Advantage: Home Kitchen

[Fat Guy]

There are a lot of foods that are difficult if not impossible to make at home as well as the restaurant and commercial versions. Anything deep fried, anything baked in a bread or pizza oven, anything requiring the heat of a commercial broiler, ice cream, etc. It's possible for a devoted cook to do some of these things well at home with considerable jerry rigging or other inconvenience, but it's an uphill battle.

A conversation with the restaurateur Drew Nieporent last night got me thinking about the flipside of that proposition, though: what are the things that are hard for restaurants to do as well as we can do them in the home kitchen?

The example we were talking about was hamburgers. It's not easily feasible for a restaurant to hand grind and season a small batch of meat, form patties gently by hand to order, and cook them carefully in a cast-iron skillet. Even the most celebrated hamburger places either have their meat ground off premises or do it all in big batches before service. Without any particular skill, you can make a hamburger at home that's better than what you'll get at most any restaurant.

What else?

[patris]

Perhaps too simple, but a true pleasure when done right: hot, crispy toast, thoroughly buttered. Never had perfect toast in a restaurant, regardless of the quality of the other meal components.

[Pierogi]

...anything requiring the heat of a commercial broiler, ice cream, etc....

I'd argue right off the bat that homemade ice cream beats any commercial ice cream out there. I know I've made some excellent batches, and I'm still fairly new at the game. Homemade ice cream is also incredibly easy these days, with the stash-in-the-freezer bowls. I have the one for the Kitchen Aid mixer, and aside from planning ahead, its no big project. And its way, way, WAY better than even the priciest commercial stuff.

But I'll certainly give you the 'burger argument.

[Fat Guy]

Perhaps too simple, but a true pleasure when done right: hot, crispy toast, thoroughly buttered. Never had perfect toast in a restaurant, regardless of the quality of the other meal components.

I must agree. The production requirements in restaurants invariably ruin toast.

[Chris Hennes]

I'm not sure I can agree about ice cream: made at home is better than the kind you buy at the grocery store, sure. But I've had some really incredible ice creams at restaurants. If the pastry chef is good, there is no reason a restaurant can't turn out an ice cream every bit as good as what we make at home.

Anything that requires fresh tortillas will be better at home: I have never been to a restaurant that was capable of turning out truly fresh tortillas, essentially a la minute, with each order. Maybe at the very high end?

[Joe Blowe]

Gentlemen, I submit to you The Humble Tuna Sandwich.

(Which is probably more sentimental than anything else, but I have yet to find a restaurant/deli tuna sandwich that is better than my own.)

 

 

 

Edited to add: Tuna on toast. Now top that

Edited July 29, 2010 by Joe Blowe (log)

[Fat Guy]

The ice cream question is an interesting one, and I think parallels a few other products especially sweets. If you live in a place where your access is limited to supermarket brands, you can make better ice cream at home. I have not tasted homemade ice cream as good, however, as what they make at the better restaurants and gelateria-type places using the best ingredients (which are available to the home cook, but the same rule applies: you don't get Valrhona chocolate at the local mini-mart) and professional equipment (which most home cooks don't have).

[Chris Hennes]

Gentlemen, I submit to you The Humble Tuna Sandwich.

(Which is probably more sentimental than anything else, but I have yet to find a restaurant/deli tuna sandwich that is better than my own.)

An interesting point: I have definitely never had a tuna sandwich, and especially a tuna melt as good as what I make at home. But is that because there is some advantage to making it at home? Or is it just that we actually give a shit when making it ourselves, whereas at a diner or other sort of place that might serve a tuna sandwich, the standards just aren't very high?

[Fat Guy]

I think tuna sandwiches fall into the category of "things where personal preference overshadows all other considerations." As is the case with a lot of breakfast foods, people simple prefer the tuna sandwich they're used to. There are a couple of places in New York City, like Tom Colicchio's 'wichcraft, that make tuna sandwiches that are from a pure ingredients standpoint much better than what most people are likely to be able to produce at home. But it's not *my* tuna-salad sandwich. It's something else entirely.

[IndyRob]

I was thinking about pizza. The importance of a pizza oven varies wildly depending on the type of pizza you're making (extremely important for a NY style, to almost irrelevant for a Chicago style). Much more important for most styles is the control you have in your dough handling. A chain pizza store is making and balling a lot of dough well beforehand (often stopping and resuming after interruptions) and can't always control exactly when the dough is made, proofed or used - whereas at home we can control it precisely.

But I guess the more general point is being able to control the timing. At home we generally know well in advance what will be served when.

[inductioncook]

In Italy, pizza is viewed as one of the things you can't make at home, unless you have your own wood burning terra cotta oven!

Edited July 29, 2010 by inductioncook (log)

[Fat Guy]

Yes it's not all that hard to beat Pizza Hut at home. It's more complicated to compete with a wood-fired stone oven.

[IndyRob]

Yes it's not all that hard to beat Pizza Hut at home. It's more complicated to compete with a wood-fired stone oven.

Again, depending on the type of pizza you're going for. I know NYC style charred crusts are loved by many, but they don't necessarily play well elsewhere . There are Sicilian, Neopolitan, Californian, Midwestern, Chicago, cracker, etc., style pizzas. Most of these do not require (or even desire) a blast furnace. I'm not trying to disrespect NYC style pizza, just not relegating everything else to Pizza Hut status.

[Kent Wang]

Anything that requires fresh tortillas will be better at home: I have never been to a restaurant that was capable of turning out truly fresh tortillas, essentially a la minute, with each order. Maybe at the very high end?

I think it's common in Mexico. Itanoni in Oaxaca City turns out them out fresh to order, and it's a pretty cheap place. It's really beautiful and delicious and the best tortilla I've ever had. I've been told that all over the countryside in Oaxaca you can find even better.

[Shalmanese]

Risotto

Edited July 29, 2010 by Shalmanese (log)

[dougal]

Product Description

A celebration of home cooking by the chef at one of London's top British restaurants. 'Some things are better cooked in restaurants: that's why people go to them. But the converse is equally true. There are plenty of dishes that no restaurant does properly.' Distinguished chef and food writer Rowley Leigh places these dishes at the heart of his first book. ...

No Place Like Home - by Rowley Leigh first published 2000.

... but its not everyone's idea of home cooking!

[Paul Stanley]

1. Roast meat (except very small roast birds). They take to long to cook to order, and if cooked in advance and in any way reheated they are grim. I daresay in theory a busy restaurant dedicated to the art might make a go of it, but my experience is not good.

2. Risotto. I think this one might be controversial, perhaps -- and it's certainly possible to get good risotto in restaurants. But the *best* risotto takes just too long for restaurants to produce. I think home-made is usually better.

3. Meat pies (of the steak-and-kidney variety). Again the problem is cooking time. A hot pie wants 45 minutes or so cooking, and doesn't benefit from reheating once cooked. Too long for a restaurant. The result is short-cuts, such as "faux" pies which are really just splashes of stew with a pre-cooked top popped on later. A nicely garnished braise, but not a pie.

4. True saute dishes, the sort that take around half an hour to 45 minutes to make (such as chicken with morels, or with bacon onions and mushrooms). The point of these dishes is that plenty of chicken cooks with the other ingredients for just long enough to meld them into a dish (about half an hour, probably). A restaurant is almost bound to produce something which cooks chicken and sauce separately, and that (while good) is not as good.

5. Almost anything involving really freshly cooked eggs, because the timing has to be so spot on and then they need to be served at once. (That's why a diner breakfast is so often better than breakfast in a grand hotel.) I'd agree with toast as well, for more or less the same reasons.

These dishes have one of three characteristics: (1) they require split-second timing and instant eating (eggs and toast) which most restaurants can't do very easily or (2) they have a cooking time from start to finish of 20+ minutes and require constant attention (risotto, saute dishes, pies) but don't reheat well and/or (3) they benefit from being cooked in "family-size" quantities (saute dishes, roasts) and can't be reheated in smaller quantities.

The limiting factor on restaurants in other words is not so much equipment (which tends to be the problem in the household kitchen), but more whether the timetable for their preparation fits restaurant conditions.

[BadRabbit]

Country Fried Steak (aka chicken fried steak)

For similar reasons to those Fat Guy gave for hamburgers, I think country fried steak is difficult if not totally impossible to be done right in a restaurant.

a) Home-cubed steak made from excellent cuts of meat would not be feasible in a restaurant. Especially given that you can't charge much for the dish as it's the farthest thing away from haute cuisine.

b) Breading needs to be done on cubed steak right before frying to get the proper crust. Most restaurants are going to either buy it pre-breaded or have some sitting there breaded for a while waiting to go into the fryer. Again, in a high end restaurant, proper breading technique might be feasible but the dish is unlikely to show up there.

c) Southern gravy held in a steam table always congeals too quickly once plated and is generally unpalatable by the time it gets to the table. The only way to get the gravy just right is to plate immediately upon finishing the gravy in the pan.

Sorry to go all southern on y'all.

Edited July 29, 2010 by BadRabbit (log)

[Chris Hennes]

Interesting: if you are ever in Oklahoma City stop by Cheever's and try their chicken fried steak: I think it's excellent, but I'm not a Southerner (I just live here).

[BadRabbit]

Interesting: if you are ever in Oklahoma City stop by Cheever's and try their chicken fried steak: I think it's excellent, but I'm not a Southerner (I just live here).

I will. It certainly sounds interesting. I guess I stand corrected that the processes are not feasible for a restaurant. I can honestly say that here in the deep south I've never seen it on a contemporary menu. It's generally only found at "meat & 3" places and chicken joints.

[Moopheus]

I have not tasted homemade ice cream as good, however, as what they make at the better restaurants and gelateria-type places using the best ingredients (which are available to the home cook, but the same rule applies: you don't get Valrhona chocolate at the local mini-mart) and professional equipment (which most home cooks don't have).

That's the thing--most commercial places--even dedicated ice cream shops and good restaurants, do not actually use the best ingredients. They all have to cut corners somewhere unless they are charging a crazy high price. I've never had a coffee ice cream, for instance, that tasted as good as what I make--I can't imagine a commercial shop using as much coffee, from good roasters, as I do. They almost all use stabilizers and emulsifiers. There are some very good ice creams out there, but they are not that hard to beat. The number of commercial establishments that serve really top-notch ice cream is very small.

One place that home machines do fall down is that they generally can't freeze very fast, or give you any real control over factors like overrun.

[Fat Guy]

Pizza: It's not so much a question of New York style. The overwhelming majority of pizza in New York City is baked in standard-issue metal pizza ovens. It's more an issue of Neapolitan or related brick/stone-oven styles. Those are quite hard to replicate if you don't have a specialized pizza oven. That it's possible to bake a deep-dish pizza in any old oven doesn't change that.

Ice cream: Most homemade ice cream I've had has been defective in terms of texture, even when made with first-rate ingredients. Without professional equipment it's very hard to get it right. And while it's relatively easy to do better than supermarket brands just by using better ingredients, I've never had homemade ice cream that's competitive with the ice cream that comes out of a good restaurant kitchen or gelateria. The equipment difference is almost insurmountable.

[therippa]

I don't think I can make a sorbet at home that is restaurant quality in texture, but the ice creams I make using the base recipe that's shared in the adhoc/tfl/bouchon cookbooks rival the stuff I've had in great restaurants, some industry friends of mine agree. Then again, it has $10 worth of high-fat dairy products and a dozen eggs in each quart, so of course it's going to be delicious :-)

[paulraphael]

I'm not sure I can agree about ice cream: made at home is better than the kind you buy at the grocery store, sure. But I've had some really incredible ice creams at restaurants. If the pastry chef is good, there is no reason a restaurant can't turn out an ice cream every bit as good as what we make at home.

True that. The only homemade ice creams I've had that rivaled the best at restaurants were made at home by pastry chefs (or home cooks who have trained under them).

Anything that requires fresh tortillas will be better at home: I have never been to a restaurant that was capable of turning out truly fresh tortillas, essentially a la minute, with each order. Maybe at the very high end?

Yes, at the high end. And I've been to some lower end places that have a kid cranking out tortillas to order. I'm no tortilla connoisseur, but these places made better ones than I ever have.

[menuinprogress]

Real smoked barbecue.

Anyone with a cheap smoker can put out a better product than what passes for barbecue at restaurants in most metropolitan areas where they either can't or can't be bothered to do it right.