“Menus Lie”2

Restaurants sometime irritates me. Sometimes just because of the way the waiters act. They sometimes tend to get too noisy and loud. But the things that I don’t understand the most is the real dishes looking different from the way they are shown on the menu.
I was just reading some blogs on the alltops.com site, and the blog that talked about the food looking different with the picture in the menu really grabbed my attention. I was often annoyed an irritated by foods looking different from the way it was shown on the menus and advertisements.

How displeased and disappointed would the guests be, if the food they chose from the menu looked like something totally different from the one they saw in the menu? They must have chosen it because of the ingredients and partially the looks. When I ordered fried rice with eggs on it at a certain restaurant, I chose it by looking at the menu. When I got the real food, thes difference gave me such a shock. The egg was two times smaller and there were shrimps that were a size of half of my pinky. On the picture the shrimp surely was about the size of my whole thumb. I was surprised and upset at the cheap restaurant. It felt as if I was cheated on. It’s like lying to your customers.

The importance in the looks is more important than any other things. The cooks and managers have to have some sense in art and style. In order to attract people to your food and restaurant, the design and looks of the foods would very much have a role. It would obviously prove that your restaurant is humble if the food looks like a smashed cake. Sometimes restaurants make models of food they serve that looks too different from the ones they actually bring you to eat. How would this make the costumers feel? According to my experience, it really pisses you off.

It really is not a good way to bring in customers because it would only be disappointing. Bad looking foods would give your cooks and the restaurant and bad reputation. This would only lead to less people coming to the restaurants.

What Skype Makes Possible

I’ve been contacting the management at a famous Korean restaurant- Sun@food, the same way Kevin and I have been contacting numerous other people for interviews. And this was the first time since Mr. Burell set us up with Scott Schiwster that a person has actually answered - and not an auto-reply mind you.

Jay Lee, the Team Leader of the International Development Team at Sun@food was actually interested in what went on in our PLN class and offered to contact us in person once he got back from his business trip in South Asia, or if we needed an interview ASAP, he could have a person back at his office contact us with more information and set us up an interview with someone else at Sun@food.

So far so good.

I sent him a reply with some more information about our class and most importantly, what our group is doing with our project web-based learning. But then it hit me. This was the chance to actually use Skype, a great tool that Mr.Burell has been trying to get us to use for our projects. But when I suggested this to Jay, he didn’t really know much about Skype. But somehow we managed to set up a time. Unfortunately, I think the time difference messed things up a bit, and by the time we were both on, Jay had to leave for a business meeting and had to log off.

Athough this wasn’t a great success, I was both surprised and proud that a leader of the international development team, who didn’t even know about Skype, took the time and hassle of downloading Skype and going through the trouble of logging on waiting. Though we weren’t able to get any substantial interview done, we set up a time for when he came back to Korea. But most importantly, I think is the fact that we got encouragement from realizing that there actually ARE people out there who are willing to help out.

Menus Lie

Menus Lie
I’m sometimes irritated a lot from restaurants. Sometimes just because of the way the waiters act. Sometimes because it is too noisy or crowded but, the things that I don’t understand the most is the real dishes looking different from the way they are shown on the menu.
I was just reading some blogs on the alltops.com site, and the blog that talked about the food looking different with the picture in the menu really grabbed my attention. I was often annoyed an irritated by foods looking different from the way it was shown on the menus and advertisements.
How displeased and disappointed would the guests be, if the food they chose from the menu looked a lot different from what they expected? They must have chosen it because of the ingredients and partially the looks. When I ordered fried rice with eggs on it at a certain restaurant, I chose it by looking at the menu. When I got the real food, I was shocked by how much it was different. Thee egg was two times smaller and there were shrimps that were a size of half of my pinky. On the picture the shrimp surely is about the size of my whole thumb. I was surprised and upset at the cheap restaurant. It felt as if I was cheated on. It’s like lying to your costumers.
The looks of the food are actually very important. The cooks and managers have to have some sense in art and style. In order to attract people to your food and restaurant, the design and looks of the foods would very much have a role. It would obviously prove that your restaurant is humble if the food looks like a chunk of mixed crap. Sometimes restaurants make models of food they serve that looks too different from the ones they actually bring you to eat. How would this make the costumers feel??? I’ve already explained it and it really pissed you off.
It really is not a good way to bring in costumers because it would only be disappointing. This would only lead to less people coming to the restaurants.

http://diningservices.tamu.edu/images/menu.gif

Interviewing a Pro: Bar design

Dad/Architect interview
Q: Questions
A: Answers

Interviewer: Today i will be interviewing an architect who is also my dad. I am very glad that i could interview and ask questions about bar/restaurant designing to a professional architect.

Architect: I am also glad to be getting interviewed by a group of students, I hope I could be a help.

Interviewer: First i would start with a very basic but needing question

Q: What is the most important trait in designing a bar or restaurant.

A: First one of the most important thing about designing a restaurant is the location. The location has to be in a place where people would easily be able to come. Also an area where it makes the restaurant or bar stand out. (view)(location of main entrance)

Interviewer: Hmm, I really never thought about the location of the entrance, I did think about the affect the view might have, but not entrance.

Also the view from the restaurant is very important. The costumers would have a better time if they would be able to watch a good view of the outside while enjoying their meal. And adding to the view, the entrance of the restaurant is also very important. They entrance should be made in a way people could get in as easy and comfortable as possible. The costumers should face the least inconvenience as possible.
Also the location depends on which part of the city or area the restaurant is built in. The customers and audience is very important. It would be much wise and more profitable to build a luxurious restaurant in a rich and wealthy town.
Q: Very accurate and reliable answer, now the next question is how do you think about the interior designing about a restaurant?

A: The type, taste of food has to have a relationship with the interior design. The back ground, walls, and furniture have to relate with the food’s taste.

Also, to design a restaurant, the layout of the design is important, such as, the layout of the sittings of the chair. You have to choose from four seating table, stand bar type. Also the amount of area, square meter used to build the kitchen, eating area, and the service area.
Mostly kitchen will take over 1/3 of the total size.

Interviewer: I did not think the portion of the kitchen and service area was that important, but by listening to an architect’s view of bars/restaurant it must be one of the most important traits.

Q: What do you think about the theme, and concept of the restaurant?

A: The theme is very important. The theme has to all match one theme. The utensils, the furniture, the design of the menu. The dressing of the waiters and waitress are very important, if the restaurant or bar has a specific theme.

Interviewer: Well, these are all the questions we had for today, I think that i got much more than i expected and asked for. Thank you very much.

A: Your welcome, I am glad that i was able to help.

“Nocturnal”

I just had an idea about making a creative and unique bar or restaurant. I started out just thinking about the next topic I could write about for my group blog. And I thought about the interview with my dad. He said that the view and the look of the restaurant was very important, either from the inside or the outside.
I thought that night lighting and the night decoration would really change how a restaurant or a bar might look. Having decorative and really bright lights at night for your restaurant would make the place look much better and attractive. Just turning on a switch that makes your building look like a glass castle. It might turn your restaurant into some place else just by the effect the light does to the building.
But, lets say the building or the restaurant is really bad and old. The tiles and walls are breaking down and falling apart. What if at night the building is light up and it changes the whole place. It could make an old and ugly looking restaurant into a bright castle. The effect of the lighting would be able to make your restaurant into two different places.
But before you put up all the bulbs, the shape and design of the building itself is important. The design of the restaurant would be like he outline of the image you get after the lights are installed.
To have more people that are attracted and amazed by the restaurants unique and artistic night lighting would be a new way to bring in costumers. Just for the idea of being unique and interesting, having a very special lighting style for the restaurant would be very attractive and helpful. For example decorating the building with bright white lamps and bulb until it looks like the castle in the movie Cinderella. At the day it would look like a normal plane building, but at night the place would be a shining and magical castle. But like I’ve said in order to make this work, the original design of the restaurant in very important.
Just being able to decorate the building with lights and bulbs in a very stylish way would make the restaurant stand our much more, in the dark. The restaurant might become really famous just for its beauty at night. The lighting would bring in more customers at night. The restaurant might be high lighted as the castle at night. Your restaurant would be more lively at night.

Night View of restaurants

I just had an idea about making a creative and unique bar or restaurant. I think that night lighting and the night decoration is very important. I think having decorative lights at night for your restaurant would make the place look much better and attractive. To have more people that are attracted and amazed by the restaurants unique and artistic night lighting would be a new way to bring in costumers. I think that just for the idea of being unique and interesting, having a very special lighting style for the restaurant would be very attractive and helpful. Just being able to decorate the building with lights and bulbs in a very stylish way would make the restaurant stand our much more, in the dark.

Taste of Reality

    Reflecting upon what we’ve achieved so far with our project, I have to admit that I haven’t really had faith in our idea of creating a project around the idea restaurants and bar design. The four of us(Stephanie, Jihyung, and Kevin) came together with a common interest in bar and restaurant designing. Though we didn’t exactly have a grip where this idea would go, we decided to plow on with a topic that we were interested in working on for the rest of the year, and maybe even developing beyond that after graduating. We were all intrigued with the idea that we were actually going to be able to integrate our leisure interests into something worth developing a school project around.

I have always been fascinated with architecture, and had my eye set on the goal through my years of education up till now, but a single year in high school during which my grades in math class suddenly plummeted, carried away my dreams with it. Having ruined my chances of getting into a prestigious architect school, I turned my interests elsewhere. But now, it felt like I had another chance. Not in pursuing an education and life career through architecture, but a project based self-learning that I could develop in my leisure. So we set out to focus on the interior and exterior design of bars and restaurants.

All fascinated with designing bars and restaurants, all we could think of off the top of our heads was actually designing bars and restaurants ourselves. But we were stopped short by our teachers guidance. He paused us in the midst of our excitement and gave us crude feedback on our project idea. What we had failed to realize was that no one in the world would be interested in reading and learning about what a couple of high schoolers were designing. The people that we had been hoping to reach out and target had been actual bar owners and designers, and hopefully learn from interacting with them through web2.0. But putting myself in the shoes of a prestigious bar owner/designer, I though, ‘why would they want to take our advice when they already have a great bar/restaurant up and running?’, especially when we’re so green in the field of design, business, and management.

So we took a step back and wracked our brains what we could do to achieve what we all wanted. The solution we came up with was to start our own blog and develop our project, but start small and research and learn about the other millions of bars/restaurants in the world, and then when we had substantial ground to work on, we would start designing our own bars/restaurants. With this idea in mind, we started to contact people through twitter and skype and set up interviews with bar owners, and receiving information about people’s favorite bars and restaurants. I can’t say all of our attempts were successful, but many people answered to our requests and we’ve been able to begin our project. Many people graciously turned down our requests, or even simply ignored, but we remain undaunted and will hopefully lean from our mistakes during the course of this developing our Bar and Restaurant review blog, and eventually even design our own. Who knows? Maybe someone will decide to promote us in the near future (:

Photos by Always 

Perspective: My visit to OBLADI

Obladi. So this is the Indian theme bar/cafe place in Korea that I personally love, and was planning on working on this weekend. As excited as I was, taking a trip to Obladi with my friends over the weekend, I’m sorry to say that my visit wasn’t exactly a huge success.Last time I went to Obladi, I asked the waiter for the owner’s number, received a few baffled expressions and comments from the waiters in response, and took a few pictures. But when I tried the number that a waiter gave to me, an operator answered and said that she was sorry to inform me that the number was no longer in use. So this week, I went, asked again, got the same answer, gave up, and separated myself from my friends and the hookah for a while and went to the bar where the bartender was mulling around, seemingly bored.

So I sat myself in front of him and cleared my throat to get ready to shoot questions for my interview. We started talking and to my bemusement, this youngman knew almost nothing about the place he worked in, and was more intent on sharing the details of his social life with me. But I did get one interesting fact about this Indian hookah cafe/bar. Their name Obladi, originated from the Beatles song, “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”, which translates into “Life goes on”. (Come to think of it, they did play “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” quite a few times every time I’ve been there.) I’ve always wondered about the queer nature of the name of the place, so I guess I can’t say my interview was entirely a waste of time, but can’t really say that this interview was what I had hoped for.

But Obladi still remains my favorite bar in Korea. This cafe/bar is a great place to go with friends, sit around with a few cocktail drinks and hookah in almost 20 fruit flavors, and lie around on the heated wooden floor, listening to tranquil music.

Even though my interview didn’t go as I had planned, I still gained a bit more perspective and an idea of what to expect next time I go to bars and try to interview people.

First Avenue: the birth place of Purple Rain

Through a Skype chat with Scott Schwister we were able to take a look into the grounds of what makes a bar “work” by asking him to introduce us to his favorite bar. First Avenue is a prominent bar in Minneapolis. It’s

“a gritty place full of stories and history. It’s the antithesis of glossy, but it does have its own kind of legendary glamor.”

says Scott. First Avenue was a turning point in our project. Before talking to Scott, we naively thought that what makes a bar famous is the fancy exterior and the sheek interior. But after taking a look into First Avenue through it’s web site and pictures Scott provided us with, we were taken aback This bar was none like the ones we had pictured in our minds eye.

First Avenue was the setting of the famous movie Purple Rain, starring Prince. We realized that it’s not so much the design as the location.

“First Avenue is a music club committed to fostering the arts, music and entertainment excellence.”

And here’s a documentary about the music history surrounding First Avenue.

Visit First Avenue at http://www.first-avenue.com

701 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55403-1327

Info:	612-332-1775 (anytime)
Office:	612-338-8388 (10am - 6pm, Monday - Friday)

TAJ Tandoor

If you happen to be in Adelaide, South Australia, check out TAJ Tandoor!!

TAJ Tandoor is one of South Australia’s most popular Indian restaurants. It has been serving delicious Indian foods for the customers at the exact same spot for 20 long years. It’s best known for its luxurious dining (cocktail parties, wedding receptions, birthdays, conferences or any other gatherings) space where 60 people can be catered at once. Its cozy and stylish interior design provides great comfort for all the customers.

The owner and head chef - Pammi Sandhu is the man who made it all happened. With qualifications as a five-star hotel’s executive chef, Sandhu has been adding his own touches to every meals that he serves.

It’s located in the centre of the city at Rundle Street with convenient public transportation system nearby. Thus all the tourists visiting Adelaide will be able to stop by TAJ Tandoor without worrying about transportation.

Address

290 Rundle Street

Adelaide SA 5000

Australia

(call) +61 (0)8 8359 - 2066