If you're a chef in a next life, which would you choose??

[Zurie]

If we're foodies, we all dream dreams at some stage, of having this little nook or that famous place ...

If you could do it all over again (your life, to choose what you like!) which would you choose? (Just for fun! )

Most of these choices would have a liquor license and so be able to sell wine, or glasses of house wines.

1) A coffee shop with nothing more complicated than cakes, muffins and tarts.

2) A casual place which opens no earlier than 10.30am, and serves gorgeous quiches and amazing salads for lunch, with choices of sweets such as choc mousse cake -- and close at 4pm.

3) A fish restaurant on the coast, where sandy-footed people can fall in and have fish-and-chips, British style -- or fried calamari, or a seafood platter ... All kinds of delightful fishy plates, plus salads.

4) A small place selling only sandwiches and its relatives, with maybe coffee and tea.

5) A fancy, grand restaurant which is serious about fine dining. You love beautifully-plated food and have a great talent for innovative flavours and dishes.

6) A small wheeled van, which you move from place to place, and from which you sell simple hotdogs.

7) A 24 hour "junk food" joint serving truckers and other people who might turn up for a bite at 2am.

8. A serious vegetarian restaurant (plus vegan choices) to show people how good you can eat without meat (or wheat, come to that).

9) A pizza-and-pasta place, fast-serve, and get those bums off the seats quickly!

Can you add to this list?

[apinchofflavor]

Number 2 or 3 I guess. Ive done both before and they really are fun to work at. Having a nice small place that serves basic but delicious food is always fun. You get to meet your clientele and have conversations regularly with them.

On the other hand There can be more money in the fish place by the shore and I guess I've been in Colorado too long because I miss living on the ocean. I love the people and absolutely love the food and suppliers.

[Zurie]

Hello and welcome, Pinch of Flavour!!

So, you've done it before? You're brave! I do think you need an overdose of energy to keep an eating place going!

Well ... I'm on the sea, and I also think I'd have loved to have a casual seafood restaurant!

It's just a bit worrying to me that fresh fish is becoming scarce. It always scares the heck out of me when I see photos of Seattle's Pike Place market where they sell fish, or the Tokyo Fish Market ... At that rate we're stripping the oceans.

[Chocolatl]

Does a pizza-and-pasta place HAVE to be a quick in-and-out? We have a place here in town that serves pizza and pasta, and it's a very pleasant family restaurant where you can take your time finishing your meal. I think I'd like to do something like that, if I could.

[VeggieCook98]

Hmmmm........ I say #2, #3, and #8.

[Zurie]

Veggie Cook, you want ALL three at once, or just one?

[VeggieCook98]

I couldn't decide! If I could handle it, I'd have all three

[I'mPat]

How about a bakery where they make bread the old fashioned way in a wood oven - I have fond memories of when we were on holiday in the South West of Western Australia and a place called Pemberton and we would walk through the khari tree forest to the bakers at 5 o'clock in the morning and buy warm fresh bread rolls and site at the outside tables (big wooden ones with planked bench seating) and there would be fresh crocks of butter and knifes on the tables and you would eat your rolls or maybe sweet rolls or scones and then go back to the caravan park with fresh bread and full tum with smell of that freshly baked bread wafting in the fresh crisp air.


Pat

[Zurie]

Oh Pat, I am SOOO with you there!!

(By the way, hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Ours, with guests but unfortunately the kids and grands could not be here, was fine, and the food was great!)

Pat, there are a few -- very few -- bakeries like that scattered through South Africa.

In a lovely lake town called Knysna, not far from here, is such a bakery. People queue up from very early in the morning for the various breads, buns, croissants, ciabatta's, etc. By 10 - 11 am they're sold out!

My sister arrived here on the 24th with 2 ciabattas from such a bakery in a Port Elizabeth suburb -- superb. She and her DH only buy their bread there, even if they often have to freeze the breads to have on hand (they live outside the city).

But I do think such a hands-on, old-fashioned bakery is very hard work.

[I'mPat]

A couple of weeks ago a bakery fired upped about a 1/2 hours drive from us - a brick wood fired oven which was built about 140 years ago and had not been used for 60 years - the baker had to do some work on it (with the brickwork of it) to get it fired up and going (took him about 6 months to bring it up to cooking stage and took 2 days to get it up to temperature with wood before they could start cooking) and he is doing very traditional breads with starters etc, starting out small with a small range but hoping to expand. Hoping to get over there to have a look see.


Pat