Restaurant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A restaurant is a retail establishment that serves prepared food to customers. Service is generally for eating on premises, though the term has been used to describe take-out establishments and food delivery services. The term covers many types of venues and a diversity of styles of cuisine and service.

A restaurant owner is called a restaurateur; both words derive from the French verb restaurer, meaning to restore

Catering
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Catering is the business of providing foodservice at a remote site.

Hamburger
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A hamburger (or burger) is a sandwich consisting of a cooked ground meat patty, usually beef, placed in a sliced bun or between pieces of bread or toast. Hamburgers are often served with various condiments, such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, onion, relish, pickles, and cheese.

A cheeseburger is a hamburger with cheese in addition to the meat. In 1924, Lionel Sternberger is considered to have grilled the first cheeseburger in Pasadena, California. When Sternberger died in 1964, Time magazine noted in its February 7 issue that:

"...at the hungry age of 16, [Sternberger] experimentally dropped a slab of American cheese on a sizzling hamburger while helping out at his father's sandwich shop in Pasadena, thereby inventing the cheeseburger..."

Steak
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A steak (from Old Norse steik, "roast") is a slice of meat, typically beef. Most steaks are cut perpendicular to the muscle fibres, improving the perceived tenderness of the meat. In North America, steaks are typically served grilled, though they are also often pan-fried. The more tender cuts from the loin and rib are cooked quickly, using dry heat, and served whole. Less tender cuts from the chuck or round are cooked with moist heat or are mechanically tenderized. The more tender steaks have a premium price and perception; the idea of eating steak signifies relative wealth. For people from Asia, steak is regarded as one of the quintessential dishes of Western cuisine.

A restaurant that specializes in beef steaks is known as a steakhouse. In the United States, a typical steak dinner consists of a steak, with a starchy side dish, usually baked potatoes, but occasionally another potato dish, rice, pasta, or beans. A small serving of cooked vegetables accompanies the meat and side, with green beans, creamed spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, peas and onion rings being popular. A well-known accompaniment to steak is shrimp or a cooked lobster tail, a combination often called "surf and turf" or "reef and beef". Special steak knives are provided along with steak; steak knives are sharper than most table knives and are usually serrated. Prepared condiments known as steak sauces are generally on the table in steakhouses. Tenderized round or sirloin steaks, breaded, and pan-fried or deep-fried, are called chicken fried or country fried steaks, respectively. Thinly sliced ribeye or other tender cuts, cooked on a hot griddle and shredded slightly, and served on Italian style rolls are called Philly steaks, after the city in which they became famous.

In France, beef steak is usually served with French fried potatoes also known as "pommes frites", and the combination is known as "steak-frites". Vegetables are not normally served with steak in this manner, but a green salad may follow. In the United Kingdom they are also served with French fried potatoes although they are often thicker than the French variety and the combination is called Steak and Chips. Peas, half a tomato or a fried onion ring often feature on the plate too.

In Italy, steak was not widely eaten until post-WWII due to the relative ruggedness of the countryside inhibiting the space- and resource-consuming raising of great bovine herds, but some zones of Piedmont and Tuscany were still renowned for their beef. Bistecca alla fiorentina is a well-known specialty of Florence; it is typically served with just a salad or Tuscan beans. From the 1960s onward the so called "economic boom" allowed more and more Italians to switch to a red meat-heavy diet.

Grill
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There are multiple varieties of grills, with most falling into one of two categories: gas-fueled and charcoal. There is a great debate over the merits of charcoal or gas for use as the cooking method between grillers. Electric indoor grills have also recently become popular.

Grilling is a pervasive tradition in the United States. There are many cook-offs for steak grilling and barbecue (midwestern and southern style) around the United States with serious cash prizes involved in most. Almost all competition grillers use charcoal, most often in large, custom designed brick or steel grills. They can range from a few 55 gallon oil drums sawed lengthwise on their sides to make a lid and grill base, to large, vehicle sized grills made of brick, weighing nearly a ton.

History

E.G. Kingsford was the prime force behind the American grilling tradition. Kingsford was a relative of Henry Ford who saw that Ford's Model T production lines were producing a large amount of wood scraps that were just being discarded. Kingsford pitched a simple idea to Ford: Set up a charcoal manufacturing facility next to the assembly line and sell the charcoal, with the Ford name, in Ford dealerships. Ford, knowing a good idea when he saw one, immediately implemented Kingsford's idea. After Kingsford's death, the company was renamed Kingsford Charcoal Co. in his honor. Today, Kingsford charcoal is the dominant brand used by charcoal grillers.

Another personality in the charcoal grilling camp is George Stephen. The stereotypical American charcoal grill is a hollow, metal hemisphere with three legs and a small metal disc to catch ash, with a lower grate to hold the charcoal and an upper grate to hold the food to be cooked. George Stephen created the hemispherical grill design, jokingly called "Sputnik" by Stephen's neighbors. Stephen, a welder, worked for Weber Brothers Metal Works, a metal fabrication shop primarily concerned with welding steel spheres together to make buoys. Stephen was tired of wind blowing ash onto his food when he grilled. One day he had an epiphany: he took the lower half of a buoy, welded three steel legs onto it, and fabricated a shallower hemisphere for use as a lid. He took the results home and within weeks was selling the grills first to his neighbors, then to customers, and finally started the Weber-Stephen Products Co. Weber grills come in many sizes, again, in small 14 inch diameter grills up to a full size 24 inch diameter grill.

Charcoal

Charcoal grills use either charcoal briquets or all-natural lump charcoal as their fuel source. The charcoal, when burned, will transform into embers radiating the heat necessary to cook food.

There is contention among grilling enthusiasts on what type of charcoal is best for grilling. Users of charcoal briquets emphasize the uniformity in size, burn rate, heat creation, and quality exemplified by briquets. Users of all-natural lump charcoal emphasize the reasons they prefer it: subtle smoky aromas, high heat production, and lack of binders and fillers often present in briquets.

There are many different charcoal grill configurations. Some grills are square, round, or rectangular, some have lids while others do not, and some may or may not have a venting system for heat control.