From the Editor & Feedback
Posted by estiator at 10 September, at 03 : 53 AM Print
FROM THE EDITORS
Summer’s Over
If the calendar tells us there are still a handful of days of summer left, reality tells us something different: After Labor Day it’s back to business—kids are back in school, and summer getaways are banked in the memory files.
If you haven’t already rolled up your sleeves, this issue of Estiator should kick you into gear with a cover story that studies the successes of the Pan Gregorian of Upper New York, and its use of technology to create tools that promote transparency and help members to understand the benefits of compliance. In Soapbox, we look at the dangerous trend of lawsuits against restaurants by servers seeking back wages and how legislatures need to step in to define how much “side work” a restaurant can require of these employees that are paid below-minimum wage.
With college students returning to school, we look at how to hire smart in this month’s Managing for Success, while in Service 101 we remind readers why servers are the “face of the restaurant.”
For our Chef Profile, we caught up with celebrity chef Christos Christou, who is on the verge of opening another restaurant while maintaining a busy schedule of cooking for luminaries that include President Barak Obama, the new archbishop, and a continual flow of Greek and Cypriot statesmen.
Finally, Chef Maria Bernardis contributes an article on ancient Greek wisdom and how our ancestors connected food with health. Enjoy this issue, and welcome back!
FEEDBACK
To the editor:
Thank you for your article in the March 2019 edition regarding the Year of the Gyro. It was interesting to read about the upcoming trends in both the gyro/ Mediterranean food segment and the evolving face of “Greek” restaurants. Being in the industry, we have seen tremendous growth and change in this market. As a result of your article we have received numerous calls for more information regarding the new trends, such as hand-stacked cones and the newest fully cooked and carved-off-the-spit meats. With rising labor costs and other issues the restaurateur is facing today, these new items offer a solution and new menu opportunity that never previously existed.
Andrea Coutretsis
Olympia Foods
National Sales Manager
Editor’s Note
Time Out magazine has named the Aegean Negroni from The Clumsies in Athens (one of the featured bars in our July cover story, “Spirits of Athens: Exploring Greece’s Craft Cocktail Scene”) as the world’s best cocktail. Congratulations to the team at The Clumsies! Here’s a bit of what Time Out had to say: “Its subtly explosive Aegean Negroni is as blue as the glittering Aegean sea, and uses the bar’s own spiced gin plus white vermouth, Martini bitters and Martini Ambrato. Fennel seeds and fragrant dittany (an herb that grows only on the island of Crete) gives this refreshingly bitter cocktail its distinctive Mediterranean savour.”
