My restaurant will need to strike a balance between comforting food people are used to and exciting new food for the more adventurous diner. Comforting familiar food works great, look at Denny's, McDonald's and the countless Diner-type restaurants. Exciting food works great too, look at the massive popularity of ethnic (besides italian, french and chinese) and vegetarian cuisine which challenges the consumer to try new things. There are also places that strike a balance between the two and do quite well, though they are usually more upscale establishments who carry the "F" word in their descriptions (fusion). Fusion has been popular for the past few years but many chefs dislike it because it is frequently poorly executed by other members of the profession (think spaghetti filled samosas). A far better way of combining the cuisines of different cultures is simply to serve a variety of classic dishes from around the world. Juniper in Ottawa, the restaurant I *may* be working at this summer does just this, they combine excitement with familiarity simply by listing both types of items on the menu. When I was there I had curried samosas (somewhat exciting) as an appetizer, shrimp gumbo for soup (also exciting for me because I'd never had gumbo before) and an entree of beef tenderloin fillet steak with gravy and scalloped potatoes (familiar, comforting, delicious). So as you can see you can even combine these feelings in different ways in the same meal. Here's the thing, I want everyone to be happy at my restaurant, that's kinda the whole point isn't it? I want to be able to eat there with my friend Josh who might order a boring pasta dish while I'm slurping down a big bowl of spicy Pho. I want to eat garlicky mussels while my friend Sean who dislikes garlic (madman!) munches down a plate of pad thai. And of course there's the old vegetarian girlfriend but I think my taste for meat is slowly fading just a bit so we'll be sure to have loadsa veggie grub on hand. (are grubs vegetarian?)

Is this possible? Can I do it? We've seen restaurant after restaurant go under because they diversified too much. The seedy bar that started serving sushi? Gone. The Mexican Cantina that tried to hook it's customers on truffles and champagne? Kaput. Maybe I should set my sights a little lower and open a bar that serves Labatt Blue and shitty nachos... NEVER!!!!! Besides, our generation and the one after us are going to start to *expect* diversity on the menu. More and more people are waking up to the fact that not only is eating mashed potatoes, steak and gravy every day horribly unhealthy but it's less fun too! The Food Network is largely responsible for this, chefs are celebrities now and chefs say you should eat interesting foods and apparantly we always do what celebrities say. It's all falling into place...

Sidenote: I had a black bean casadia roll at the bishop and the belcher on queen yesterday, it was good and a neat idea to boot.