food + drink – Page 2 – Leslie LaskinReese Design

food + drink

tires, runways and cutting edge food

in food + drink, innovation + inspiration

Confession: I watch Project Runway. And I spend a huge percentage of our income on food. I did not grow up this way.

My parents took us out to eat occasionally. A typical night out was Denny’s or Bob’s Big Boy. And a really nice night out was the local family run Italian joint, Paesano’s, in what was then the outskirts of Cupertino. Apple computer was run out of a garage and I spent my summers in the apricot orchard down the street. The Michelin Man* was the funny looking cartoon character that sold tires. And my clothes came from Mervyn’s.

Then I went to design school and began working in restaurants to pay the bills…the beginning of both my aesthetic and culinary education. I soon left the South Bay in search of better aesthetics and better food. Now I only return under duress, or when someone in my husband’s family has a birthday.

Cutting Edge Creativity

Recently, as much as I shun reality TV (aside from the PBS cooking shows which don’t count), my daughter hooked me on Project Runway. And I realize that the reason I enjoy it is the same reason that I enjoy the occasional night out in a really nice restaurant: it’s the cutting edge creativity. Food is food, and clothes are clothes. The raw materials don’t change all that much. But when a true craftsperson works magic with those raw materials, they feed my creative soul. when a true craftsperson works magic with raw materials, they feed my creative soul Click To Tweet

Cutting Edge Food

As a working creative, stoking my fire is a necessity (that’s what I tell Steve when I’m trying to sell an expensive night out), so lists of really good restaurants psyche me. And Michelin just released their 2016 guide. Manresa earned three stars, which means a trip down to the South Bay for something other than a family celebration, right? And after reading up on David Kinch, I’m kicking myself for waiting this long. I’m guessing a reservation is a few months out so I have time to check out his cookbook and maybe even catch a few episodes of the PBS series The Mind of a Chef featuring Chef Kinch. So much to do!

Living on the Edge

And while I’m making plans to feed my creative soul, I’ll work on convincing Steve that we should start ticking off all of the Michelin one star restaurants. I don’t think once a month, okay once every two months, is completely unreasonable. I’ll keep you posted…

Keep in touch
Leslie

*About the Michelin Man….I finally took the time to research why the tire guy and the fancy restaurant guidebook have the same name. It seems the Michelin brothers who sold tires in the late 1800s in France decided to put together a guidebook for those few people who owned cars. It gave those early adopters ideas about places to drive so that they could wear out their tires, thus building business for the Michelin family. Who knew? Brilliant business men.

riding bikes for farms

in food + drink

that’s me and my trainer….don’t worry, I’m better at riding than I am at selfies

I’m riding my bike to save farms in Marin. Well kinda. I’m actually riding my bike to see if I can ride 40 miles in a go. My trainer (and hubby) thinks I can do it. And whether I’m successful or not (I will be), my ride fee goes to an amazing cause…it goes to save and protect family farms in Marin. You know, the farms where we get our local eggs, cheese, fruits, veggies and meat. Those farms.

Donate to MALT, support my ride. Let’s keep it local!

Marin is home to many family owned farms, a tradition that dates back 150 years. In the middle of the last century, developers came a callin’, looking at the beautiful land of west Marin and dreaming of big towns and huge profits….for them. That’s when MALT, Marin Agricultural Land Trust, was born. MALT supports family farms by purchasing agricultural conservation easements that disallow the use of farmland for anything but agriculture.

A MALT agricultural conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between MALT and a landowner. MALT easements prohibit non-agricultural residential and commercial development, subdivision, and other uses or practices that are detrimental to sustainable agriculture. MALT easements are perpetual: they remain in effect on the land regardless of change in ownership.

By restricting certain uses, the easement lowers the value of the land. MALT purchases easements from landowners to compensate for the loss of value. Once the sale of an easement is final, MALT extinguishes the development rights on the protected farmland. We do not sell or transfer development rights to another area of the county. The land remains in private ownership and on the tax rolls.

I’m riding nearly every day, getting ready for 40 miles and 1400 feet. So far so good….today’s ride was 35 miles and 1900 feet. I think I’ve got this! I’ll ride, now you write.

Donate to MALT, support my ride.

Keep in touch….keep it real….keep it local,
Leslie

can you hear me now?

in art + architecture + design, food + drink

noise vs sound

NOISE: that would be the down side of sound. Restaurants generate an inordinate amount of it….kitchen pots, dishwashers, bus tubs, clinking silverware, conversation, ringing phones, music, etc. In restaurants some sound is sound and some sound is noise and all of it is part of the acoustics of your restaurant. Acoustics is one of the invisible design elements that many restaurateurs ignore until they start getting complaints. STOP IT! Ignoring the acoustics of your restaurant until after you open is more expensive than addressing acoustics during the design process. In both dollars and lost customers. And as we, your customers, continue to age, we get more and more sensitive to noise.

#2 customer complaint? noise!

This year’s Zagat survey puts noise as the #2 complaint of restaurant goers (service was #1….and we’ve already talked about that). I’ve gotta agree. Hubby and I ate at a local restaurant a couple of weeks ago, one that we really enjoy most of the time, and nearly had to walk out. It was early and the restaurant wasn’t very crowded. So the large table of women at the front of the restaurant, who were apparently having a very good time, were painfully audible. Their shrill laughter bounced off the brick walls, ricocheted off the very high plaster ceiling, and reverberated with deafening clarity in our eardrums. The server kept apologizing, or at least that’s what it looked like she was doing since we couldn’t actually hear her. Once the dining room filled with more diners, the sound level evened out and, while this table of women didn’t quiet, the ambient sound of the room backfilled the sound of their laughter. Those in the world of acoustics call this masking.

don’t wait till noise is a problem

So, would you have known that what was needed was more sound to ease our pain? Guessing probably not. One restaurateur had the good sense to realize that what he knows is food and service, and he hired the experts to deal with noise BEFORE he opened his restaurant. During the design process John Paluska, of Berkeley’s Comal, hired engineers to create a system to dampen, move and adjust the sound of his restaurant. While this is a very sophisticated system and may not be necessary in your restaurant, you do still need to address your room’s acoustics. That is if you want me, or anyone like me, to eat there more than once.

Back to our local eatery, as a designer I would recommend the owner hire an acoustical engineer to work with a designer (yes, me) to create something to ease the acoustical pain. If even that is too big an order, then at the very least hire a designer who has done restaurant work (again, me) to at the very least put some bandaids on the pain. We can add acoustical panels and sound absorbing materials to dampen and separate some of the sound. And do it soon….because you have some of the most delicious green chile stew I’ve ever had!

good acoustics is part of good design

When you open your next restaurant, be a hero. Hire whoever you need to get your acoustics right…this may be an invisible design element, but your customers care about their auditory comfort. They may not compliment you on your acoustical brilliance, but they’ll certainly complain if you ignore their ears. And we all hate whiny customers, right?

Keep in touch,
Leslie

ps….you can totally ignore my blatant self promotion, but please don’t ignore my message. You are an amazing restaurateur, hire someone with amazing acoustical chops to deal with the sound of your restaurant.

design isn’t pretty…sometimes it’s angry

in food + drink, interior design biz, telling your story

Every so often I become the angry designer. Especially when I hear things like ‘I know what I want it to look like….I can design it myself’. Or ‘it doesn’t need to be pretty, it just needs to be good’. One local restaurateur, whose restaurants I no longer frequent, had the incredible lack of class to tell me that all west coast designers are unimaginative and their restaurant designs all look the same. And he and I have never worked together, so I know first hand that he hasn’t experienced ‘all west coast designers’. Beside which what we do is only minimally about what it looks like. Can you hear me growling?

Steve Jobs said it best.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

You don’t need me, or someone like me, to make your restaurant pretty or your website flashy. You don’t need us to use the ‘in’ colors or the latest coolest fonts. You don’t need us to tell you how to be hip and trendy and current.

Design Solves Problems

You need a designer to help you create business solutions so that your business can fly. You need us to have the knowledge to put all of the pieces of your business puzzle together and tell your business story, allowing you to do what you do best: run your amazing business!

Designers know that if you are designing a restaurant you need to consider equipment, acoustics, lighting, style of service, furnishings, ventilation, codes, budget and so much more. We bring expertise in all of these areas and we have relationships with the people who will do much of this work….we don’t just show up at the end and make it pretty!

And designers know that if you are designing a website you need to consider hosts and domains and content management systems and landing pages, CTAs and KPIs and CSS. This knowledge is what we bring. And if we’re talking about a designer who also creates content (like yours truly), we also bring an innate ability to listen and synthesize and build the story of your business. We don’t just make your site flashy!

You don't need me to make it pretty. You need me to make it work. #partinotes Click To Tweet

You Can Do It Yourself

But if you do, understand what you are taking on. Your business needs to work well and look good. So when you are done, and you need to hire a designer to fix what isn’t working, please have the courtesy to treat us with respect. We studied for years before we took our first jobs, and the knowledge that we have amassed to help you build your business was hard won. So next time you are in conversation with a designer, please don’t mention pretty. We are so much more than that.

wait….cats and coffee?

in food + drink, my sf

I was planning to tell you something about the psychology of color today, then I got another email in my box about yet another cat cafe. So I’m forsaking science for frivolity for the moment.

Purrington’s, Portland

Cat Town, Oakland

Kit Tea, SF

what it is

Every time I hear the term ‘cat cafe’ I just kind of shake my head and wonder. It’s not that I don’t care for cats. They are lovely and I’ve owned a couple over the years. I definitely prefer my dogs if given a choice, but it’s never occurred to me to combine any pet with a cafe as a thematic element. The craze has been in my peripheral vision for a few months now, so today I did a little research. It’s real and it started in the far east according to my sources (wikipedia). Taiwan was the first location of a cat cafe, followed by about a zillion in Japan where most landlords don’t allow pets and most businesses (apparently) have very stressed out, introverted employees who prefer the company of cats. If you check the crowd funding sites, both IndieGogo and Kickstarter have several cat cafe projects looking for funding all over the world. And the handful of cat cafes that are already up and running in the US are all claiming to be firsts of some sort.

why it is

Whereas in Japan the cats are permanent residents of the cafes, here in the US they seem to be mostly adoptable. And with all of our health department requirements, the cat/human play areas and food service areas must be separated. But once you’ve purchased your food and drink you can take it into the cat play area. Some places charge an hourly fee to spend time with the cats, many require a reservation, and all limit the number of people that can be in the cat area at any one time. Cat Town in Oakland ( which claims to be the first in the US) opened in late 2014 and works with Oakland Animal Services to adopt out shelter cats. Cool coffee mugs are a bonus. Up in Portland, Purrington’s, the ‘first cat cafe in the northwest’ opened January of 2015 and even serves beer and wine. And sometime this spring, KitTea is scheduled to open in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. They will work with Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue to adopt out their feline friends and their schtick will be tea.

it’s real

So yea, it’s real. Cat’s and coffee (and beer and wine and tea) are a thing that is growing in the US. And now that I’ve done a little research I’ll quit smirking. I’m a huge fan of saving shelter pets rather than buying from a pet store or breeder. So if I can get a great cup of tea and save a furry critter, I’m on board. Guess that’s really not so frivolous. Maybe I’ll be the first to do dogs…..want to partner up?

Keep in touch,
Leslie

let’s talk about cell phones in restaurants

in food + drink

Last summer my oldest uncle, my mom’s big brother and the last of his siblings, died at the ripe old age of 102. Imagine the changes he saw in the world over the course of his lifetime. The mass production of the automobile, invention of radio broadcasting and then television broadcasting, widespread use of the telephone in households, computers of any sort and then personal computers, and now cell phones (one of which he wore on his hip until the day he died). Such remarkable technological growth. And with each invention a fair amount of grimacing and fear and anger about the changes that new technology wrought. In 1865 the UK Parliament regulated automobile speeds to 4 mph and required a man to walk ahead of the auto waving a red flag. When the telephone became commonplace, people worried that telephone operators would listen in on their conversations (they did). And when computers moved into our homes we worried that strangers would hack in to our personal lives (they do). Now we carry our computers in our pockets but we call them phones. They are also cameras. And credit cards. And game consoles. And there is more grimacing and fear and anger.

Last week I ran across this article about complaints in restaurants. The bottom line is customers are so busy with their phones that they take longer to order and eat their meals, slowing the entire dining experience. Then they complain about the quality of the food (that has sat in front of them getting cold while they photograph it for their yelp review), the length of time it takes to get their server’s attention (while he/she is helping the diners at the next table connect to wifi), the length of time it takes to be seated (because the whole process has slowed). So what to do?

Some restaurants ban cell phones. I suppose that’s an option and will work about as well as ‘disconnect day’ or whatever they called it a week or so ago. In so doing we accept that the devices are in control and try to manage their devilish power over us. Because that worked really well with the automobile, the telephone, the radio and the television. And certainly the personal computer. Or we can decide that we are in charge and figure out how to make a place in our world for technology that allows its benefits and minimizes its deficits.

This is something we try to wrap our heads around in our household as our children are learning to face their world in ways so different from ours. They don’t use the phone to talk, they use it to text. They don’t write letters, they post on Instagram or Facebook or SnapChat. They don’t write period….they type. So we can be the parents that try to drag our children back to the world that we grew up in (was it really so much better?), or we can embrace the changes and guide our children to a productive and balanced future that includes technology that we are still learning. Honestly, is there a choice here? Has anyone ever successfully turned back time (and don’t give me the Amish example….I’ve already thought of that and I think it is a special case)? And do we really want to?

So back to the world at large, I think that we are in need of some big design thinking here, and it would be my suggestion to include people under 21 in the conversation. This is their world and they understand things that we haven’t even thought of yet. Let them help to guide us. We need to move restaurants into the 21st century and that doesn’t mean we ban technology. Complain all you will about your yelp ratings, people photographing their food, texting rather than reading the menu. And alienate both your current and future customers. Those photos of your food? That’s free advertising. Those complaints on yelp? Those are opportunities to improve. Slower turn times? Maybe this is an opportunity to sell more food and drink. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, and haven’t even thought of all of the questions. But I think it’s time to begin a productive conversation here. Don’t you?

Keep in touch,
Leslie

an abundance of tufting

in art + architecture + design, food + drink

My favorite design contest, Restaurant and Bar Design Awards is gearing up with entries due before April 19. Out of only 37 entries to date here are the 5 from the US. I’m seeing a lot of tufting and nailheads this year. And an abundance of wood finishes. Check these out and get your entry in if you’ve got one this year…let’s show the world how brilliant we US designers are!

Hootan & Associates Design Studio (Southern CA) created Bosscat Kitchen and Libations featuring whiskey and southern style cooking in Newport Beach, CA.