Food for your thoughts the next time you see menu prices and get annoyed:

Restaurants’ raw ingredient costs have increased 26% in the last 4 years.

Menu price increases in the same time period average 2.6% – exactly 1/10 of the differential.

In the real world, how does that play out? Let’s say a dish was on the menu for $19.  The raw food cost on that item was probably around $8.  That left $11 for the restaurant to pay rent, bills, servers, cooks, insurance, et cetera.

NOW the dish costs $20 and you’ve noticed.  However, the food costs are now $10.  Two dollars have flipped in this deal – you’re paying $1 more but the restaurant is “getting” $1 less.  For the restaurant to still be making their $11 (of which about 50 cents to a dollar will be actual profit), they’d have to price the dish at $21 or more.  No one wins, but the restaurant is still cutting you a break.

Sucks, right?  Well, we are in a recession and you can choose how you spend your money.

My request for you is to consider spending your less-frequent dining dollars locally.  Instead of $30 for pizzas from a national chain, get take-out from Johnny’s.  Or delivery from Giovanni’s or Straight Up Pizza.  Or have a sit-down meal at The Grill and plan your next special occasion at the next-door spot, Jennifer James 101.

With many restaurants operating on a 3 or 4% profit margin, this means there are a lot of small local spots that are trying to just survive this recession, raising prices a tiny bit or not at all while making no money – possibly even losing money for awhile hoping to not have to drive away customers that are having their own wallet-pinching woes.

Go.  Visit your favorite local restaurant, where the cooks are visible, the owner circulating (if they’re not the same person!), and the patrons nearly all regulars.  Thank them for the service they provide and let them know you hope they’ll be around for a long time.

Then, tip well after you enjoy a great meal, even if it won’t all go to your server if the restaurant practices tip-pooling.  Know that you are making a difference in both your local economy as well as a small business owner’s success.

“This is my complete and utter obsession.”

One of the guys in the band Beirut spent nearly all of a recent interview waxing, pining, and gushing about his absolute love and addiction for New Mexico chiles.  Though he was born here and visits twice yearly, the poor dude lives in Brooklyn.  The article included a link to someone’s blog showing a large variety of our beloved dishes, which is kind of a nice summary.

Sounds like we might need to seduce his band to come out (again?) and play the Sunshine or something local and then ply him with tons of the good green stuff.  Or, Mary & Tito’s for some mind-blowing red. I know he already gets it, but hey, more chile is always better, right?

I love to hear when folks that “get it” with the chile thing talk publicly about their addiction after they’ve moved to another city.  He’s very disparaging about Tex-Mex, which is awesome:

“You can’t find [New Mexico Chile] anywhere else in the world, let alone the southwest, and it always gets overshadowed with, you know, like Austin bragging about their fucking breakfast tacos like it was the biggest invention of the century and that kind of thing.”

Just recently found this roundup of diner’s annoyances on a midwestern food blog.  Not a bad site, actually.  It almost makes me want to fly Northwestern/Delta *and* have a hideous layover so I can investigate the Minneapolis food scene.  (Not.)  (I mean “not” on the layover/Delta part, not the Minneapolis part.)

There is even a nice little website gem in there, applicable to every goddam restaurant website on the planet.  Hear, hear:

“The whole point of having a website is to disseminate your address, hours, contact information, and reservations policy. List ‘em. List ‘em prominently. Keep them current. Do not bury them behind a 30-second Flash introduction with music.”

Many of the grievances are about information and the lack thereof:

• disclose prices, from “extra sauce” to the daily special
• if hot food is ow-ow-ow-omigod-hot!, warn diners but don’t “protect” them from spicy food
• warn about portion sizes – if they are huge and a table of 4 is about to receive 12 pounds of food, it is really courteous for the waiter to notice this when orders are taken and to give the table a heads up

In a scant two weeks Santa Fe will play host to a massive food festival:  The Santa Fe Harvest Festival.

Bringing together everything from farm advocates to the highest chichi restaurant chefs, it will be three weeks of crap to do – starting on November 1st and concluding on November 23rd.  Here’s a short list:

• TONS of cooking classes all over the city
• Chef competitions
• Amateur (that means YOU) cooking competitions
• Cocktail competitions
• Discounts at local restaurants (minimum discount is 10%, but that includes places like Coyote Cafe!)
• Grand finale dinner (extra charge)
• Food & Wine Expo with 50 vendors

A basic pass to everything but the big meal and the Expo is $35 – a great bargain that includes a $10 donation to Cooking With Kids, a pretty nifty organization that teaches a BASIC LIFE SKILL to young’uns.  The super-mondo pass is $160 but that includes both the Expo (normally $50), and the huge dinner ($175 on its own).

And, STAY to the management and kitchen staff as they transition over to the Italian theme of Gregorio’s under the helm of Matt DiGregory.  It’s the same people as Rodeo Grill, which are the same people as The Range, and the same as Standard Diner.

Here’s my issue:  They’ve been open ONE WEEK.  Urbanspoon already has 4 reviews both great and bad.  Give it some time, folks . . . even experienced restauranteurs need time to get things flowing.  Go visit, take notes, wait, go back, think about it…. and then post a review.

Thanks.

P.S. I’m not saying that Gregorio’s is getting any different treatment than most new and hyped joints in town, but this one happened so quickly that I wanted to object in public to the general practice of lobbing critique at brand new restaurants.