Tableside Simplified
Some assembly required at Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale

Plate presentation is always a factor when finalizing a new menu. But at Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North, presentation was the factor in deciding which dishes made the cut at the hotel’s new Talavera Restaurant.

“I didn’t want to do just another steakhouse," says Mel Mecinas, executive chef at the resort. "As a chef, I want to give the guest a wow factor with my food, and I can do that by extending the presentation to the table because the guest wants to see the details of the dish."

Mecinas built a menu that not only reflected a high-end steak and seafood selection, but also included the test of whether the ingredients could be prepared in the kitchen and assembled tableside as a showpiece by a server in under four minutes.

“We practiced with the servers to minimize the time spent mixing and slicing tableside. You want to keep it quick and clean so it doesn’t hold up the overall dining experience,” Mecinas says.

Some of the dishes that hit Mecinas’s balance of practicality and presentation include:

• Wagyu Beef Tartare – The meat is prepared and seasoned in the kitchen, then brought tableside, where the server mixes it into a tower, then drizzles it with olive oil and a dash of mustard crème fraîche. It’s then placed into a glass filled with crushed ice. “It looks fantastic,” says Mecinas.


 

• John Dory – The fish is plated with crab brandade and white asparagus. To finish, the server makes a saffron shellfish broth tableside, putting lobster stock and saffron into a coffee press with tarragon, parsley, and dill, and pushing the press down. The mixture is poured into a bowl over baby carrots, baby turnips, and baby squash.
   

• Chocolate Illusion – A large chocolate dome covering a dish of cherry-pistachio mousse is brought to the table. The server pours hot white chocolate over the dome, and it melts, revealing the mousse underneath. “It’s a great example of finishing touches happening at the table,” says Mecinas.

Talavera was previously a steakhouse called Acacia, with seating for about 130. Mecinas says he lost around 15 seats when Acacia turned into Talavera because more room was needed for the tableside presentations.

And if rolling out a new restaurant concept and menu wasn’t enough pressure, Talavera opened to a packed house during one of the busiest times of the year, with the Super Bowl and the FBR Open Golf Tournament in town. Even with that trial by fire, Mecinas says Talavera has been a hit.

“We said from the start, ‘Let’s make it more fun for my staff.’ And that’s the key to this menu. It’s nothing crazy. It’s very simple, and it has great presentation.”

Click here to view the Talavera menu (PDF).
 

Creative Conch
Reducing food cost by sourcing locally

Think of the Bahamas, and the word plentiful comes to mind: plentiful sunshine, plentiful beaches, and plentiful smiles from the locals.

Another bounty around Nassau is just out of view in the Atlantic Ocean and is a versatile menu staple at the 694-room Sheraton Cable Beach Resort.

“We use about 200 pounds of conch a week when we’re busy, and we have a vendor who supplies us with fresh conch every day. They recognize our need to be profitable, so we arrive at prices that are agreeable, and everybody wins,” says Ricardo Pearce, director of food and beverage at the hotel.

Pearce says conch is important not just because it adds authentic Bahamian cuisine to the resort’s menus, but also because the Bahamas doesn’t have the variety and volume of locally sourced food that a large hotel needs to operate daily. He says the bulk of their ingredients are shipped once a week from Sysco in Florida.

Consequently, lower-priced, island-sourced conch becomes more than a token Bahamian dish. Pearce says spreading it across several entrées helps offset the higher price of imported items, and consequently helps keep the overall food cost in check.

Cooking with Conch

The Sheraton Cable Beach has six F&B outlets, including the poolside Dolphin Grill, the grab-and-go Caribe Café, and the Bimini Market buffet, as well as room service and a banquet operation.

Across this mosaic of menus, the versatility of conch is on display, including:

• Conch fritters—conch meat mixed with onions and peppers in a batter and deep fried

• Conch salad—cubes of raw conch mixed with lemon or lime and chopped vegetables

• Cracked conch—conch pounded flat, breaded, seasoned, and deep fried

• Conch chowder—similar to clam chowder

• Conch cakes—similar to crab cakes

• Conch and grits for breakfast

L-R: Don Robinson (Baha Mar Resorts), Graeme Davis
and Kevin Regan (Starwood). Photo by Wendell Cleare.

“It’s more than just about flexing conch on our menus to keep the food cost down. It gives the customer something they may not have had at home. I think more often than not, our guests come here wanting to try conch at least once in some form,” says Pearce.

He adds that conch is particularly interesting to many male guests because of the food’s fabled reputation as an aphrodisiac.

“I don’t know if there’s any truth to that, but those properties seem to conjure up a lot of interest, and a lot of people try it because of that.”

Click here to view the Dolphin Grill lunch and dinner menus (PDF).
 

 SPONSORED PRODUCT LINKS

¨ Kellogg’s™ I-Box Wellness Assortment features five popular adult cereal brands in convenient, grab ‘n go size boxes.
www.kelloggsfoodawayfromhome.com/

¨ Seattle’s Best Coffee® full line of coffees includes Organic Breakfast Blend and Organic Sumatra.
www.seattlesbest.com/services/foodservice.aspx
 

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