"nations restaurant news" news and stories

Hey, Stella!: You made it into the 2010 Fine Dining Hall of Fame from Nation's Restaurant News. Joining Stella -- Times-Picayune critic Brett Anderson's favorite upscale dining spot in New Orleans -- are Chicago's perennial winner-of-awards, Alinea (best restaurant in America, according to Gourmet, in 2006), with Grant Achatz (above) named Outstanding Chef of 2008 by the James Beard Foundation); Melisse, Josiah Citrin's seminal French dining room in Santa Monica; and Thomas Keller's New York Haute spot, Per Se.

Hey, Lidia, you got an award, too. Lidia Bastianich, that is -- host of TV's Lidia's Italy and owner of New York's Felidia restaurant, was honored as a Fine Dining Legend by the magazine.

Once again, longtime restaurateur Mildred Pierce walked away with nothing, making her the Susan Lucci of the resto biz.

What's going on behind the venerable ramparts of White Castle?

As Nation's Restaurant News reports, it appears that the chain is looking to be home to more than just its oddly addictive little sliders. It's testing three different restaurant-within-a-restaurant concepts, trying its hand at a strangely diverse mix of fast-food fare: barbecue, pressed club sandwiches, and "Americanized Asian noodles."

Taken together, it kind of looks like company executives simply headed down to the food court at their local mall and had an epiphany: "Hey, we could do all this!"

Inside one of its restaurants in Lafayette, Indiana, White Castle recently opened Blaze, which it bills as "modern barbecue." (We have no clue what they mean by "modern" here; presumably they won't be serving mastodons on a spit.) According to the online menu, Blaze offers a range of barbecue staples, from pulled chicken to brisket, and traditional sides (baked beans, mashed potatoes, etc.).

Dining out hasn't exactly turned into the robotic push-button experience portrayed in "The Jetsons," but today's restaurant technology is definitely creeping into futuristic territory. Handheld ordering systems, automated dumpling kiosks and radio-controlled sushi monitors? They're not just cool ideas -- they're already in use.

Despite the creaky economy, enthusiasm for innovation was high at last week's Foodservice Technology Conference and Showcase in Long Beach, California. "I had a sense that it was more optimistic than it was a year ago," says Alan Liddle, Managing Editor of Nation's Restaurant News, which produces the conference. He participated in a panel highlighting some of the coolest new innovations popping up at restaurants across the country -- and this stuff is definitely cutting-edge.

You might have seen servers using clunky held-held ordering systems at big chain restaurants, but it's rare to find them in high-end eateries. At The Bazaar, a luxe Los Angeles hotspot, waiters are sporting James-Bond-like Motorola MC50 terminals that resemble nothing so much as large wristwatches. "They make it easy to efficiently field orders and keep the servers around the guests," says Liddle. "The staff can be more helpful and provide service as opposed to running back and forth to terminals to enter orders in the back room or hiding around the dining room."