By Samuel J. Voss, sous chef, Isle Casino Hotel Bettendorf
Kicking off a new menu can be very stressful as most chefs would agree. Providing a high level of service and quality can be demanding. But when we see our customers leave pleased, we all feel rewarded.
Chili Lime Glazed Shrimp
Planning a new menu can also be very time consuming. However, executing it properly and setting goals makes for an easy transition. Involving my staff and servers made for some really interesting input, but I think we made it a success. My goal was to be able to create a menu that could reach out to a larger demographic and appeal to all sorts of budgets.
As a chef, I tend to dabble into many different informational sources to keep an ‘updated’ idea on what’s happening in the culinary world. There still seems to be the same trend in every article—‘house made’. Just as micro-breweries have been popping up everywhere and becoming more and more popular, I think that restaurants that focus their efforts on exceptionally great food and service with a good value are becoming more and more of a neighborhood staple. This is exactly where I want to be so when creating the new Farraddays’ menu, a great amount of focus was turned to the ‘house made’ aspect.
Citrus Salmon Salad
It’s often times hard to source just the right products but, given the culinary knowledge of me and my staff, we were able to create just about everything. Believe me, when we were able to print ‘house made’ in just about every menu description and then see our guests enjoy it, we all feel very proud of what we do.
Where on earth can you get a prime grade, course ground steak burger with a buttery brioche bun and hand cut steak fries for $9.95? Believe me it’s hard. But we now have it at Farraddays’. We are also featuring ‘house made’ tapas-style meatballs in a Spanish-style sauce with toasted artisan bread. And something fun is our Asian Chicken Tacos with peanut glazed chicken and Asian slaw stuffed inside fried won ton shells. We feature fresh ‘house made’ soups and we always hand cut our steaks daily.
This is what cooking is all about and I’m proud that I get to share it with a great staff and loyal guests!
The new menu is now available.
For more information about Isle Casino Hotel Bettendorf, visit us online.
