It's been awhile since I've posted. Shame on me. Been a rough couple weeks. Rough in a good way, I guess. Been working on changing the menu even more, to make it more of what I want to do. We've been changing a few items a week, so as to not overwhelm us in the kitchen, but also keep things fresh.
Here are a few pics of some new items on the menu:

Top Left: Braised short rib, gnocchi, shallot confit, port, micro salad

Top Right: 3 Little Pigs: House cured pancetta wrapped pork chop, pancetta braised red cabbage, fingerling potatoes, apple bourbon honey

Bottom right: Seared tuna, edamame salad, sweet & spicy soy

Action

Couple action shots of me plating the Local Flavors for Local Foodies dinner the other night.

I wanted to give a special thanks to one of my cooks, Andrew Dolph, for photographing the event and dishes for me. Andrew is a trained photojournalist, so if anyone needs any photo work done, please contact him. His website is: http://andrewdolph.net

Local Flavors for Local Foodies

On Thursday night, I did a 5 course dinner for some local foodies. The dinner was called Local Flavors for Local Foodies. Each of the courses had at least 1 ingredient that was locally grown. Some courses had multiple ingredients that were local.

The dinner turned out great! At least I thought it did. I was very pleased with how everything came out. I thought the dessert course could have been a little nicer, but I thought the flavors were there.

Here are some photos and the menu:

1) Local tomatoes and watermelon, many accompaniments

2) Scallops, local corn and bacon ragout, candied hot peppers, corn shoots

3) House cured pancetta wrapped pheasant, local chanterelles, brussel sprouts, pomegranate

4) Local pork belly, Asian slaw, caramelized peanut and chile dressing, tamarind caramel

5) Local peaches and local blackberries, multiple forms

T-Shirts

Just wanted to make a quick mention about my buddy Matt Mytro's t-shirt company, Stove Monkeys. http://stovemonkeys.com/

Great urban chef wear, created by chefs, for chefs. Please, support the little guys and BUY A SHIRT!

Here is Matt and one of his many shirt designs.

Charity Event

I just got back from the walk-thru for an upcoming charity event that I'm doing.

It is called "Flavors of Northeast Ohio" and it benefits the American Liver Foundation.

It will be held on September 21, 2009, starting at 6pm.

Here is the link: http://www.liverfoundation.org/chapters/heartland/events/505/

If you are interested in helping to support a good cause, please visit the link above and buy some tickets. Hopefully, we'll see ya there!

From My Garden

These are all from my garden. I got a late start to the garden this year (mid-June), but I'm hoping to get a few things from it. Tomatoes are coming in good now, but no where near ripe. The San Marazano are the ripe ones, but are super tiny.

Cucumbers are coming in strong, which is a great sign and the beets look decent. The next few weeks will determine all.

Press

Almost forgot to mention and thank Nancy Heller and Joe Harvey for the press they gave me this past week or so.



I've known Nancy for 3 or 4 years now as a guest to I think every restaurant I have worked at. She's also soooo wonderful in trumpeting local, independent restaurants. She is always the first to give a chef credit for a wonderful meal and share it with the internet world.



Joe is the community manager for Northern Onio LocalFoodService, a website for local foodie news. http://northernohio.localfoodservice.com/index.cfm

I just became acquinted with Joe this past week when he was kind enough to mention me on the website. http://northernohio.localfoodservice.com//apps/news/local_news.cfm?nid=34002&ntoken=4000599299

Thanks for the press, it's much appreciated.

Jeff

Some New Things!

This past week I changed the menu at North End, only slightly. As mentioned in a previous post, the salads and desserts were unacceptable, so I changed those this week. The way I approached those were to make them solid and have all the products so we didn't run out of anything. Mission accomplished.

I forgot to take pictures of the new stuff, so I will get some up this coming week. Here is what I added though:

Red, Wine, and Blue Salad: Field greens with roasted red peppers, blue cheese, pickled red onions, and red wine vinaigrette.

Cucumber and Tomato Salad: Local heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers, red onion, arugula, feta cheese and apple cider vinaigrette.

Desserts:

-Flourless chocolate cake, ancho chile chocolate glaze, salted caramel, vanilla ice cream

-Strawberry shortcake, vanilla whipped cream

-Mom's mint chocolate chip ice cream pie, chocolate snow

In addition to adding those, I switched the menu around so it featured the salads (and a soup du jour) on their own page, instead of hiding them at the bottom of the entree page. Seemed to work, because we sold 40-some salads on Friday! The tomato-cucumber salad is selling like crazy, no surprise! Use good, local ingredients and you're bound to sell the product.

I will be changing a few more things this week. On my list to change are the pork, salmon, and probably the halibut. Maybe add another steak and, wait for it............PORK BELLY!!!!

Jeff