Merry Christmas, Brad, I'm happy to see you here again!

For starters, I'll take a nice big tall glass of your Gram's lemonade. If I still have room, I'll order food, LOL.

Since I've already owned a restaurant, it's kind of cheating. Ours was a local neighborhood bar/grille. One of our top selling items was a sirloin for two that was about 36 ounces, came with a salad, baked potato and bread basket. Other favorites were pot roast, sliced pork roast with dressing and pan fried chicken. I made pie from scratch and it was a big seller, I was constantly getting teased because I never bought a rolling pin, I rolled the crust out with a Kessler's bottle filled with ice water, LOL. Breads were homemade too. We had a pretty good business through the week, although weekends were definitely more "bar" than "grille".

Annie

I will take one of everything! OOOOOO What flavors do you have for your lemonade? I love black cherry lemonade and Strawberry lemonade!

My restaurant would for sure be a meat and 3 southern food place. Because, first of all, I am good at cooking that type of food. And second of all, practically thinking about restaurant service, most of it can be prepared in large bulk quantities, and finished cooking to be served fresh right before service.

Meats:

Fried Chicken

Chicken Strips

Chicken Wings

Baked Chicken

Smothered Turkey Wings

Hamburger Steak w/ gravy

Meatloaf

Smothered Pork Chops

Fried Pork Chops

Grilled Pork Chops

Fried Catfish

Salmon Croquettes

Pot Roast with roasted carrots and potatoes (Sundays only)

Sides:

Mac and Cheese

Collard Greens

Cabbage

Purple Hull Peas

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

Rice and Gravy

Herbed rice pilaf

Fried Okra

Fried Green Tomatoes

Green Beans with Bacon and Onions

Fries (homemade)

Chicken dressing

Roasted Broccoli

Cole Slaw

Candied Yams

Potato Salad

Dessert:

Banana Pudding

Chocolate Banana Pudding

Caramel Cake

Peach Cobbler

Chocolate cake

Other Random menu items one must have to please people:

Cheeseburger with Fries

Grilled Chicken salad

Chef Salad

Club Sandwich with Fries

Cheese Steak Sandwich With Fries

Fried Chicken Sandwich with Fries

For drinks, for sure sweet and unsweet tea, and Pepsi products, only because my SO likes Mountain Dew and only Mountain Dew.

I would macerate some fresh fruits to flavor the beverages with (mostly berries, but would also do peaches and cherries). Flavored syrups otherwise.

I love a good burger and fries, but I also would love some baked chicken, green beans and bacon, and fried green tomatoes.

How would you fix your wings? In various sauces? I'll take a dozen mild to go with blue cheese (make that burger and fries to go, too).

I do like making fried/sauteed/braised cabbage. It's so easy to prepare and cook. I've been cooking it seperately when I make the corned beef.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Oh yes, different sauces for the wings:

Mild

Medium

Hot

Lemon Pepper (mild or hot)

Sweet and Spicy BBQ

Garlic and Parmesan (mild or hot)

"Greek"-(lemon, garlic, oregano, delicious)

Also regular, breaded wings, extra crispy.

All made with love.

amylou - tell me more about smothered turkey wings!

My restaurant would be a BBQ joint. I've learned a lot of meat smoking techniques as an amateur making BBQ on a small scale and taking a few lessons over the years.

I would offer the traditional BBQ fare.

Brisket

Ribs

Burnt ends

Pulled pork

Smoked sausage

Chicken

Salmon

fries

potato salad

cole slaw

beans with burnt ends

No deserts because after eating BBQ nobody ever has room IME.

Seagrass, they are very easy and really good. I season the turkey wings (or drumsticks, whichever i can find) with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. I dredge them in flour seasoned the same way. Sear them in some vegetable oil in my dutch oven. I remove the meat, then add onions and bell peppers to the pot and cook them until a little soft, then add some more flour to the pan with the veggies. Cook the mixture for a couple minutes just to get rid of the raw flour taste. Then return the wings or drumsticks to the pot, and add chicken stock (or turkey stock if you can get it to cover it. Cover the pot, and bake it at 325 for a little over two hours. The meat will be fall of the bone tender. The gravy should be thick and delicious, but if it needs to be reduced that it easy enough to do. I add a touch of heavy cream or half and half at the end to make it richer and more delcious. Serve with rice or mashed potatoes. Before I had a dutch oven, I would sear the wings and cook the veggies and make the sauce in a regular skillet and pour it all in to a disposable foil tin, cover it with foil and bake it in that. Works just fine but my dutch oven makes me feel fancier. Plus its more stable and makes it less anxiety inducing to put it in and take it out of the oven.

I think I’d be happy just working at one of Lars’ restaurants. Heck, I’d be the dishwasher if that’s what it took. 🤠

I've been thinking. It would be produce forward. Seasonal veg plus some year round standards. Cold and hot mixed salads, as well as small plate type single focus salads, purees, etc. House made crackers and flatbreads. Tagines, pastas, etc. Lots of spices. Meat available, but vegan friendly as well.

Amy, how much vegetable oil in the dutch oven? I'm seriously considering making these turkey wings/legs!!!!! Sounds delicious!

Not much. Just enough to cover the bottom and give a good medium for searing. In my 5 quart dutch oven, I don't know, 1/4 cup maybe? Maybe a little more? Sorry i am really really bad at giving amounts for recipes......

Thanks, "to cover the bottom" is good enough... :) I got a really cheap breast today marked down so I'm just going to try that with the breast!

EDIT TO ADD: Amy, wanted to thank you for the recipe you shared for the smothered turkey. I made this on Wednesday with that breast I got for 50 cents a lb! I just cut it into smaller pieces and followed your cooking suggestion and it was delicious! I do believe I've found a new way to eat turkey since neither of us really care for turkey cooked in the traditional way. I will look for wings or legs for a future meal.

I'm not running any restraunt, but I'll order a peach cobbler with some of that vanilla ice cream and a tall lemonade please!

Good to see you, Brad....how goes it?

Hello again, Brad!

I think that it would be awesome to run a small restaurant where you only offer two dinner specials each night. Options like a full sauerbraten dinner, or a homestyle chicken & biscuits dinner. There was a place like that near here that ran by reservations-only and they were always fully booked. There's a really cute place (Pickity Place :) in New Hampshire that does something similar, but even simpler! They pick a menu for a month! two choices, reservations only, and they serve 3 time slots a day. They have to beat people away with a stick! It's so neat there.

eta, and to be clear, in both of the above-mentioned restaurants, you need to specify your meal choice when you make reservations!

Soups! I love them and have amassed my own cookbook of at least 50 delicious soups.

I am much past the point in my life where I would consider running a restaurant, but I always thought a "just soup and stew and bread" restaurant would be a good idea. I make soup/chili/stew at least twice a week in the fall and winter and make often make bread or biscuits or cornbread or flatbread to go with it. I thought that in an industrial area, with a lot of young, hungry men, it would go over well.

I'm with LynnNM and nekotish! Soups, stews, casseroles like lasagna and chicken pot pie!! I would have to learn how to bake sourdough bread, however! A coronavirus skill I didn't learn!

Mine would specialize in breakfast. All kinds of toast with gourmet jams, waffles, omelettes, french toast, different muffins each week, etc. Great coffee. Different international specials each week like congee and a meze platter, huevos rancheros, matzohbrei, or a fry up. If I served lunch, it would be soup and sandwich. You could also get just a baked good and coffee, like scones or cinnamon rolls. Sunday champagne brunch buffet with music.

The other option would be a tea house, with both a simple cream tea, and a low tea, with all the fixins. White linen tablecloths, bone china cups, and wing back chairs.

There are a few great breakfast restaurants I've been to, but none near me anymore, sadly, so I am skeptical of the economics. I have only seen one tea house in MI in all my years, and it is no longer there. I know there may be one or two around but again, not near me.

I would do greek. My favourites to make are:

Tarama with pita

Rice with peppers, shrimp and feta. A long time fave.

Moussaka, with lamb

Pastitsio with lamb

Spanakopita, I make a pie and serve slices.

Usually lamb chops or souvlaki

These are the ones I like to make and have had success with. There are lots more I’d need to try..

Mine would be a a bit like a tea room and serve only soups, salads, sandwiches, desserts and drinks. I would just be open from 11am till 2 or 3pm.

I thought tea time was 4 PM.

In England, Afternoon Tea (the one with cake) is traditionally at 4pm, while ”High Tea” (high = late, high tea is the one with meat) is equivalent to basic American ”dinner” and is served on getting home from work, about 6pm. American Afternoon Tea is more likely to be around 3pm. Restaurants (mostly British or Continental themed or in hotels) in the USA will often have their Afternoon tea menus available from before noon (standard lunch time) until late afternoon, but usually only on the weekend. This is about accomodating guests (i.e., making money). Some hotels have tea at exactly 3pm daily for business guests who don't like bars. This is a time when their dining rooms are empty, tea requires little of the kitchens, and it leaves them plenty of time to reset for dinner service. Some hotels also have tea service in the lobby, but more likely with a few cookies than all the cakes, finger sandwiches, cream and jam. That is, not much to look, or actually be, messy. I had a dear friend who loved Tea, so I've been exposed to the gamut. It's not really my thing, but I'd happily attend daily if she were still with us. She'd have loved Lizbeth's tea room (there actually was just such a place here, run by a couple of British expats, where we went often).

Yes, Americans muddle high and low/afternoon tea, which is why I would muddle low tea with lunch or even breakfast, rather than the more elaborate dinner . . . I just love the idea of a platter of one type or other coming to the table like those tiers of small bites in an afternoon tea menu. There was a wonderful restaurant in a nearby city (casualty of the pandemic) that offered fondue as one of its specialties. It was so fun to get your own little personal fondue pot and all those fun choices of things to dip in it. Sort of like ye olde "pu pu platter" at some other places, or tapas. I just happen to like the food that goes with tea . . .

And Greek. Oh yes, I love Greek and it is a rare treat in my region as well. There was one restaurant in Saugatuck but it closed. Few restaurants even offer Greek entrees. Even ones run by Greeks!! I cook pretty good Mediterranean cuisine but I wouldn't trust myself to run a restaurant on those skills. We had a wonderful tapas place, that I mentioned as also having a Sunday brunch buffet. It closed.

Nothing nice stays open in my area. But if you want mediocre pizza and wings, they abound. Dairy Queen drive through is the busiest place in town. And pot shops. I tried to go to my local laundromat yesterday (our dyer is broken) and found it empty/gone out of business. But there were four pot shops being about the only thing left open in the whole strip mall complex. A total of eleven pot shops within a mile of each other on my end of town, mixed among the mart marts and fast food joints. Get high, eat junk food and buy cheap carp made in China seems to be the message my town is sending out. Hard to imagine any type of nice restaurant succeeding which is why this is hard for me to play. We do have a nice coffee shop recently opened that has a pretty good lunch menu and baked goods selection. Nothing special, but pretty good. We'll see how long it lasts. Two almost identical places like it have closed in the past ten years.

Heck we can't even support a bakery. Several folks have tried and failed, on gal manages to keep a food truck bakery going . . . this problem with upkeep and rents for storefronts is killing my small town. I have a friend who owns commercial property in a nearby small town. He rents "at cost" just to keep the places from suffering being empty. But he doesn't make any money anymore. He talks to all kinds of entrepreneurs who just can't pay the exorbitant rents . . . I imagine this is an issue with restaurants too. One landlord in our small town is the same, she rents "at cost" just to try and keep the business district from totally going under . . . and still it is almost dead . . .

I had afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC at 4 PM, and I was not impressed. They used silver teapots instead of porcelain, and so the tea got cold quickly and did not taste as good.

In "Nasty Habits," Mick Jagger sings about his nasty habit of taking tea at three, and so I always thought that that was considered uncouth. Personally, I only drink tea in the morning and never in the afternoon, but in a colder climate (such as England or BC), I could see drinking it in the afternoon.

I went to a tea shop in Hollywood in 1989 and had tea with a scone in the afternoon. I used to drink afternoon tea at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, if I happened to be in the park, when I lived in San Francisco, another cold climate.