The biggest challenge was, when we were creating the logo, to synchronize the restaurant logo with our gastronomy concept “from farm to table”. And at the same time we wanted the logo to look natural, fresh, clean, simple and modern. The whole project of the logo creation took almost two months and you can judge by yourself how successful we were to achieve that.
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Risotto is one of my favorite recipes and it won’t be missing on our restaurant menu. We will be changing the risotto variations based on the season and I can disclose that apart from the saffron risotto we will be serving mushroom risotto with truffle oil, spinach risotto with grilled vegetables and when the pumpkin season comes we will be serving the pumpkin risotto with roasted pumpkin seeds as well.
You can find the authentic Italian saffron risotto recipe also known as Risotto alla Milanese in the “recipe” section.
The authentic Italian risotto is most often cooked from the Carnaroli or Arborio rice. We should never wash the risotto rice so that we don’t wash out the starch that this type of rice contains and that helps to achieve, together with the stock, the required creamy consistency. Risotto actually is not the name of the Italian meal but it is one of the options how to cook rice. We can cook it, steam it, we can use the pilaf or risotto method. The risotto cooking method is characterized by the rice roasting on butter after which the rice is deglazed with white wine and cooked in stock that we add ladle by ladle and at the end we add some parmesan cheese for flavor and some butter for creamier consistency.
The risotto cooking method can be used not only for the rice but also, for instance, for hail preparation, which when cooked using the risotto method results in very tasty side dish.
…are two very important steps that are defining a significant portion of the investment level into the restaurant project, and that’s why we did not underestimate them. The main success factor for both tenders is the project documentation for both the kitchen and the interior design. We knew that without these two documents, that are exactly specifying what kitchen technology we want to have and what furniture from what material and what construction changes we request, the tender can’t be effective and its result comparable. Therefore we have decided to invest our time and money into the project documentation, which simplified the tender significantly and on the top of that, it helped us to save some money and select the right suppliers.
With the project documentation we then contacted three suppliers for the kitchen as well as for the interior and we requested their price and service offers based on the detailed specification that is part of the project documentation. We then compared their offers based on the price, the quality and the service level criteria and selected our kitchen technology and interior suppliers that are already working on the realization of our restaurant.
…is often underestimated step when opening a restaurant, even though kitchen should be the heart of every restaurant, or at least every good restaurant. Most of the kitchen suppliers are offering the realization of the kitchen layout design for free, within which they are trying to sell their products, and the quality of the final result is often influenced by that.
When creating the kitchen layout design it’s important to select not only the kitchen technology suitable for the restaurant’s gastronomy concept, but also its ergonomic and logical layout so that every cook’s move is as effective as possible. We did not leave anything to chance and hired a professional kitchen design studio, which is the more expensive option but with some important advantages.
First of all, the project documentation will be realized based on your gastronomy concept and your needs and at the same time you will get a detailed documentation for a supplier selection process. With such documentation you can then address multiple suppliers and compare their offers based on identical base. And this is the moment, when you realize that you have to spend some money for the project documentation but based on which you will be able to save money by selecting the right supplier. In our case the difference between the most expensive offer and the one we have evaluated as the best in terms of price and quality ratio, was almost 30% and the price for the project documentation was only 3% from the final gastronomy equipment price. In my opinion it is definitely a good deal to invest 3% into kitchen layout design and save 30% on the right supplier selection. Nothing is for free these days and the suppliers that are offering the project documentation for “free” have already calculated the price into their offers, but only in a few cases they will process it on a professional level and with as much effort as the specialized kitchen design studio.
…was another step we had to make on our way to opening the restaurant. First we had to specify our expectations and how we wanted the restaurant interior to look like.
Our gastronomy concept is focused on honest food cooked from scratch only from quality and fresh ingredients and based on the traditional recipes but at the same time utilizing the modern gastronomy trends and we wanted the interior design to be in line with the same principles. Therefore we wanted the restaurant interior to be honest, light, cozy, elegant, simple, traditional yet still modern and we wanted the natural materials to be dominant.
With this expectation we started to look for an architect who already has experiences with restaurant interior design and who will be able to translate our vision on paper into 3D interior study. We were lucky and very soon we found an architect exactly like that. What convinced and impressed me were the references of other restaurant interior designs they have done so far and the fact, that they don’t use any computer drawing software to design the interior but they use the traditional drawing board, paper and pencil to create the base interior, which is then transferred into the computer for color scheme finalization. It is refreshing to see that there are still people who are using, for their craft, the traditional and proven methods and the modern technology is only a supporting tool for them. We are shooting for something very similar in our gastronomy concept.
We started to work on our restaurant face creation, which was very enjoyable and creative work. During our first meeting with the architects we talked about our gastronomy concept, our interior expectations and also about some practical rules for restaurant layout. After a few weeks we received first visuals that we started to form and fine tune and few more weeks later we received the final restaurant interior design, which we were happy with and which you can judge by yourself from the attached visuals.
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was our blog displayed on your screens…and together with the czech version of the blog, total number of displays is 15.200 up to date. Thank you for all your virtual visits and we are already looking forward to your actual visits in our restaurant that we are planning to open on June 24th, 2012.
What does this concept actually mean in our restaurant?
Fresh, seasonal and quality ingredients in their natural form as they were created by the Mother Nature, are the basics of the whole concept. We believe that only from such fresh ingredients we can cook a meal, that has not only its natural flavor, but is also providing healthy and full nutritional value to our diet. Unfortunately we are living in a hectic and busy world full of quick and convenient substitutions such as flavor enhancers, powders of all kinds, cans and I don’t know what other convenient products are available these days. And you know what, I don’t need to or want to know, because there is no such thing as substitutions or convenience products in the From farm to table concept. There is a space only for quality and fresh ingredients in their natural and unprocessed form in our kitchen.
When we create our recipes, we list not only a simple list of ingredients we are going to use for the recipe, but we are testing what concrete ingredient, from what supplier and in what quality will be the best for each individual recipe. For instance, when we were testing tomatoes for the best tomato sauce, we included 6 different kinds of tomatoes in the test and the absolute winner was the San Marzano variety. Definitely not the cheapest one, but in terms of quality vs. price ratio, simply the best you can get.
Honest cooking from scratch is another important philosophy in our concept. Only when we cook everything from scratch in our kitchen, we have a control over what ingredients in what quality were used and what cooking method was selected. Again, we are living in a hectic world full of convenience products that are providing significant time savings, which means a lot in a restaurant where hundreds of meals are produced. But we have decided to shoot for quality under control, which is not something you can expect from most of the convenience products, and therefore we believe that the honest cooking from scratch is the only possible way how to deliver such quality to our customers.
Support your farmer is an integral part of the From farm to table concept. When we select our suppliers, we always prefer the local farmers that have decided to shoot for the quality over quantity as we did. I believe we all noticed the growing trend and popularity of the farmer’s markets in the Czech Republic, which is undoubtedly a positive trend. But unfortunately, for now, the produce bought at the farmer’s market does not always equal quality and the bio sticker does not always bring the increased quality for the increased price. We therefore decided to select and cooperate only with those farmers, who can deliver quality produce in a consistent, reliable and regular fashion. It’s not going to be an easy task, but we are convinced that with time, the situation on the market of local and quality produce delivered directly from the Czech farmers will get only better. And we are committed to support such trend as much as we possibly can.
