Hailing from the head table of the embassy, the new chef at the Berceau des Sens, Cédric Bourassin, has acquired a unique experience which he shares with our students and customers in our gourmet restaurant.
Christmas is right around the corner and nothing brings out the festive mood as much as baking. These shortbread cookies are an easy and delicious recipe to try at home during the holidays. This recipe is brought to you by Chef Julien Boutonnet, EHL Senior Lecturer Practical Arts and Meilleur Ouvrier de France 2015 for pastry and candy making.
Young EHL students are faced with the daunting task of mastering grape names, wine regions, flavors, along with some artful wrist action in just 10 days as part of their Service Skills trainee program. Head wine teacher and Meilleur Ouvrier de France, Thomas Fefin, explains the main stops along the wine teaching journey at the prestigious Michelin star fine dining restaurant, le Berceau des Sens.
Chandra Kurt is one of Switzerland's best-known wine critics and writers. For 32 years, the "publisher" as she prefers to call herself, has been working in the Swiss and international wine spheres. She has been responsible for numerous publications and books, primarily aimed at the average person, with a style and pedagogy that have enabled her to reach a large number of wine lovers.
EHL Success Stories: Start-Up Edition is a new series to show support to our EHL Family and, more specifically, our hard-working AEHL entrepreneurs. This project aims to showcase EHL's entrepreneur mindsets, support new and upcoming ideas and businesses. While overcoming a challenging time for all companies, these Start Ups prove that resilience and hard work can overcome any problems.
"There is a pasta shape and recipe for each day of the year and more! In Italy there are over 600 different pasta shapes on the market and new inventions every day, so there is always something new to discover and taste. Italians feel strongly about certain pasta shapes being paired with certain sauces (something I think is only really understood in Italy)." - Gennaro Contaldo, Italian chef and restauranteur.
We all know how to pour a glass of wine, right? Wrong. Depending on how you pour your wine, you can actually enrich the taste of it. You don't need to perform silver service in your own home (unless you want to, of course), but drawing upon sommelier know-how will improve the taste and develop your confidence when you are next surrounded by guests. Lockdown is the perfect time to master the skill of pouring wine, and drinking it (in moderation) might help you get through it! We spoke to Lukas Kolodziejczyk, Head of Fine Wine at Cult Wines, who shares his step-by-step guide on how to pour wine like a professional.
Have you heard about the little wine holes in Florence (and to a lesser extent in other Italian cities)? It's a cute little story that has emerged out of the pandemic and yet one more reason to visit this illustrious Renaissance cultural nexus. Importantly for you, it demonstrates a critically overlooked principal about selling wine that you can use to rethink your beverage program.
A Brit: "Would you like a cup of tea?" An Italian: "Why, do I look unwell?" Born and raised in an Italian household in London, I didn't come into contact with the empire-building beverage until I was 18 and at university in a different town.
Food & Beverage (F&B) has always been a significant component of hotel operations and revenue. Several hotel chains have created their own iconic in-house restaurant brands over the last few decades. Dining at these hotel restaurants, known for their high-quality cuisine and celebrated chefs, had a novelty factor that was missing from the options available outside of hotels.
Milan received a hard knock earlier on this year with a very long and strict lockdown that affected all lives and businesses. Tiziana and Basilio Santoro had been running an authentic and popular Sicilian food truck ('BEDDA') in Milan for the past 5 years, specializing in the island's particular brand of tasty and unforgettable street food, when COVID-19 struck and momentarily shut down all operations. Ironically, they had just branched out into an elaborate new location that was to serve as their headquarters and fixed selling hub. Basilio, a true siciliano, ex-radio producer, DJ and professional raconteur, describes how putting the sharing of human experience at the center of their service and diversifying their offer has ultimately saved the BEDDA business from potential ruin.
The hotel industry faces new challenges and opportunities as COVID makes hoteliers rethink the viability of their food and beverage services and adapt for the future in ways many could have never anticipated. While the transformation of food and beverage offerings at hotels and resorts is an ongoing strategy to provide unique experiences while increasing revenue, hoteliers and restaurateurs must rework their offerings in order to maintain approachable for as many potential customers as possible for the long term.
EHL Success Stories: Start-Up Edition is a new series to show support to our EHL Family and, more specifically, our hard-working AEHL entrepreneurs. This project aims to showcase EHL's entrepreneur mindsets, support new and upcoming ideas and businesses. While overcoming a challenging time for all companies, these Start Ups prove that resilience and hard work can overcome any problems.
Coffee - so much more than a drink - more a way of life. David Lynch is famously quoted as saying that "even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all". While the amount that is either good or bad for your health is still unresolved, coffee remains the most popular beverage in the world with more than 400 billion cups consumed each year. More important than the sun rising in the sky, once the taste and kick are floating around in your blood system, it seems that the day is ready to start. Senior lecturer in Food & Beverage Management, EHL's Alain Berruex takes us through coffee's stimulating journey.
The buffet has been an integral part of many restaurant and other hotel food operations. For now, the buffet is just taking up space - an ugly reminder of better times. Buffets have a unique appeal to many customers if for no other reason than the visual of the food display - so many options for one set price.
Using examples from Version 4 of Wine Cellar Management Tool, this report describes the many spreadsheet-based analyses in this tool that can assist an individual, restaurant, or bar in managing a wine cellar. The primary motivation for developing Version 4 was to expand the capability of the tool to assist cellar owners in making decisions about how to manage a purposeful decrease in the size of their cellars. In addition to providing insight into the key questions of what to consume and what to promote, the tool shows such interesting and informative analyses as appellations, vintages, and types of wine. In the tool described in this report, the spreadsheet itself incorporates form-based sets of data entry fields. The Wine Cellar Management Tool Version 4, which is available at no charge from The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University, does not require actual knowledge of how to construct a spreadsheet. It does require diligent data entry regarding wine purchases and withdrawals.
A Ghost kitchen is a professional food preparation and cooking facility that serves customers exclusively by delivery. Ghost kitchens do not have a physical location that customers can enter (yet). The concept of ghost kitchens strips down the traditional dining establishment by removing dining areas and fancy décor. Instead, they serve as kitchens for restaurants to prepare food to deliver to customers. Several restaurants can operate out of the same ghost kitchen, either working from the same facility or breaking the space into separate areas.
The restaurant business has been one of the worst-hit by the Pandemic.
For both casual and avid wine drinkers alike, tasting notes are an important barometer in gauging how likely one is to enjoy that particular wine. While the memory of tasting wines may last for several days, when you frequently taste many wines in a short period of time, they can be hard to accurately remember down to the last detail. Of course, the best and worst wines almost always stick out, but the vast majority of wines fall somewhere in between. This is why it's important to take useful tasting notes.
With COVID-19 slicing into hotel profit, cutting food costs is more important than ever—especially with so many hotels now relying on food and beverage (F&B) services to meet guest expectations.