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.