The Menu is a Change'n

I thought this would be a perfect week to change some items on the WB menu. During a week where Thursday is just like the past up-teen third Thursdays in November for as long as you’ve been alive, usually tagged as tradition, I’ve done my small part to make something new available. While there is nothing revolutionary about these new items, they are items that are slightly more labor intensive, that take more attention than those they’ve replaced. Shortribs, gnocchi, meatballs all are labors of love, sure they are available IQF frozen with gravy packets in the bag, but that isn’t what we are doing. I’ll explain:

I wanted dearly to remove the tomato & motz salad, for obvious reasons, but from a financial standpoint it’s far and away our best selling salad, at a price point that couldn’t be ignored. I have matched it against a very hearty Greek Salad. Classic Greek salad ingredients, lettuce less, but instead of an oily vinaigrette we are dressing the vegetables with honey, and a red wine reduction.

Boneless beef shortribs are a no brainer this time of the year. I really enjoy the vegetables used in the braising, the ones we usually throw out. Instead I peel and clean them exceptionally well, and serve them as a "mashed braising vegetables" under the meat. Very nice with a drizzle of soy-truffle vinaigrette.
Truffle veal meatballs are a dish I’ve done before, and it tastes exceptionally well with a sage cream sauce. The cream sauce is heavy enough you can forgive me for leaving out the starch, but if you’d like a starch we would be happy to prepare a bread basket, or some spaghetti noddles for this dish.

The grilled shrimp as it appears on the current menu is gone, but not forgotten. It is a very nice dish, simple, easy to prepare, and very well received. I felt we needed to mix things up at the top of our sales chart though, and I felt comfortable changing a dish like the shrimp because customers who are looking for shrimp are willing to try it in various preparations. After all that, I got my arm twisted into adding back the grilled shrimp in conjunction with the tuna satay. The new version is as a soft taco with banana-bacon ‘guacamole’ a very fun flavor combination that went off fantastically well as a special.

Lastly we are adding a cheese plate consisting of 3 international cheeses hand selected from Dion’s Cheese Shop at the West Side Market. We receive most of our cheese from the Cheese Shop already, but I wanted to put a focus on a select few very upscale cheeses to offer people. Dion carries probably the nicest selection of cheeses around that are available in small quantities like you would buy for home. We will keep things simple with warm walnut bread and a fruit compote rounding out the cheese plate.

As for lunch, I’ve added 3 additional hot items to the menu, as well as a soup and sandwich combo. Lunch has been very challenging as of late, but I insist that our quality and standards are just as high for lunch as they are for dinner and everything is made from scratch, and nothing is deep fried.