Your Restaurant Reviews

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.

When is it appropriate to give wine and cheese baskets as a gift? There’s no real etiquette to it. Any time you want to give a gift, a wine and cheese basket is appropriate. They’re easy to buy, they go with any occasion, and even the most persnickety person will appreciate getting a nice basket of something yummy.

You can find baskets for the wine connoisseur or for the wine newbie. If you know your recipient loves wine, pick something a little fancy and out of the ordinary; if they’re not well-versed in wine, then something nice but a little more common is appropriate. The same is true for cheese. There are some outstanding cheeses available for the cheese enthusiast, and some for people who think anything other than cheddar is “fancy.”

But there are a few times when a wine and cheese basket will really hit the mark.

• Corporate gifts – Since a wine and cheese basket is seen as a high-end gift item, as compared to, say, a box of golf balls or a t-shirt that says “my boss is going to buy your company for $500 million, and all you get is this lousy t-shirt,” pick out a few wines and complimentary cheeses (“hey, nice office. I like what you’ve done with the place. Have you lost weight?”) and ship them off to your favorite C-level executive.
• Housewarming gift – Home buying is such a momentous occasion in a person’s life, especially a first-time home buyer’s, that you want to help them celebrate the occasion. There are a whole lot of firsts in the new house: first dinner, first spill, first repair. With a nice basket of cheese and wine, you can help your new home owners celebrate with their “first wine in our new home.”
• Ambassador/goodwill gifts – Okay, not everyone is going to be the ambassador to a new country, and that’s not what we’re saying. Many states have their own winery, and some even have their own signature cheese or cheesemakers. Put together a basket of wines and cheeses from your home state, and give them to international clients or clients from another state. It shows that you’re proud of where you’re from, and that you have more than (pick one: corn/tumbleweeds/earthquakes/smog) there. Don’t make the classic mistake of buying wine and cheese from your client’s home state. They can already get those things there, and the product may have a reputation as being. . . well, not very good. You may end up doing more harm than good by giving them a basket with not-so-good wine in it.

There’s also more to a wine and cheese basket than just wine and cheese. Most baskets usually contain a bottle of wine and some different cheeses. But the nicer ones also include crackers, chocolates, sausage, and other little delectables. Some even include a cutting board and cheese knife. Pick a nice basket of stuff you think your friends or clients will enjoy, and go to town.

Most baskets come with only a single bottle and a couple types of cheese, but you can find fancier, more ornate baskets

And rather than picking a mish-mash of stuff, try to create a theme for your basket, whether it’s your own state’s goodies, or if you’re going for a country theme, like French, Italian, Spanish. Australia and Chile also have some nice wines and cheeses, so don’t be afraid to think out of the box basket on this one and do a little culinary exploring.

While it is possible to run to your local wine shop and mega-cheese outlet, sometimes it’s just easier to visit one of the wine and cheese basket companies and pick one of their selections. They’ll take care of everything for you, including assembling and shipping. No mess, no fuss, no worries.

Thanks to the increase in online shopping and faster shipping, holiday shopping is a lot easier, especially if you want to give food basket gifts to your friends and family. There are a wide variety of websites that allow you to buy gourmet foods online, but anything can make wonderful food basket gifts.

Food basket gifts can be made of anything. The old standby of sausage and cheese is always a favorite, but wine and cheese gift baskets are becoming more and more popular as well. But don’t forget chocolate! Gourmet chocolate gift baskets are a big hit with many people. Besides, research is telling us that a little chocolate gives many of the same health benefits as red wine, so food basket gifts filled with chocolate can only be good for the recipient, right? Just make sure it’s dark chocolate, since that’s the one with all the benefits. (Mmmmm, dark chocolate. . .)

Pick something you know the recipient will enjoy. While most food basket gifts are pre-assembled with a prescribed list, you can always create your gift basket by visiting your favorite store or by buying gourmet foods online, and assembling your own basket. By giving foods that you know your loved ones likes, you can design food basket gifts that will contain everything they enjoy, and not just somethings

And don’t just limit yourself to a one size fits all food basket gift either. Give a theme to your food basket gifts. While sausage and cheese baskets are popular, you can get just about any type of food from any part of the world. If your gift recipient is from a certain part of the world, get food from the ancestral home. Brie and Cabernet for someone from France, smoked Gouda and ontbijtkoek for someone from Holland, smoked herring and Jarlsberg cheese for someone from Norway.

The container for your food basket doesn’t even need to be a real basket. While a basket is lighter and easier to ship, we’ve seen people use galvanized wash tubs, plastic flower pots, terra cotta pots, or even mixing bowls for their food basket gifts. Just keep in mind that some things, like the wash tubs and terra cotta pots weigh a lot more, and the terra cotta may break during shipping. Reserve those types of baskets for gifts you deliver personally.

And don’t limit yourself to just food for your gourmet gift basket. Include some other things the recipient might enjoy. If he or she is a writer, include a nice pen and a leather bound journal. Give a golfer a sleeve of golf balls. For a baseball fan, include an autographed ball, a ball cap from their favorite team, or even a bobblehead doll of their favorite player. A combination food and item basket gives your recipient something to remember and something to nibble on.

Kids would even love food basket gifts if you pack it with the right stuff. Pick a few of their favorite food items, toss in a couple DVDs or small toys, and pack them into one of the non-basket baskets we talked about earlier. Whether it’s a little girl who loves Disney princesses, or a little boy who loves Thomas the Tank Engine, you can create some wonderful gift baskets that will be sure to be a big hit with the little ones in your life.

Finally, make sure you’re careful about any allergies or food issues your food basket gifts recipients might have. Don’t give cheese to someone with lactose intolerance, nuts to someone with peanut allergies, or sausage to vegetarians. It’s the thought that counts, it’s the insensitivity that will be remembered.

You really can’t go wrong with food basket gifts this holiday. They’re easy, convenient, and allow you to create a variety of combinations to please even the most hard-to-please on your holiday gift list.

As dieting and special eating plans become more popular, people are becoming even more interested in making healthy restaurant choices to make sure they stick to their diets. It’s taken consumers exerting a lot of pressure on their favorite eateries to start offering healthy restaurant choices, but they’re finally doing it.

Are you a vegetarian? Many restaurants have vegan options for their customers. Do you have celiac disease, where you can’t eat wheat, barley, or other long grains? Many restaurants are offering their gluten-intolerant customers their own healthy restaurant choices by serving gluten-free foods. No-Carb diet? No problem? Low fat? You can’t swing a carrot stick without hitting entire plates of healthy restaurant choices in the form of low-fat versions of a restaurant’s popular items.

You can even get healthy takeout from a lot of restaurants. Not only do most healthy restaurants offer take out versions of their regular menu items, but there are even restaurants that specialize in filling healthy restaurant choices for their customers. Think vegetarian restaurants, Mediterranean restaurants, and organic, locally-grown restaurants.

You can make your healthy restaurant choices first by recognizing that it’s better to adopt healthy eating as a lifestyle, not as a diet to be started and stopped whenever you hit your target weight. By having permanent healthy eating habits, making healthy restaurant choices is much easier. And if you want to be naughty once in a while, and have something that’s not typically healthy, you won’t feel like you’ve failed in your diet.

Some of our favorite healthy restaurant choices include things like getting a sandwich in healthy salad form from our favorite footlong sandwich shop, or getting a burger without the bun. For the low-fat dieters, consider getting a bison burger or a turkey club sandwich and low-fat mayo. If sodium and salt are a problem for you, make your own healthy restaurant choices by ordering things that are naturally low-sodium, like vegetables, fish, and dairy products. You can also request that the kitchen honors your healthy restaurant choices by leaving out certain ingredients from your meal.

Another option is to use a food monitoring service like Livestrong.com, DietFacts.com, or CalorieKing.com to see if you’re making healthy restaurant choices. Just sign up for an account, enter the items you ate for your meal, and you’ll be able to see if you made the best decision for your new healthy lifestyle.

Of course, there are plenty of foods to avoid if you’re trying to make healthy restaurant choices, and there are a few ways to tell if you should or should not be eating those particular foods.

* If you can upgrade your meal by using the words “size” and “super.”
* If you can order your meal while you’re still in the car.
* If you leave the restaurant with your pants unbuttoned and your belt unbuckled, telling the hostess you need to be rolled out to your car
* If the restaurant will take your photo and put it on the “Wall O’ Shame” because you ate their Gut Buster/Heart Attack Special/Death By Beef
* If the paper bag your food comes in is shiny with grease by the time you get it out to your car.

Believe us, we understand how hard it can be to make healthy restaurant choices. The foods that are bad for us taste so darn good, and the ones that are good for us, well, could always be made better with a nice cream sauce, or butter and salt, covered in cheese, or dipped in chocolate. But it’s important to remember that those should be an occasional treat, maybe once every couple of weeks, but certainly not every day.

You need to find a specialty coffee for a friend or that one, specific type of olive oil that a favorite recipe calls for. Do you trek down to your local grocery store, cross your fingers and hope they’ve started stocking gourmet foods right alongside the Heinz ketchup? Or do you crack open the laptop and start clicking?

Here’s why you should be buying your gourmet foods online instead of off:

Bigger Selection

Big city or small town, your local grocery stores aren’t going to have everything and they’re certainly not going to have it all in one place. What’s more likely to happen is that you’ll spend an afternoon driving from specialty store to specialty store looking for each and every specific gourmet food item you need. At the end of a long day, you may or may not have everything you need or you’ve been forced to settle for inferior ingredients.

By doing your gourmet food shopping online, you have access to a wider selection of products all in one place. Instead of motoring around town, you can do all your food shopping from your desk. It’s convenient, fast and you don’t have to leave the house.

Easy to Find

Stop wandering the aisles aimlessly trying to find that perfect box of chocolates. When you’re online shopping, you just type in what you’re looking for, hit the search button and you’re off to the races. Instead of hunting and scouring the bottom shelves of a grocery store, you can find gourmet food items fast.

Better Prices

For the most part, you’re going to find better prices buying gourmet foods online as opposed to specialty stores. Instead of paying for the overhead costs associated with running an actual store, online gourmet food sellers can pass those savings on to you, the consumer. Yes, you’ll pay for shipping, but those costs are often comparable or lower than what you’d spend on gas and time hunting down these products yourself.

Ship Directly to Gift Recipients

A good portion of gourmet food purchases are intended as gift items (if they make it that long). So, what’s easier? Driving across town, hunting down a selection of sauces, olive oils and marinades, packaging them so they won’t break and then mailing them out to a friend or simply clicking “Buy” on a website, entering your recipient’s mailing address and calling it a day?

Where to Find and Buy Gourmet Foods Online

Gourmet food gifts can be found through Restaurant Wired’s large selection of specialty ingredients, unique corporate gifts and discounts on gourmet food gifts. Find gourmet gift baskets, restaurant recipes, restaurant gift certificates, gourmet gifts, and gourmet foods all online at RestaurantWired.com.