March 25, 2011

Chicory journey part III: Cafe Du Monde and open kitchens

Rolando and I started our day with coffee and beignet at Cafe Du Monde. This place is very well known, sort of a landmark in New Orleans. The place is built for seriously high volumes. I’m always on the lookout when traveling for high volume operations. There are very unique problems that arise when you’re forced to push your service volumes and I love seeing creative solutions.

This is sort of a non-Chicory aside: you might think of a place like Subway as high volume, but take a peek at their processing speed. They get 1 customer every 40-60 seconds max. That’s 1-1.5 customers/ minute. A place like Du Monde probably serves more like 10 customers/ minute at peak, maybe higher. That’s a massive difference. Peak at Du Monde might serve as many customers in 10 minutes as Subway would serve in 1.5 hours. It takes a special place to pull that off and the operations usually evolve over many years.

Check the technique in the picture above. This guy was actually pretty sloppy. He was replaced 3 minutes after this picture was taken by somebody much more skilled. Probably because the restaurant was starting to fill up. It’s a bit hard to see but on the left is a conveyor belt, then the dough is stamped by that drum, and this guy tosses the squares into hot oil.

Two more things before I close this chapter: (1) notice that the guy is frying these on site. When was the last time you saw donuts being fried at your favorite donut joint? (2) I have a picture of the full operation. Why is that? Kitchens were open EVERYWHERE in New Orleans. It was amazing to me. Obviously we work really hard to make sure you can see the food we’re making. I always thought of that approach as new and forward looking. Now all of a sudden I feel like a throwback!

I have a theory for the food scholars out there. I see amazing food in New Orleans everywhere, at all price points. Made on the spot. In an open environment. People there love their food. I talk to people here in the Northeast and they are telling me that they love everything about Clover EXCEPT the open kitchen. They think it’s gross to see food being prepared. “The best restaurants in the world keep their kitchens completely hidden. Nobody wants to see what happens back there.”

I suspect that the architecture of kitchens is culturally driven. The more afraid of food people are the more they want it hidden. I think having food made from scratch and having it visible and transparent are linked by some deep cultural attitudes.

So are we going to change attitudes here in Boston? I’m not sure. It’s sort of intimidating to think about it that way. Much easier to work with people as they are than to try to make them change.

Recent Posts

May 24, 2023
I recently learned that garlic has 4 stages that it goes through on its journey to become the cured stuff you’re probably used to seeing. This year I learned about Green Garlic. It’s the mild, sweet, un-cured bulb, plus the fresh green shoots. We got our hands on a super limited crop from Red Fire out in Granby, and so we decided to see if we could incorporate it into every single different type of box we make next week…
May 23, 2023
We’ve intentionally steered clear of bowls for a long time. If you see Ayr tomorrow, ask him why : ) Tomorrow (5/24) we’re starting a 2-week test of bowls at CloverNTV, our restaurant in Newtonville. If it goes well, this could represent the beginning of one of the bigger changes our menu has EVER seen. We’re hoping we’ve cracked the code to bowls that are seasonal, carefully-composed, easy to carry, and craveable – all the things we love about bowls, and none of the things we don’t.
May 18, 2023
I used to eat Cheesy Grits almost every morning, and if you were eating with us around 2017, I bet you did too. We took our Plimoth-ground-grits off the menu for a little while, but now they’re back at all locations (except for the HUB for the time being). Stop in for breakfast during the next 2 weeks – we’re aiming for these to be hot and ready at 8am and we’ll be selling them til they’re out. The staff has been waking up extra early and adding a lot of extra whisking to their mornings, so we’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve never had our Cheesy Grits before, here are some things you should know….
May 16, 2023
What is Chris eating? When we toured the field at Siena, the crew was planting dahlia tubers. They get planted in warm soil, will grow all summer and will be ready for harvest in the fall. They reminded us of sunchokes, so we got to talking about whether the tubers are edible and it turns out they are! Are they delicious?
May 15, 2023
Do you want a beautiful box of produce for a fraction of what you’d pay in the grocery store? Do you want to invest in a farm’s success and be with them throughout the harvest season? Do you think you hate eggplants but you’ve just never had a good one? It might be time to look into a CSA (or farmshare).
May 5, 2023
I remember exactly the moment we started celebrating May the 4th (“May the Force” be with you). We were on a planning call about meal boxes and we were talking about how we were going to launch our Taco Tuesday program on Cinco de Mayo (May the 5th). Chris accidentally said “May the 4th” and Ayr said, “May the 4th! We should do a Star Wars Box!”
April 24, 2023
If you’ve been reading for a while you probably know we hate waste. Most of the time, minimizing waste is pretty unglamorous, but every once in a while our mission to reduce waste takes us to some very cool places. I look after Clover’s grocery marketplaces (including our Assembly Row grocery store). A few months ago I noticed that the marketplaces were going through a lot of our paper bags. They’re compostable, which is great. But I think the best bag is one you can use over and over again.
April 22, 2023
Few people know that Clover is environmental activism. This is by design.  And it works. We do these customer surveys and see that 9 out of 10 Clover customers are NOT vegetarian. Yet I’m constantly troubled by conflicting feelings about the approach we’ve taken.
April 10, 2023
Over the next 3 weeks, on a rolling schedule, most Clovers are going to be giving out a free hot or cold George Howell Montecarlos coffee to anyone who stops in between opening and 11 am. No strings— we just want to see you all and talk about coffee!! George Howell’s Montecarlos is a single-origin coffee we love for our pour-overs…
March 30, 2023
Each year, early spring is a busy time at the Clover kitchen because we have 2 of our tastiest boxes, usually back-to-back. For the Passover box, a lot of care goes into the kashering of the kitchen, with Rabbi Dolinger coming in to ensure the box is totally Kosher for Passover via Lighthouse Kosher.
March 15, 2023
That photo is corn fritters drizzled with maple syrup. We just started frying them up for a 2pm special – and they’re an element of our Maple Meal Box. If you head away from the city this time of year, you’ll see signs for sugar shacks, where maple sap gets boiled down into syrup and little restaurants pop up to serve pancakes, corn fritters, cider donuts, and dill pickles (to cut through the sweetness of the fresh syrup).
February 28, 2023
You’ve been asking! And finally we can announce: sunchokes are here, starting tomorrow, 3/1. Thanks to Pete’s Greens in VT for getting us local sunchokes. At breakfast we’ll be making The Sunchoke Truffle: fluffy house-baked pita, creamy truffled butter, caramelized onions, a 6.5 minute egg, and thin, crispy sunchoke slices. At lunch and dinner: The Sunchoke Mushroom: scallion-black-pepper mayo, fresh arugula, roasted crimini mushrooms, fried brined onions, and roasted sunchokes. But what IS a sunchoke?