Wine 1 Comment
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Posted by Chef Bruce Lefebvre, The Frog and The Peach

It is spring and our new menu is being phased it. People often ask me how I come up with new menus for every season. It is an interesting question because my answer is never exactly the same. One trick is that I keep a running list of ideas that come up in between “creative days” (when I have to put pen to paper), that I refer to when I need them later. Simply being in tune with one’s surroundings can also produce a fresh idea.

The one constant tool, however, is to generate a comprehensive list of a particular season’s ingredients and build from that. We are fortunate to live in a climate where every four months or so nature gives us a great variety of produce (and even fish) that are seasonal and at their peak. One ingredient that caught my attention this Spring is green garlic. It is one of spring’s first offerings and tastes like a cross between garlic and green onion.

For our 2009 Spring menu we are making a Green Garlic Vinaigrette and serving it with Rosemary and Seed Crusted Lamb Loin. Vinaigrettes are a refreshing accompaniment to meat as the weather gets warmer and we don’t need a “hot” sauce made from roasting and simmering bones for hours and hours.

Green Garlic Vinaigrette
Chef Bruce Lefebvre. The Frog and The Peach

2 oz chopped raw green garlic (white part)
1 oz chopped green garlic (greener part)
2 T green garlic puree (tops, blanched in hot water, cooled in ice water and blended with ice and 4T olive oil)
3 ea lemons, juiced
2 ea canned anchovies, minced
1T Dijon mustard
¼ C white balsamic vinegar
1.5 cup olive oil

1. Sauté the white part of the garlic in 2 T olive oil
2. Combine all ingredients except oil in a bowl.
3. Pour in the olive oil and stir with a whisk to combine well.
4. Store in refrigerator for up to 1 month.

Dining out with a restaurateur: What’s the measure?

Published March 13, 2009 Food and Wine 7 Comments
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Recently Jim and I had dinner with new friends at a restaurant near our house in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. We have this lovely old colonial home in the Mejorada neighborhood and decided to dine close to the casa at a Spanish restaurant facing the park; Meson Segoviano, Opting for the room without the florescent tube lighting (“but it’s air conditioned” the accommodating proprietor pointed out). “Ambiance matters” was probably a red- flag to our new friends that dining out with people who own an upscale restaurant might be an adventure….. with the jury out as to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Who wants to end up dining with demanding jerks who criticize every taste, smell and detail because it’s not how it is at their own place.

I am used to dining with people I know where it’s usually, “please Betsy pick the wine,” or “you’re in the business you figure out how to divide the check’ (being a restaurateur does not mean your math skills are any more honed than the general public!). My friend Liz and I laugh when I once again correct her; “He’s the busser you don’t ask him what the specials are, wait for our server.” Other than those little “being the expert things,” I’m just like everyone else. I’m pretty easy to satisfy, will eat just about anything and am not a food and wine snob. These seasoned friends know that I don’t measure every other eatery against The Frog and The Peach.

So back to dinner with our new friends. There were 5 of us. The two other women and I opted for the pork specialty (3+ required to have this menu item) and were delighted with our ½ a little piggy head and all with crispy skin, extra tender super succulent meat in a somewhat greasy but who cares it tasted fabulous jus, and some bones big enough to see to avoid and if too small by this time we were friends enough to spit them out without anyone being offended. It was great! We were loving it! My new friend Robin popped the question about my take on the restaurant. My response was that my evaluation on a place is if I get what the concept is, what they are out to achieve, and think they are doing a good job at it, it seems to gel, then I am happy. I was indeed happy. Robin thought this was a good way to look at it; a healthy approach. Glad to get that out on the table, I believe we set the stage for many a memorable dining experience at any dive on any corner, any haute cuisine restaurant, or any place in between.

The Menu

The Menu. Cocina Economica calle 48 y 55.

About Merida dining: I would indeed starve to death in Merida if I snootily expected every restaurant to be like the F&P! I would be terribly disappointed if I used the F&P as the yard stick by which to measure every cocina economica, café and restaurant in town. That I don’t allows me to thoroughly enjoy Taco del Pastor  at Santiago Park, Arabe Taco (not sure I could find it again), Hamburgusea from the street cart vendor by Santa Lucia park, and panuchos at the cocina economica across the street from my house. Dining with a restaurateur need not be an exercise in how high into the air one can stick their nose. I can and do lick my fingers!

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