If asked to name the restaurant I would eat at for ever and ever and ever, I might actually choose one that I’ve yet to visit.  It’s tiny, it’s cramped, the owner is a jerk (sometimes), and if you don’t play by the rules you’ll find yourself wondering if you stumbled into the Seinfeld Soup Nazi episode.

Yes, my choice is Shopsins.

How can you argue – especially if you are the indecisive sort like myself – with a menu that offers hundreds of options though no substitutions are allowed; this ensures that no matter what you order at a meal you have plenty of other choices to pick from as the rest of your life transpires and you realize that choosing the absolute BEST restaurant you’ve ever enjoyed really would have been too limiting.  (And if it truly is the REST of your life, I expect sushi to be gone as a viable foodstuff in the next 10-20 years so that definitely leaves out all the great sushi joints.)

Now, a fabulous Japanese place, on the other hand… that could be pretty good.

Oh yeah, remember that talk we had about crappy restaurant websites?  Shopsins.com breaks the rules in that they are so unbelievably well-known that their website is free to be just a weird as it is.  But that’s in addition to the fact that they HAVE their address and phone number and hours in plain text right on the main page.  Thank you, Kenny Shopsin.

What happens when you are thinking of visiting a restaurant and you are just a little picky about what you eat?

You go to their website to look at the menu, of course.

But what if they have a page on their site that says, “We update our menu frequently, so CLICK HERE to see our latest menu”, and the menu link is from 2008?

Do you still go? Do you call them and ask them to update their site? Do you email them and threaten to boycott? Post a list of all offending restaurant sites to try to get them to sharpen up, or post a list of GOOD sites as motivation? Embark on a campaign of blogging about the problem?

I’m considering a few of these options – using my “evil powers” for good, as it were. I know a lot of non-picky eaters who could care less about the menu, but what if it were the HOURS of operation from 2008? That’s a bit more serious. Or a note that if your posted hours are until 5 but you close your kitchen at 4:30? In my mind, your “hours of operation” are the hours during which you will SEAT and SERVE any customer.

Your feedback is wanted – let’s make restaurant websites better!

Part One of my “Good Restaurants” series.

Of course, this can be applied in many cases to all businesses, but since I typically deal with restaurants, I’ll put the focus on them.

GOOGLE YOURSELF – if you like what you see, great. If you don’t, you can some ability to change it. If you don’t see any relevant results AT ALL, start working on it immediately – your survival could depend on it.

If there’s one thing that annoys me about *any* business (and of course, there ain’t one thing, there’s usually lots of things…), it is the inability to EASILY find out hours of operation.

Assuming you have a working phone number and address, when someone calls you, if they don’t hear a live person answering, the very first thing they should hear is, “thank you for calling ZZZ.  Our hours of operation are:  YYY”.  It should be plastered on your front window, on every piece of paper you publish from biz cards to menus.  It should be on your WEBSITE in text (that might be Part Two).   And it should be in your YELP and GOOGLE pages – you as the business owner can control those pages – do so, especially if you don’t have a website.

Good businesses do this, and good luck to the rest….

The Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail is now officially done and a must-have for those in-state travelers searching for unique and delicious burgers.

Yet, if you wanted to make your own, you could add the ideal cheese for melting – American.  Or, you can go a little more upscale and flavorful, even if the results won’t be quite as silky in the end.

I think you cannot go wrong with a cheesemaker that’s a mere few miles from where I grew up in America’s Dairyland:  Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa, WI.

Getting a big ol’ pile of shrink-wrapped bars is a holiday tradition, but you can have the delicious love, too – their prices online are identical to in the store.  You’ll only pay shipping, and they’re even pretty cheap in that regard, too!

For the top of the line, 10 year aged Cheddar is as rich and decadent as Parmesan, for slivers on a salad or whatever use you can dream up.  On burgers, I’d probably go a little more mellow, like Provolone, salty and tender.

Here’s to green chile meets meat meets cheese!