So I am day 3 into my stay in beautiful Montreal and yesterday was an eye opening experience. When I look at the landscape of restaurants and bars in Niagara there is much to yearn for. Yes Niagara has great places like the Merchant Ale house and The Office but what do we have that is different? To me Niagara is a hard nut to crack in how you make yourself unique and get the local crowd to buy into your concept. Montreal has given me a lot of concepts and ideas that I plan to implement into Niagara's restaurant. A restaurant that gives Niagara what it is lacking in cocktails, food and wine.
Now to read wine may be surprising to many people. Yes we have lots of wine 28,000+ acres of it in fact but go into a restaurant and find the Niagara wines. There are very few restaurants that have a strictly Niagara wine lists (Rest/Stone Road Grill in NOTL). In Montreal I have noticed that they support local without regret or remorse. In Niagara we have amazing products that I am certain that we as an area can make big changes.
Yesterday I visited a bar that put my concepts into practice, La Distillerie. I am going to do an entire post on this place as there was so much to learn. I did a kind of case study with the people and employees in the small bar about cocktails, upgrading and taste. I got some amazing feed back and hope the same study can be done in Niagara...however we do not have any good cocktail places.
With so many ideas for menus, restaurant concepts and things to study this trip is worth more then anyone can imagine for Artisanal Palate. To succeed in this business you have to be different and be the best.....I hope next February is the beginning.
Slainte
No comments:
Post a Comment