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Episode 31 – What we can Learn from Elegant Restaurants about Cooking and Dining

Today we’re going to talk about some things we can learn from elegant restaurants about food and dining, things that we can apply at home without making a huge effort, but that still make our dinnertime more special, more meaningful, and more nutritious. We’ll just be looking at the good things that restaurants can teach us – certainly there are fast food restaurants and things going on there that we wouldn’t want to emulate. And also, we’re not going to be able to create a restaurant at home. That’s a lot more work than we have time and ability for, as you’d need all the waiters and waitresses, and all the chefs. But I just want to think about ways that we can apply some of the principles used in restaurants to make our own mealtime special. 

Firstly, one of the most important things, and something I probably find hardest, is sitting down to enjoy the meal in a relaxed way, being present, and not being preoccupied, distracted, or busy. When you go to a restaurant with your family, everyone expects to go and sit and chat and enjoy the time together, and obviously not have to do stuff like clearing plates and things. You expect it to be a time of chatting, fellowship and connection, and laughing. We’ve got to think about what helps to make that happen at home. 

One of the things is the expectation that we bring – planning that. It’s obviously harder at home because there are dishes to clear, there’s food to get, and there are all kinds of things. It helps if we just set the expectation though, maybe at every dinner meal, or if that’s not possible, then at certain dinner meals, the expectation that we’re going to just have a slow, relaxed, undistracted, “unbusy” meal together. So, maybe mention it to your family beforehand. I would also need to give myself a pep talk, like “I’m not going to get up for this. I’m not going to worry about that. I’m just going to let it go. I’m going to prepare as much as possible beforehand.” And it’s a habit. I have to get out of the bad habit of jumping up all the time from the table, and I have to get into the good habit of relaxing and focusing on the people at the table.

So, a thing that I think helps is the atmosphere. Restaurants are good at setting the atmosphere, especially fancy restaurants. They’ll have elegant music playing. They’ll have a lovely table setting, elegant tablecloths, comfortable chairs, low lighting; anything that helps you to get into the right frame of mind.

So, maybe try lowering the lighting if possible in your dining room, or doing a  fancy table setting – though it doesn’t even have to be that fancy, just nice. Add a few more knives and forks than usual, add two glasses perhaps, or fold your napkins in an interesting or fancy way. You can look on our Youtube channel for that – Family Food for Moms’s channel. There’s a lot of napkin folding videos. Anything that improves the ambiance and the atmosphere of your mealtime is great. 

Then, speaking of making the table look beautiful, restaurants are really good at attention to detail when they’re presenting food. If you think of plating, they often use unusual plates; different shapes or colors of plates, and the way they arrange the food on the plate is always special. A simple meal can be made to look really fancy and appealing with thoughtful presentations. 

So, at home we can think about how to arrange our food beautifully without it being a huge amount more effort than usual. Some things that could help are using a garnish, having different colors and textures of food, and using whatever unusual plates you have at home, or maybe using a small bowl for a sauce or having a side plate. Layering your plates and bowls on top of each other for the meal – the dinner plate with the side plate on top, and then the soup bowl on top of that – that helps the meal go from ordinary to special. You could use a food ring or even a cookie cutter circle to arrange your rice or your mashed potatoes. You put it inside the ring, and then you lift the ring off, and it’s left behind on the plate in a circular shape. 

Sprinkling on some fresh herbs afterwards helps to make it fancier. You can put an edible flour on your plate. You can do a sauce or a puree that you put on the plate before the meat – smear it on with a spoon or something, and then carefully place the protein on top. All of these things are fun to play around with, and they really help make it special. 

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Also, restaurants are really good at clearing the dirty plates often. In fact, sometimes it’s too often when you’re trying to have a conversation. But it’s a good strategy to get rid of the dirty plates regularly. You could have one or two of your kids just clear the things that are dirty as they’re used. You don’t have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, just stack them, and then later you can have a relaxed time of cleaning up while you chat. It’s good to get those dirty dishes away, and then to stay at the table, and play a game or have a conversation or anything in between courses. 

Restaurants can also teach us about breaking up meals into courses. There would be appetizers, mains, and desserts. Breaking up your meal into courses really helps you to relax and take your time with the meal. What you can do is just take the vegetable part of the meal, and have that first on a little side plate, and then perhaps the protein and sauce, and then a little dessert. This spreads out the meal so that you can have good conversation in between. It reminds you that you’re not in a hurry. It’s easier to plate things in an elegant way, and it gives you more time to prepare each part of the meal. So, having courses doesn’t have to be a huge amount more effort, but it can just be breaking up your meal into courses. 

Then restaurants often have fresh vegetables, fresh meat, and local ingredients that they’ve sourced, and it really helps to maximize flavor and nutrition. The dishes taste fresher, and this keeps your cooking varied throughout the year. So, if there are any markets that you can go to, do that, or just try to eat your vegetables in season. 

It’s good to just have fresh ingredients on your plate, whether it’s a garnish, or whether it’s some salady things that you either have as an appetizer or on the side. Those are really helpful. 

Then sauces, I think, really elevate dishes. Restaurants are really good at having sauces, whether it’s a meat sauce that’s made to put over the steak, a cheese sauce, or a mushroom sauce, or one of the fancy French sauces. There’s also salad dressings – anything that can enhance the protein that you’re having, or can even perhaps be put over the vegetables, or you can have lemon butter sauce on fish.

Then, instead of serving it on the food, you can put an elegant little dish to the side with the sauce in, or as I said before, you can put the sauce on the plate in an elegant way and then place the protein on top. So, all of those things add to the elegance of the meal, and of course they’re delicious, and hopefully add some nutrition too. If you’re doing a roast, and you make gravy from the broth that you had in the crock pot, that really adds to the nutrition of the meal. 

Restaurants also teach us about the importance of seasoning correctly, and then balancing tastes. We need to make sure we have enough salt, and perhaps use herbs, spices, salt, and acidic mediums like lemon juice to enhance our dishes. It’s important when we’re cooking to taste as we go, and then not be afraid to adjust the seasoning at the end. For example, when you’re making a simple meal like bolognese with pasta, you want to make sure your bolognese is well seasoned and tastes good. You want to make that even your pasta is well seasoned, perhaps with a bit of salt and olive oil or some parmesan, because if the parts taste good separately, they’ll taste good together. 

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Salt brings out the flavors, as does lemon, or something like apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar. Fresh herbs will bring out flavors, and learning about what herbs complement the flavors of certain vegetables is also so helpful. For instance, basil leaves or basil pesto go great with tomatoes. 

Chefs are so good at balancing dishes, so that there’s the richness, the lightness, the bitter sweet flavors, the sour, the salty, and they bring those all together in the best way. This is not so easy at home without experience, but I think as you practice and try things, you can come up with some really cool recipes. For example, if you’ve got a rich cream sauce, adding a tiny bit of vinegar might help, or a bit of lemon juice. Fresh parsley adds a great flavor to soup. A little bit of chili powder enhances a lamb stew. These are things you can get from recipes and tips that go with recipes, and just from your own experimenting and experience.

This next point goes along with the first point, and it’s about mindful eating. In many fancy restaurants, especially those with chef’s tasting menus, the focus is on savoring each bite, and really appreciating the craftsmanship behind each dish. So, while you’re eating, and you can teach your family this too, think about what the flavor is like, enjoy the textures, the balances of flavor, look at the colors of the food, and appreciate those. Just enjoy the way it looks and the way it tastes. This will really enhance your enjoyment of the meal. 

Restaurants also teach us about experimentation and being creative with our food. Some restaurants really go far with their creativity. There’s a restaurant where the chef creates the dessert on the table by first putting down a cloth specifically for this, and then throwing pieces of chocolate or breaking a container of chocolate over the table, and then they drizzle different melted chocolate and other dessert sauces, and they make a really artistic picture with a dessert. 

We don’t have to go that far, though. I know sometimes people like to do a clam and corn dinner, or a pasta and bolognese dinner where they put all the food on the table on a plastic cloth. They create the meal down the middle of the table by laying down the spaghetti, then laying down the meatballs, and then spooning the sauce on top, and everybody takes some of that for their own meal. I’ve never done that, but there’s no limit to your creativity when you’re cooking. So, try new things, try new flavor combinations, try new ingredients that you haven’t used before, different recipes, and see what you can come up with. 

Another thing I think restaurants are really good at, because they have to be, is the assembly line of the food.

So, there’ll be the chef and the sous chef, and then they have a whole system for plating the food and they do it exactly the same way every time. They’ve pre-cooked or pre-chopped pieces of what they’ll need, and then the chef will cook the main protein. The sauce gets added, and everything is assembled in the planned way at the front before it’s sent out. I like that – taking control of a dish, and deciding “These are the parts of it that we’re going to use on the plate,” and then deciding who’s going to do what, and what’s going to be pre-prepared, and then just setting it up and making that dish a little more fancy. 

Preparing part of the meal in advance is really helpful, whether it’s the vegetables, the sauce, or some part of the meal that’s pre-chopped so that when you want to cook it at the time, it’s much faster.

So, all these things really help to make our meal elegant, to make it tasty, and to make it enjoyable and relaxed, and that’s the goal. It’s not to make it more difficult, more complicated, or to take more time, but it’s to make it more enjoyable and more relaxed. You can do this by planning more, having an idea in your mind what you want to achieve, and then getting your kids and your family to help you so that you can all enjoy it together.

Maybe start with one meal that you set up specifically to be a restaurant style meal where it’s a bit more elegant, and there’s a bit more thought going into the plating of the food, et cetera. Then, if you enjoy that, you can see what takeaways you can apply to your other meals. So, have fun, and don’t put pressure on yourself, but enjoy the process.

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time.