“In 1985, a fledgling shop with Boston in its name skewered and roasted its birds in rotating rows, so they basted each other with seasoned drippings until firm flesh morphed into Sunday dinner succulence,” claims the article. According to an October 2012 article in the Washington Post-one of the nation’s leading dailies published from America’s capital city-Americans were introduced to rotisserie chicken during the heyday of President Roland Reagan’s rule, which was marked by one the greatest expansions of the rich and upper middle classes in American history. And Zankou’s famous garlic chicken is another invention dating back to 1962 and rooted in the East-West crossroads city of the restaurant’s birth, Lebanon.īut you wouldn’t know any of this from the U.S. It was the first family restaurant to introduce rotisserie chicken in the 1970s, and the first to come up with the idea for chicken tarna, that is, marinated, flame-broiled chicken served with humus, tahini sauce, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, pickles and garlic sauce-all wrapped in pita bread. Zankou is a regional if not national pioneer in several of its most prized menu items. A family restaurant such as Zankou, for example, needs to appeal to all ethnic groups-not just Middle Easterners-and therefore offers a range of popular menu items. But what kind of menu a restaurant offers ultimately depends on the type of restaurant.

Further, the culinary skills of chefs in independent restaurants are relatively much more developed and they tend to be innovative. The menus of independently owned restaurants such as Zankou are generally far more creative than those of chain restaurants and franchise restaurants. “It excites every part of your mouth-it’s sweet, sour, crunchy, velvety, crispy,” he told food writer Tori Rogers, author of What Inspires Flavor and How it Evolves. Because the perception involves all the senses, it is a combination of everything from aroma, taste and texture to sight and sound.Īmong the favorite foods of Wolfgang Puck, one of the world’s most successful restaurateurs and entrepreneurs of frozen foods and a growing soup line, are the brioche-crusted sweetbread with shallot marmalade, and black fig salad and fennel seed as an appetizer. These are people who have discriminating tastes and tend to be influential in social circles.Ī food’s flavor is the sum total of the sensory experience that people have when the food enters their mouth. Finally, a restaurateur must strive to attract food savvy customers-foodies in today’s parlance. Next comes healthy food options, a trend that has been underway in the United States for years now and is likely to intensify and people’s lives become ever more stressful and at the same time their access to valuable information increases. Related to taste is the twin challenge of creating extraordinary flavors-the kind of food nobody else has in the market. Making food tasty is almost surely the first and greatest challenge. In fact, according to a survey by Restaurant and Institutions magazine, customers rank food quality above service, value-even cleanliness, which ranks a close second.įood poses a three-fold challenge for restaurateurs. The primary reason why customers patronize a restaurant is the pleasure of the dining experience-not because the restaurant is conveniently located or because it happens to be in a high-class part of town. And that’s why a restaurant’s menu-and the planning that goes into it-is paramount in the restaurant business. But the most vital ingredient for a restaurant’s eventual success, all other things being equal, is the quality of the food served. It’s a time-tested truism in the restaurant world that a restaurant’s location is the most important element of an entrepreneur’s business strategy.

Zankou chicken garlic sauce