The CulinaryWoman Newsletter, 6/13/21

Why places are running out of things

I rotate between two Starbucks drinks: iced Americano with one raw sugar, and a shaken green tea lemonade. Repeatedly, over the past few weeks, the Starbucks app has told me that my store is out of the latter.

How can you run out of green tea, or lemonade? I’ve wondered.

According to the app, Starbucks is running into problems with more than just the ingredients for my drink — so much that it’s posted a notice on its app. With 14,000 stores nationwide, that’s a lot of irritated customers.

We all know about shortages of paper and cleaning products that took place in the pandemic. Meat processing plants temporarily closed due to Covid outbreaks.

But as the world starts back up again, shortages of ingredients have become an issue all across the food world, from commercial giants to small businesses. Some are unexpected. Jim Graziano, who runs J.P. Graziano, his family’s beloved deli and grocery in Chicago, tells me he’s had problems getting potato chips.

This situation appears to be directly related to the staffing shortage that I recently wrote about here, and explored at the Washington Post.

Just as they had to improvise through the pandemic, food industry people must BOS maneuver around the shortages.

They’ve re-written menus to weed out costlier items, and those for whom ingredients are in unreliable supply.

Some order double amounts of the goods they need to ensure they won’t run short. Others have sought out additional vendors to back up their regulars, and almost everyone has raised prices, by a few cents to several dollars.

The impact on a small business owner

Jordan Balduf has run into all of this first hand, less than six months after opening his shop. Here’s the story I wrote about him in the Ann Arbor Observer earlier this year, when he launched Side Biscuit, a chicken wings takeout place.

Side Biscuit is an outgrowth of a pop up that he launched last year, in tribute to the favorite bar food of his native Buffalo. He came into the place with plenty of restaurant kitchen experience, and Side Biscuit got off to a blazing start, regularly selling out of its varieties of wings, and creating buzz on social media.

But, then came the problems.

When he started his pop up last year, Jordan tells me paid $80 for a 40-pound case of chicken wings, and goes through about 1,100 pounds a week, or about 27 cases. The going case rate now is $170. “That’s $5,000 in cost that used to be $2,000,” Jordan estimates.

Usually, chicken wing prices are seasonal. Demand is highest for the Super Bowl weekend, and throughout March Madness, but supply is more plentiful at other times, leading to price drops.

“This year, they went up, and they stayed up,” Jordan says. “It’s hard to do profit targets when it’s different every day.”

Jordan says the staffing issue goes beyond finding enough people to work in restaurants and carryout spots like Side Biscuit. It can be traced back the food chain.

“You can raise the chickens, but do you have enough people to process the chickens?” he says. Staffing shortages at farms and factories means he’s affected, miles away.

These price increases are affecting everything from pork and beef to plastic utensils and carryout boxes. Fryer oil, which used to cost $20 for a 40-pound box, now costs $40.

As a newcomer, he’s found himself in line behind more-established businesses, forcing him to look beyond his regular sources. “I’ve had days when I go to Costco, even, if I can’t get it from my suppliers.”

Diners should expect sticker shock

If they haven’t already noticed higher menu prices, Jordan thinks diners soon will be hit with them.

“There’s going to be sticker shock for guests,” he says. “People are going to restaurants expecting to see what they paid for years” and instead, will be presented with prices that reflect what restaurant owners currently are experiencing.

Jordan has instituted a small price increase on his wings, which start at $13 for six. And he’s introduced some items that are less expensive to produce, like a chicken finger sub, made from breast meat.

He is concerned that the restaurant business, which lost 110,000 locations the past 18 months, could be hit with another wave of closings as the impact of the supply chain problems take effect.

Ann Arbor has already seen some places close temporarily, although more from the inability to get staff than to stock its kitchens.

However, Jordan benefits from his friendships with Ann Arbor’s tight-knight pop up community. They call themselves the Misfit Biscuits and show up to eat each others’ food, and help out when the proprietors are short handed.

He hopes that this kind of collaboration can replace the ruthless competition for which the restaurant industry has been known. “It is a dog-eat-dog world, but we can grow together,” Jordan says.

And if he can stick it out, there are rewards. Last week, Chicago re-named the street outside J.P. Graziano’s in honor of the restaurant, which has lasted 84 years. “Thank you to all the customers who have supported us, new and old,” Jim wrote on Instagram. “Without you, we are nothing.”

Vegetables From An Elite Chef

Vegetable Simple

Eric Ripert

French chef Eric Ripert has been showered with praise through the years for his upscale restaurant food, his cookbooks and his television appearances.

His expertise has always been seafood, especially at Le Bernardin, his three-star Michelin restaurant, so it might come as a surprise that he has written a cookbook all about vegetables.

You may already know a lot about cooking them, and there are other wonderful vegetable cookbooks, like Ruffage from Abra Berens.

However, celebrity chefs have sometimes given them less attention in favor of more glamorous results in cooking and baking.

Now, though, vegetables are getting the respect they deserve. This month, Eleven Madison Park, one of New York’s most elite dining establishments, transformed itself into a vegan restaurant, with a pre fixe of $335.

Many restaurants have found they have to step up their vegetable game, due to diners’ growing interest in plant-based eating. So, the timing seems right for Chef Ripert’s Vegetable Simple, which has 110 vegetarian recipes.

You could definitely impress your friends with recipes like his spring pea soup or mushroom bolognese.

The lineup also includes romaine caesar gratin, which fits right into the trend for grilling and roasting salad greens; vegetable pistou, a version of the French vegetable soup that I grew up eating, and zucchini pancakes, which will be a wonderful way to use up zucchini when it appears uninvited on your doorstop later this summer.

The link goes to Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York, which can ship you an autographed copy.

A Favorite Recipe For Summer Fruit

Michigan strawberries have arrived! We get our strawberries weeks and even months after other parts of the country, and you need to snap them up in Michigan before they disappear.

But the arrival of strawberries at local markets is a good reason to test out one of my favorite recipes for summer fruits of all varieties.

I marinate them in agrodolce, a white balsamic vinegar that I first discovered in a tasting class at Zingerman’s Deli. The method is easy. You need a couple of spoonfuls, and let the berries or sliced fruit marinate for an hour or two.

Then, you have a lovely compliment to salads, grilled meats, fish and veggies, and you can use them on yogurt and ice cream. With feta or goat cheese, they make their own type of salad dressing.

Read more at my story for The Takeout, and start planning the way you’ll use those farmer’s market and CSA finds.

Some Personal News

The past few weeks, I’ve been sharing my opinion pieces from the Washington Post. Now it’s official: I’ve been named a Contributing Columnist. I’m taking part in Voices Across America, a new effort at Post Opinions to feature a variety of writers from around the country.

I’ll be writing about topics in the Detroit area, Michigan and across the Midwest. There’s no shortage of ideas and you’ll be hearing from me two or three times a month.

I’m excited for a few reasons. First, I’ve had an incredibly lucky career in the news business, but I always had the secret desire to be a columnist, along with being a food writer.

In that, my inspiration is the late R.W. Apple, known as Johnny, the legendary correspondent for The New York Times. In his 2006 obituary, Todd Purdum called him a “journalist in full,” writing about politics, travel and food, and that’s always what I wanted to be.

Second, my mother was an admirer of Katharine Graham, the late publisher of the Post, who took charge of the paper after her husband died by suicide, and built it into one of America’s most important news organizations. I think she’d be very happy for me. I hope Mrs. Graham would be, too.

Keeping In Touch With CulinaryWoman

This week, I got to meet Amy Chapman, the most recent winner of a CulinaryWoman giveaway contest. She received a copy of Every Night is Pizza Night, plus a CulinaryWoman bistro apron and chef’s toque.

Members of the CulinaryWoman Community, meaning our paid subscribers and founding members, are eligible for our contests. We have an especially delicious one coming up.

So if you’d like to take part, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Your support is vital to help keep our journalism going.

You can follow CulinaryWoman on Tik Tok and Twitter @culinarywoman. I’m @michelinemaynard on Instagram and we’re also on Facebook.

You might notice that the CulinaryWoman logo is no longer wearing a mask. I’m fully vaccinated, as I hope you are, and mask restrictions have been lifted at many places here in Michigan.

But, I’ll follow them wherever required, and observe all safety precautions. It’s been a long 18 months and the pandemic isn’t completely over..

Stay safe, and see you next week!