Your Restaurant Reviews

My favorite restaurant recipes have become my secret weapon for family holiday meals. It started innocently enough. I was throwing a Halloween party for the neighborhood and was looking for some adult-friendly treats. As usual, I started with an internet search and ran across a website full of free restaurant recipes. In no time, I found a recipe for Appleby’s Caramel Appletini. Perfect! Needless to say, the cocktails were a big hit. Not only were they seasonal and fun, but they were so easy to throw together. In fact, the hardest part was the moment when the compliments started rolling in. I had to decide: should I give Appleby’s the credit for the recipe or just smile, nod and offer an oh-so humble, “Thanks. I’m so glad you like them!” As you can probably guess, I did what any self-respecting Martha Stewart wanna-be would do. I kept the credit for myself (after all, I was clever enough to find the free restaurant recipes website. That should count for something, right?).

I thought it would be a one time thing, but the very next week my family was invited to have Thanksgiving dinner at my perfect sister-in-law’s house. Don’t get me wrong, my sister-in-law is a lovely person. She’s kind, has an infectious laugh, and a wicked sense of humor. But with hardly any effort at all, she can throw together a five-course meal that would make Julia Child swoon. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, she split up the cooking duties by assigning a different dish to each family invited. My assignment: sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes?! Intimidated by the thought of coming up with a dish that would be traditional, yet creative enough to stand up to the rest of the meal, I found myself heading to the computer. Once again, the secret restaurant recipes site delivered, this time in the form of Ruth’s Chris Sweet Potato Casserole. And, once again, I humbly accepted rave reviews.

By December, I was hooked. I downloaded secret restaurant recipes for Joe’s Crab Shack’s Crab Dip and knocked the socks off of everyone at the office holiday party. My parents came to our house for Christmas and I hit the free restaurant recipes site again, this time for The Cheesecake Factory’s Pumpkin Cheesecake. On and on, into 2009 I found secret restaurant recipes for every family holiday and event. Bake sale at the kids’ school? No problem! How about delectable, homemade peanut butter cookies, thanks to the free restaurant recipes from Mrs. Field’s? A Mardi Gras Party? What fun! I’d be happy to bring jambalaya rice (a la free restaurant recipes form Houlihan’s). For July fourth, I found Ruby Tuesday’s secret restaurant recipes and helped myself to their mouthwatering apple pie recipe. I think that’s when my husband started to suspect something was up. As he cut into the perfectly flaky crust, I saw him glance my way with suspicion in his eyes. The next day, with a heavy heart, I deleted the free restaurant recipes folder from my favorites list and promised myself that the apple pie would have to be my grand finale. By August, I thought I’d kicked the habit for good. But now, holiday time is drawing near again and the neighbors are starting to clamor for “My” Famous Caramel Appletinis. One more time couldn’t hurt…. let’s just keep this our little secret.

–Janell Leigh Oakes

Are you looking for secret restaurant recipes from your favorite restaurants, whether they’re chain restaurants or gourmet, one-of-a-kind establishments? Here are a few sites and resources, along with some fantastic restaurant recipe recommendations, that will help make your search easier and your Christmas even tastier.

IVillage’s Chef Blog

While not a site specifically for secret restaurant recipes, the iVillage Chef Blog does have a great selection of famous holiday recipes from famous chefs around the world. These include David Chang’s roasted Brussels sprouts, Nigella Lawson’s Pomegranate ice cream, Todd English’s Christmas risotto and The Scotto’s (from New York’s Fresco by Scotto restaurant) Christmas Eve dinner. These are all great free holiday recipes from world-class chefs who work at the helm of some of the world’s most famous and exclusive restaurants.

Copykat Recipes

Copykat Recipes is a site dedicated to unearthing the secrets behind restaurant recipes — Red Lobster’s Cajun Shrimp, Starbucks’ Cranberry Christmas bread, they’re working on it. They even have a forum to discuss favorite secret restaurant recipes and their techniques for replicating them at home.

All Restaurant Recipes

All Restaurant Recipes is another site devoted to serving up free restaurant recipes based on user submissions and published restaurant recipes.

There isn’t a special section for Christmas or holiday free restaurant recipes, but a simple search for Christmas will provide you with some great holiday, restaurant-worthy treats. You can find restaurant recipes for making your own Starbucks’ Italian date thumbprints and spiced holiday coffee, O’Malley Farm Cafe’s eggnog holiday pie, and Quivey’s Grove’s holiday stuffed turkey.

Oprah.com’s Famous Chef Holiday Recipes

A great article dedicated to highlighting amazing and free restaurant recipes for the holidays from world-famous chefs.

Alfred Portale (head chef at Gotham Bar and Grill in New York) contributed a free restaurant recipe for roasted prime rib with apple-quince compote. Carrie Nahabedian (NAHA in Chicago) shares her secret restaurant recipe for cream cheese chocolate chip cookies. My personal favorite is a free restaurant recipe for chestnut soup from Fabio Trabocchi (Fiamma, New York City).

SeriousEats.com [link: http://www.seriouseats.com/celebrity-chefs-holidays/]

SeriousEats.com is a well put-together website all about the passionate, informed, discerning and inclusive love of food. As part of their celebrity chef series, they’ve put together a fun compilation of interviews with various celebrity chefs along with their favorite restaurant recipes for the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

You can read about Bobby Flay’s favorite Christmas recipe – chocolate coconut bread pudding and even get access to his secret restaurant recipe for it. You’ll find out that one of Mario Batali’s favorite holiday recipes is for goat cheese truffles and that famed resteranteur Lidia Bastianich is famous for her cranberry quince chutney, both at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

You’ll find that many of the recipes shared here are the same holiday menu recipes served in these chefs’ very own restaurants. Consider it a secret peak into their free restaurant recipes.

Free restaurant wireless and other technology has made this a great time to become an entrepreneur. You don’t have to have an office anymore, you can work out of your home. We’ve become a mobile society: laptops, cell phones, and free restaurant wireless service allow us to work from anywhere.

This means you don’t even have to work out of your home if you don’t want to. For the price of a cup of coffee and the use of some free restaurant wireless, you can take advantage of a nice workspace, see people, and still get some work done. This is especially beneficial to new entrepreneurs, because for about $90 per month, you can have your own office space, as compared to the $300 – $500 you might spend for a small office in a big suite, plus utilities and Internet. And you still have to buy your own coffee.

Choose an independent coffee shop or small cafe and support your local community. Not only do the big chain coffee places charge you for your wifi, but only 13 percent of every dollar you spend stays in the community. Nearly every coffee shop and cafe offers free restaurant wireless, plus 70 percent of every dollar you spend stays in the community. So stick with the independent coffee shops and restaurants, and help out your community.

However, it’s important that you find a location that has stable and fast free restaurant wireless. Over the next few weeks, visit a few places, and see how often the cafe wifi slows down, hangs, or just drops you altogether (it happens if too many people are online at the same time). Check out the SpeedTest.net website and see how fast the free restaurant wireless is. Stick with the places that are fast and reliable, even if they’re a little farther away from home. The time you spend getting there will be more than made up for by the time you save by having faster wifi.

We know a lot of small businesspeople and entrepreneurs who frequent coffee shops and bistros for their free wifi. For one thing, it’s a great place for meetings. You can find a place that’s centrally located, and when you’re finished, stick around and take advantage of some of that free restaurant wireless to check your email or prepare for your next meeting.

Another recommendation we have for using free wireless for new entrepreneurs is to become a regular at one or two coffee shops. For one thing, you get to know a lot about the place, and some of the important things, like when their cafe wifi is most likely to be jammed up with other entrepreneurs logging on. When do they fill up, making it harder to get work done? Where are the best seats near the electrical outlets? And how fast is their free restaurant wireless?

Another benefit to becoming a regular is that as the staff gets to know you, they’ll start doing little favors for you, like watching your computer when you run to the restroom, or let you sit for a few hours without sighing loudly because you only had one latte and a biscotti. You’ll also become known to the other regulars in the restaurant. Get enough people in your network to start coming there, and you’ll be able to tap into a healthy network of other entrepreneurs who are also showing up for the free restaurant wireless.

One of the best things about being a new entrepreneur is just getting out and meeting people. While you started your own business so you could keep your own hours and work out of the house, nobody said you have to spend every single hour cooped up in the same place day after day. In fact, that’s one of the reasons you started your own business, was the freedom to work wherever and whenever you wanted. So break up the scenery, try something new, and visit some of the coffee shops or little cafes in your town. It’s a great way to meet new people, see another part of the city, and get some work done to boot.