Photo Credit: Bryan Thomas

Michelin made an early release of their 2017 restaurant rankings for New York yesterday. The top six remain the same with Chef’s Table at Brooklyn fare, Eleven Madison Park, Jean-Georges, La Bernardin, Masa, and Per Se. An addition of Aska in Williamsburg, Brooklyn has been made to the list. Unfortunately, with the addition of several newly ranked restaurants, some must be taken off. Brushstroke and Bouey, M.Wells Steakhouse, Pok Pok NY, Somtum Der, Spotted Pig, and Sushi Azabu are a handful that have lost their one-star rating. Be sure to pick up your Michelin guide this week when it goes on sale. Read more here.

Vietnamese noodle soup, which is known as pho, is a traditional dish of Vietnam. It includes noodles made from rice, beef or chicken, and is often served with fresh mint, basil, lime, and bean sprouts. Consumer can also order raw beef fillet with their soup. Pho is usually eaten at lunch or dinner. Northern and Southern of vietnamese noodle soup flavor is different. In the north, people use wider noodles and more onion. Southern vietnamese tend to use slimmer noodles and soup tastes more sweet. In recent years, the Pho becomes more and more popular in America, usually a bowl of noodles cost $5-$7.

If you want to know best places to have Pho, please click here.

Today, operation of a restaurant business two things must be coherent, one is food and another one is service, these two things are inextricably interrelated. In the past, delicious food probably is good enough to attract customers to enter a restaurant to spend their money. But now, if the restaurant only has delicious food but bad service, which would not take customers’ attention anymore. In a restaurant, excellent communication and customer care skills are universal attributes of the outstanding practitioner. Food service personal will work as part of a team and with other teams in the restaurant. So in order to increase profitability of a restaurant, the owner and practitioner should give emphasize on up selling and customers attraction and satisfaction. There should not be any gap between customers’ expectations and delivered service and food. Specially, for all restaurant practitioners need to know, food is not only key factor to impact profit of operation restaurant business, the diversity of skills associated with restaurant service is therefore likely to keep expanding.

Please click here, if you need more informations.

Sugarfish opened this month on East 20^th St. in the Flatiron District. The wildly popular business from the West Coast has imported their particular brand of sushi and sashimi to Manhattan. Offering a service fee included, multiple option prix fixe option for Manhattan lunchers, Sugarfish is already making noise in food circles. This week people were observed lining up as early as 11:30 for a chance to eat at the restaurant. Last Friday, an over 4 hour wait was quote for guests seeking to dine in the restaurant. The combination of relatively cheap prices and good quality fish seem to be driving the desire to eat at Sugarfish. Only time will tell for how long the hype lasts.
You can read more about Sugarfish here.

Shake Shack released quarterly earnings on Wednesday. The company’s $3.8 million net income represents a 153 percent increase from last year’s 1.5 million. Likewise, revenue increased from $53 million in 2015 to almost $75 million. Shake Shack currently operates 105 locations worldwide, and plans to open 19 new domestic stores this year. 3 new international locations are also possibly in the works.

You can read more about this here.

Photo Credit: Eric Ray Davidson

The genius behind Balthazar has done it again. Restauranteur, Keith McNally has just opened his 14th restaurant in the Beekman Thompson Hotel in Lower Manhattan – Augustine. However, as Keith sits down and talks with the New York Times, he is blatantly honest about the reality of opening up another restaurant. McNally opened his first restaurant, Oden in 1980; a time where restaurants were run very differently. McNally talks about the difference between health and safety laws back in the eighties compared to today. The laws being much more lax in the 1980’s. He also touches on the ever rising rent costs in New York City. He quotes, “During my first 30 years as a restaurateur, I expected to pay around 7 percent of my income on rent. Today, it’s at least 14 percent.” McNally gets real about his dislike for many aspects of the business – the rent, the bureaucracy, and over criticism – yet he can’t seem to stay away. See his full story here.