From the Editors
Posted by estiator at 8 August, at 14 : 09 PM Print
Hot and Hazy, Venerable, and Great
August is vacation month. August is the hottest month of the year. August was named for the first Roman emperor (it was previously called “Sextilius,” and no, we’re not kidding). And the word “august” means “the venerable one,” or the “great one.”
For restaurant veterans, it’s a month of refrigeration being pushed to the limit in sweltering kitchens; it’s a month of the air conditioning in your dining rooms struggling against successive days where temperatures hover the mid 90s; and it’s a month of trying to fill schedules with staff members all vying for the same vacation time.
For the purposes of this issue, August is a chance to talk to some of our go-to industry contacts, this time looking for lessons to be learned in an industry climate change of skyrocketing prices, and a dearth of hospitality workers. Senior editor Michael Kaminer captures their thoughts in “Learning from the Leaders.”
In the meantime, for this month’s Managing for Success column, our resident restaurant guru Constantine Kolitsas tunes in to what the young people are hearing and is disturbed by one siren’s troubling song.
In Service 101, Estiator offers strategies and tips for front of the house staff on how to approach and handle problems. And in Catch of the Day, we’ve gone fishing again; this time to Asia for barramundi.
Across the ocean, our Athens correspondent, Gina Kallitsi looks at carob from Crete before taking us on holiday to Chalkidiki in the north, where she dines with Chef Dimitris Paboris at his Treehouse restaurant at the vacation mecca’s Ekies All Senses Resort.
Whether you will be spending this venerable month relaxing away from home (and the work grind) or sweating it out in the kitchens, we wish you all a regenerative month, healthy and safe. And, quite literally, we wish you a “great one.”
Cheers!
The Editorial and Publishing Staff
