Tag: Restart

The dishes of the chefs for the restart of the restaurants – Italian Cuisine

For many chefs, the quarantine months were an opportunity to come up with new creations to be proposed when the restaurant reopens. We snooped on their Instagram accounts: here's what awaits us!

From 18 May also i restaurants they could reopen after the long period of lockdown, months in which the chefdespite everything, they did not lose heart: they cooked on social networks to be close to their followers, they created dishes for the delivery, have created new menus for the restart, organized their premises to respect the social distancing. In a word, they worked to make sure everything was ready by the time they could cook again. And for many, the recovery was like the first day of opening the restaurant between the excitement and expectation of the first customers.

The dishes to share are summer, sustainable and have many stories to tell

There are those who reopened immediately, those who wanted to wait a few days, who will do it later: in any case, there are many chefs who have never stopped telling each other and telling the news for this new phase also through Instagram: we were struck by the photos of the brigades ready to welcome us with masks and then we were surprised by those of the new dishes to taste. They are mostly summer dishes, fresh, colorful, such as soups and cold minestrone or tartare, dishes that convey the desire to get back into the game and to do it often in a new way, with the new awareness gained in this emergency as a more sustainable approach and close to nature or, again, classic dishes that return and others with new stories to tell and, also, tasting menus with prices for all budgets.

Let's find out some of the novelties of the restaurants by browsing the gallery!

start-ups in support of restaurants for the restart – Italian Cuisine

Digital menus, complete sanitization systems, financial support for the purchase of ingredients, bottles of wine on consignment. Here are some of the proposals to support restaurateurs

There is no doubt that that of Restaurants was one of the sectors most affected byCoronavirus emergency. Not only that: restaurants will be the activities that will have to respect the strictest restrictions for reopening often in contrast with the very concept of service and conviviality at the table. In recent months many chefs have wondered how to start again and new ideas have been born to support restaurateurs like i bonds, or a tool to pay in advance for a meal that will be consumed later. Then there are startups that are rushing to the aid of restaurant owners and apps to facilitate the work of the premises by limiting contacts with customers. Let's see some of them.

360 ° support

Lombardia Re.Start is the restart plan designed by Soul-K, which provides for an investment of up to one million euros dedicated to hotels, restaurants, bars, bistros and all those who work in this sector and who are located in the territories where Covid-19 has hit hardest. Financial, but also strategic and training support, not to leave the restaurateurs alone, but to prepare them in view of the restart. Soul-K provides an incentive plan for the purchase of the entire range of semi-processed ingredients that cover almost all the needs of a restaurant, from vegetables to fish. On the strategic front, the platform makes its know-how available to all restaurateurs, guiding them in the construction of a summer menu that is in line with the reduction of fixed costs, precise control of the same and efficient management of the warehouse to minimize the waste. Finally, the Lombardia Re.Start project will offer participating restaurateurs a training course to comply with all anti-contagion regulations and guarantee the safety of their employees and customers. To benefit from the project it is necessary to fill out an application form on this Lombardia Re.Start page to be contacted within 48 hours by a Soul-K consultant.

Wine cellar on consignment

The Winesider, a technological platform born with the aim of simplifying the process of purchasing wine by the restaurateur and, at the same time, of improving the final consumer shopping experience, becomes even more strategic at this particular moment. The system is based on the sales account whereby the restaurateur pays only the bottles of wine he sells. In this way, capital is freed which can perhaps be reinvested in promoting the restaurant, resources are not immobilized and, at the same time, the problem of the unsold is avoided. In addition, other services such as specialized consultancy for the organization of the cellar with the related training of the dining room team, an automatically updated wine list, the digitalization of operations such as inventories, orders and payments, a control dashboard to verify the data sales and consequently direct their business and a series of interactive contents to improve the customer experience.

Digital menus and more

Kill Bill it is an "anti-contagion" app created by two young people from Viterbo that allows customers to read the restaurant menu through their smartphone, thanks to a QR Code placed at the tables. Always through your phone you can order and then receive a notification when the dishes are ready to go to collect them in self-service mode: in this way you avoid paper menus or tablets on the tables (and their sanitization) and close contact with the restaurant staff.

Also MyContactless Menu proposes to digitize the restaurant menu and to have it consulted by customers always by scanning the QR Code. There is also the possibility of translating the menu into 60 languages and sharing it on social networks. And the bill is also received and paid via smartphone.

Menu available through QR Code is also the proposal of Dishcovery which allows you to take advantage of the interactive menu to receive orders directly on the restaurant's Whatsapp and conveniently manage delivery and take away.

The start up Sooneat has implemented some functions to respond to the Covid-19 emergency. From their smartphone, each customer can avoid the queue at the entrance, sit at the reserved table, consult the multilingual menu and photos of the dish, order, pay and make requests throughout the stay with an internal chat between customers and staff. In addition, customers can reserve their seats from home or from the office, pre-order the dish and indicate the exact time of consumption.

Secure access

Sprayforlife is a complete sanitizing system consisting of three devices: a single totem to be positioned at the entrance of the room brings together an infrared thermoscanner for body temperature control, a no-touch hand sanitizer gel dispenser with photocell and a nebulizer with no-touch sanitizing spray with photocell to sanitize footwear.

Restart (in a big way) with new ideas: the example of Contraste – Italian Cuisine

The quarantine passed "on the bench" to create new formats, to be launched as soon as possible in Milan. Thomas Piras tells how, together with Matias Perdomo and Simon Press, he is ready for reopening. With more desire than before

First there was the period of social recipes, often with a beneficial purpose. Then the moment of delivery came and now we are in the era of take-away food. All interspersed with a sea of interviews on the problems of the moment and the future. Since the beginning of March, the most famous Italian chefs have lived the strangest days of their career, made up (alas) of words rather than deeds. For this reason, the Contraste team is deserving attention: the Uruguayan chef Matias Perdomo, his Argentine right arm Simon Press and the man from the hall and cellar, the Milanese Thomas Piras. Disappeared from the world – apart from some initial ironic incursion by the chef on social networks – to hide a different reality, made up of daily work, projects, plans and four plans for restarting. "Three had already left, while a fourth we have invented in the last few weeks," explains Thomas Piras.

Good wines at competitive prices

A project is linked to wine, Thomas's great passion. To drink, a nice name: a new distribution and import of labels that will aim to discover apparently second row terroirs, but with a precise philosophy and great personality. Reserved for professionals. «It is a project that we invented together with the producer and friend Marco Tinessa, collaboration regarding the selection that has been going on for some time. Now we will concretize it on a national level: it is a distribution that wants to place itself in the range between 10 and 30 euros in price (restorative price), avoiding those now inflationary wine areas . The second project is a real one urban pasta factory within the city in the Porta Romana area, to be precise with a double entrance in via Orti and via Curtatone. About forty seats and cocktail bars: urban style, signed by Fabio Ferrillo of the Off Arch study, with the work temporarily stopped by the emergency.

Pasta and empanadas

"Although pasta is always associated with tradition, Exit Urban Pasta Factory it will be a contemporary place, which also focuses on sharing , Piras continues. "We like the idea that one comes to have a drink with friends and then stops to enjoy a plate of pasta, maybe even a dessert. No appetizer, no second course to change the connotations of the Italian restaurant that focuses on first courses . The other two projects of the Contraste team are linked to the large production laboratory, which has been open for two years Lambrate, with the aim of relieving the Contraste kitchens from more routine activities and being able to reason with greater freedom on any new projects. It is here that the empanadas at the base of the third project will be prepared: it is called Empanadas del Flaco. Curiosity: el Flaco is the nickname of Simon Press (while Piras is nicknamed el Pelato and Perdomo el Gordo) who as a good Argentine had been proposing the idea for five years. Finally we are convinced, the first store will be on the way S. Maurilio, one of the alleys around via Torino: small, because the concept focuses absolutely on delivery, never as trendy as in recent weeks.

Origin Contraste Rotisserie

"We have combined Argentine experience and craftsmanship with a gastronomic touch also made of process, standardization and technologies. The product is made in the laboratory, shot down after a first frying and regenerated in the store. It works from every point of view after a thousand tests even blindly, we tasted the product made two weeks before and it is always at the top. And so we can be confident when the project, we hope, will expand ", explains Piras. If Empanadas del Flaco is the fruit of long maturation, the fourth project is really the result of comparison in the weeks of the pandemic: Roc, a gastronomy ready for online debut and destined to find a store between Porta Romana and Porta Genova as soon as possible. Roc stands for Rosticceria Origine Contraste, but there will be no connection in the vision nor in the image with the starry one in via Meda 2. Here too there is the desire to stand out from the current offer, not so much on the culinary proposal as on the way of prepare and serve it.

Ordered the day before

«We start from an assumption: the lasagna will be lasagna, the puree will be the puree, the eggplant parmigiana will be eggplant parmigiana, but there will also be bolder and more sophisticated dishes thinking of a rotisserie 2.0. We are looking for a memory of taste well known and shared. The difference is that it will not be possible to order day by day, but the day before with delivery on the following one, at the exact time . The advantage? «We will have the overall picture of the deliveries we have to make, of the shopping to be made: zero waste for us, well-managed food cost, lower costs and guaranteed freshness for customers. And the packaging will be entirely composed of biodegradable and heat-sealed plastics. We focus heavily on hygiene, personalization, labels, portioning ", explains the Constraste partner. Given the skill and experience of the team in catering – both in the starred Contraste and in the Exit bistro – it is striking that they are all different initiatives and certainly not inspired by the two venues. «Standardization requires a method that is not ours, we are not capable of it. Apart from the obligation to always offer the highest quality, we believe in a system where the right space must be left for people, who bring creativity , Piras closes.