Tag: restaurant
Toronto’s oldest family restaurant turns 100 this year
To celebrate their 100th anniversary, United Bakers Dairy Restaurant is asking customers to contribute stories for a booklet that will come out during a birthday celebration in May. Current owners Philip Ladovsky, who runs the dairy institution with his sister Ruthie, says they’ve already received wonderful submissions for the “Stories for One Hundred Years” project.
Aaron and Sarah Ladovsky started United Bakers downtown in 1912, first on Agnes St. (now Dundas St.) near Bay, and then on Spadina Ave. near what was then the Jewish neighbourhood of Kensington Market. Later Ladovsky’s dad, Herman, took over. The family opened a second branch in Lawrence Plaza, at 506 Lawrence Ave. W., near Bathurst St., in 1984, and shut down the Spadina location two years later.
The restaurant is renowned for its thick, vegetable-based soups. The green split pea soup and the beet borscht (hot or cold) are so popular they’re served daily. Cheese blintzes, gefilte fish, lox and cream cheese platters, latkes and cabbage rolls all have their loyal fans.
Contribute to the United Bakers story project by emailing ub100years@gmail.com or by clicking on the “100 Years” tab on their website.
[via The Toronto Star / Image from United Bakers]
2012 Restaurant Trends
Diane Chiasson, President of Chiasson Consultants Inc., a restaurant and foodservice consultancy firm in Toronto, foresees these food trends for 2012:
Communal dining
More and more new restaurants will be designed with long communal tables in the centre of the room, as opposed to single tables or booths. Counter and bar dining will also be played up. In order to enhance the dining experience, many restaurateurs want to create camaraderie amongst its customers by having them sit together. Some restaurants will even go so far as to serve everyone at the communal table the same food at the same time.
No-time dining & Snacking
As our culture continues to move away from the 9 to 5 workday, a restaurant’s hours must also reflect this shift. Expect to see more restaurants offering all-day breakfast, longer lunch hours, afternoon snacks and more late night fare. Our culture is also moving away from eating three square meals a day. Many diets and health food experts encourage people to eat six small meals a day, so expect to see more snack, tapas or dim sum items on menus, as more customers will want to pop in for a small snack as opposed to an entire meal, or share a selection of snacks with their dining partners.
Mobile restaurants
High-class street food will soon be available on every street corner. The growing popularity of food carts, food stalls and food fairs has helped make street food a serious competitor to great restaurant food. Today’s street food goes far beyond a hot dog stand. Many food cart operators offer unique and delicious items that can’t be found anywhere else. And most importantly, street food is still cheap.
iPad ordering
Servers in restaurants will soon be trading their pads and pens for iPads or iPods to take your orders. This modern POS system combines cloud computing, wireless technology and touch-screen interface to allow servers to take and send orders from within the network, so that even before the server has left the table, the order has already been sent to the kitchen. Payments can also be processed using the iPad at the table. At quick-serve foodservice operations, expect to see iPad kiosks where customers would be able to order their own food.
Read the full list over at Restaurant Central.
