Casual and grill menus are fast becoming the most popular options among club and resort diners-but tapping the full potential of these concepts requires anything but an offhand approach.
When you’re serving the “Old Guard” along with members and guests who seek the “avant-garde,” writing menus to satisfy both contingents can be a challenge. But most chefs worth their salt (even in these sodium-restricted times) enjoy the creative challenge of trying to deliver dishes that can please both camps, while still pushing the culinary cutting edge.
The Saint Andrew’s Golf Club, in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., certainly sounds at first like a place that would lean to the “Old Guard” side. But America’s oldest continuously existing golf club, founded in 1888, is now serving about 100 members per day, mid-week, and 200 to 300 each Thursday, Friday and Saturday, thanks largely to the appeal of a unique main dining room menu that literally draws a line down the middle between traditional and new-age favorites.
SUMMING IT UP
• Casual menus offer both chefs and members a number of unique and avant-garde applications.• Comfort foods like burgers, sandwiches and breakfast items reign supreme on casual menus. • Deconstructing and rethinking classic dishes like the club sandwich can bring new appeal to diners. |
Patrick Wilson, who until recently served double-duty as Saint Andrew’s Executive Chef and House Manager, reengineered the menu to appeal to all diners at once. “‘Club Fare’ selections, on the left side of the menu, are the more traditional items,” says Wilson, who presented at C&RB’s 2010 Chef to Chef Conference in Palm Beach, Fla. “These include New York sirloin, filet mignon, pork chops and salmon, all with salad plus vegetables and a potato, and all at normal club pricing.
“On the right side,” Wilson says, “is the ‘Modern Fare’ menu, featuring smaller portions, more unique dishes, and lower prices.” Featured selections include a quick sauté of sole or seared hangar steak over baby greens, plus Saga bleu cheese (a zesty blend of brie and bleu), caramelized pecans and a pistachio citrus vinaigrette.
“These items are designed for quick prep and affordable, fast service, but not like the casual sandwiches in the bar,” adds Wilson. “Our members are constantly on the go, and we need to make fast service available to them as well as take-out options.”
Saint Andrew’s changes up the Modern Fare menu every Thursday, but stays prepared to tweak it again for that week’s Friday and Saturday service if, for example, the kitchen runs out of a specific fish that was ordered for those three days. To showcase the Modern Fare selections to their best advantage, Wilson recently purchased white china, including rectangular, oblong and serpentine shapes. “Our sushi-grade tuna, seared very rare and served over seaweed salad, looks great on the serpentine plate,” he says.
The Club Fare menu, on the other hand, doesn’t change much, since the “Old Guard” wants and expects those items, Wilson notes.
A stylish casual comfort food offered at Isleworth CC is the Southern-fried, buttermilk-marinated chicken with braised greens, succotash and mustard pan gravy (recipe here). |
Clubs Within a Club
Saint Andrew’s even extends its quest to provide something for everyone to the most traditional fare of all: the club sandwich. At lunchtime, a traditional club sandwich takes center stage, but several updated and casual twists are also offered; in fact, “The Club Sandwich” is featured in its own section of the club’s menu, with each made-to-order selection plated with coleslaw, potato chips and a giant pickle.
At Saint Andrew’s, the turkey club is currently the top sandwich seller, helped by servers’ promotion of how the meat is fresh-roasted in-house, from a bone-in turkey breast, each morning. The turkey club is menued with Aussie sun tomatoes, an Australian product that’s halfway between sun-dried and fresh, and boasts a high moisture content as well as concentrated flavor. “We puree the tomatoes for a roasted tomato mango salsa we use on the club,” Wilson explains.
To further utilize product that appears on the regular menu and help contain food costs, Saint Andrew’s menus a salmon club that’s sautéed to order and served with dill mayonnaise, as well as a roast beef club with horseradish mayo, prepared from beef that’s also roasted in-house each morning. Bacon, the indispensable club sandwich staple, is also baked off fresh each day—and any leftovers are incorporated into staff meals, pasta dishes, and soups. “It’s not revolutionary and we don’t reinvent the wheel, but ‘clubs’ at the club have taken off,” Wilson asserts.
Casual Flair
Executive Chef Russell Scott III, a Certified Master Chef, serves about 400 members at Isleworth Country Club in Windermere, Fla. Having worked in an array of restaurants, hotels and clubs for more than three decades, Scott (“Adding to the Bounty,” C&RB, November 2007) thoroughly enjoys writing menus for this unique small club, which members think of as their second home and where they often dine three to six times a week.
With that much repeat business, it’s especially important for Scott to keep the menu mix fresh at Isleworth. The club offers three dining venues, each with its own menu: Windows on the Green, with its breathtaking views of the golf course; the Windermere Room, with views of Lake Louise and a menu featuring a marriage of gourmet cuisine and casual elegance; and the Champions Grill.
Saint Andrew’s GC’s sushi-grade yellow fin tuna is dusted with Nori Fumi Furikake (rice seasoning) then seared in sesame oil, and served with pickled ginger, wasabi, soy sauce, and a seaweed salad. |
“A number of my colleagues in the industry have an eclectic approach to their fine-dining menu,” Scott asserts. “But on the casual menu there are so many neat applications, platescapes and pairings you can do.” From time to time, Scott menus smoked salmon, or grilled or poached tuna in sandwich form, served charred with lettuce, tomato, bacon and mayo on toasted bread—much like the classic club, only reengineered.
Again playing on the sandwich theme, Scott also breads eggplant in panko, frying up three crispy pieces to layer with rare charred tuna, sun-dried tomatoes, wasabi mayo, grilled onion and baby greens, plus smoked salmon (or smoked eel or smoked onions). All of the ingredients are stacked and then cut in half, to display the colorful layers. This could be billed as a “grilled ahi club,” Scott points out, but it’s presented as a “knife-and-fork thing,” menued as an eggplant and charred ahi Napoleon.
“My guideline for the dinner menu is to provide an environment—including uniforms, ambiance and menu—that offers a little finer approach than casual; hamburger is not on the menu, but a guest can ask for it,” he notes.
That said, Scott doesn’t ignore the current popularity of sliders. He’s taken a casual burger and made it small enough to fit the appetizer-portion side of the evening menu. “We use venison or Kobe, utilizing some end pieces that can’t really equal a steak,” he says. “We serve them on baked-in-house potato buns or Parker House rolls made without the fold, for a flat shape that’s cut as biscuits. We tailor the other ingredients to what’s available—perhaps rock shrimp with a Cajun remoulade, or mustard mayo and baby greens.”
While Isleworth is renowned for its fine art collection—about $30 million worth is on display at any given time, including works by Henry Moore and Fernando Botero—dinnerware is kept traditionally understated, to allow the food to be the focus of the plate.
At Isleworth’s pool order window, the lunch menu is standard sit-down fare, including sandwich and salad options as well as traditional protein/starch plates. “We don’t do much volume there, since our members enjoy the air conditioning in the summer months,” Scott says. But he quickly adds that guests can ask for and get anything, if available.
Isleworth CC’s Grilled Miso marinated tofu, shiitake mushroom and scallion brochette is served over soba noodles. |
Laid-Back Luxury
At Fantasy Springs Resort & Casino in Indio, Calif., approximately 3,000 meals are served per day in a constellation of six restaurants. At The Bistro, the most elegant yet cozy venue, the menu is a blend of French, American and Pacific Rim cuisine; here, a prime Kobe beef burger, served with heirloom tomatoes on a brioche bun with tempura-battered steak fries, is the most casual item. “That was added a few years ago, for guests seeking a high-end restaurant experience but still wanting ‘casual’ food,” says Executive Chef Freddy Rieger.
Another of the resort’s eateries, POM, is Fantasy Springs’ casual American concept, offering meals for all dayparts. The concept of POM is simple: serve the freshest and healthiest ingredients, creatively prepared to pique all the senses and presented eloquently, with attention to detail.
Everything at POM changes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, including uniforms, music and even the table colors, Rieger reports. The odd-shaped menu has some items boxed out, such as Vegetable 4 (i.e., to the 4th power), featuring innovative vegetarian preparations served on white china. The four dishes include: 1) wild mushroom soufflé; 2) spinach Agnolotti (stuffed crescent-shaped ravioli); 3) roasted vegetable risotto; and 4) thin asparagus/roasted garlic.
Although POM is a more casual venue, Rieger has played around with crab cakes, a guest favorite, and successfully transformed this menu staple into an upscale version, primarily because of how he plates it. Chef Freddy’s Crab Cakes feature three patties infused with Old Bay-flavored tartar sauce, skewered to stand upright, and served with a vinegar-based, Southern-style slaw.
Recently, Rieger added another box on the POM menu, simply headed “Brunch”; it includes five or six breakfast items—available all day long—such as omelettes, French toast, and Belgian waffles. The dinner menu boasts a smaller box, “Breakfast for Dinner,” featuring Steak & Eggs ($14) and an omelette with sauteed spinach, Swiss chard and wild mushrooms.
“In a gaming world, some folks may sleep all day and get up at 5 PM, looking for breakfast,” Rieger notes. And that’s just another reason why casual dining has become a 24/7 affair.
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