Latest news with #Cajun-spiced
Scottish Sun
27-05-2025
- Business
- Scottish Sun
Family favourite restaurant chain with 49 sites launches all-new breakfast menu and prices start at just £5
Meateaters and veggies will have a selection of mouthwatering options to choose from BARGAIN BREKKIE Family favourite restaurant chain with 49 sites launches all-new breakfast menu and prices start at just £5 Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A POPULAR restaurant chain with 49 locations across the UK has launched an all-new mouthwatering breakfast menu. TGI Fridays will wave in customers with the selection of dishes to start the day - with some offerings as cheap as a fiver. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 TGI Fridays has launched an exciting new breakfast menu Credit: Alamy 2 The chain will introduce the meals as it fights its way back from administration The 'Rise and Dine' menu, which begins on July 4, will feature an Oreo Crunch Pancake Stack, the All-American Slam breakfast and Steak & Egg. Veggies can join in the delicious fun too, as its Garden State Slam comes complete with plant-based chicken, smashed avocado, Cajun-spiced corn chips, fried eggs, hash brown bites and toasted ciabatta. Punters keen not to break the bank can sink their teeth into a Bacon Ciabatta. The breakfast classic made affordable at just £5, with crispy bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and fresh tomato on a warm ciabatta. Diners can accompany their meal with a thirst-quenching beverage, with fresh apple, cranberry, orange and pineapple juice available, as well as a choice of 'Sunrise Sips'. The chain's facelift comes after TGI Fridays plunged into administration in September, putting all 87 locations at risk. Since its debut in Birmingham in 1986, TGI Fridays quickly expanded nationwide, winning over diners with its casual American bistro-style experience. Serving staff were known as Dub Dubs, and taught the art of entertaining their customers with jokes, banter, and other gimmicks like juggling and magic tricks, all performed with impeccable table craft and cheeriness. A decade ago, the chain was acquired by a private equity firm, which rebranded it by removing all punctuation, changing the name from T.G.I Friday's to TGI Fridays. In 2021, the company was spun off into Hostmore, which was a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange until the recent administration led to its being delisted. I went to TGI Fridays for bottomless brunch - the service was super quick and two things really shocked me Recently, the chain's fortunes have waned, with Hostmore reporting that UK sales have dropped by more than 10% this year compared to last year. TGI Fridays' biggest market is the US, where it operates 128 restaurants, including franchised sites. It also operates more than 270 restaurants in countries around the world. I'M LOVIN' IT It comes after McDonald's made mornings even tastier with its first-ever Breakfast Saver Menu. The bargain meals are launching in selected branches across the country with bites starting from as little as 79p. The fast food is serving up favourites like the Cheesy Bacon Flatbread (£1.99), Saver Bacon Roll (£2.19), and porridge pots (£1.69). The Sausage Sandwich is an exciting new addition to the morning offerings and costs just £1.99. There is a variety of snacks on offer, including apple slices (79p) and hash browns (£1.59), which can be washed down with Tropicana apple or orange juice (£1.89). The Breakfast Saver Menu launched on May 7 across 332 UK restaurants in the North of the country.
San Francisco Chronicle
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
This popular seafood counter just opened its second location. Here's the best thing on the menu
Each week, critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan shares some of her favorite recent bites, the dishes and snacks and baked goods that didn't find their way into a full review. Want the list a few days earlier? Sign up for her free newsletter, Bite Curious. Where better to eat raw fish than at a fishmonger? Billingsgate in Noe Valley is a seafood market that sells everything from whole branzino to trays of uni, but they also have a counter and a few tables where you can tuck into a poke bowl or toss back a few oysters. My strongest recommendation is the hamachi crudo ($18), served with thinly shaved slices of hearts of palm and segments of grapefruit. It was all dressed aggressively with finely chopped shallots, olive oil and flaky sea salt (which some of the other dishes were lacking). East Bay residents take note: Billingsgate recently expanded to Oakland, taking over the Hapuku Fish Shop stall at Rockridge Market Hall. Belfare serves a superior fried chicken sandwich. The Petaluma business got its start at farmers markets and moved into a brick-and-mortar location in a strip mall in 2022. The classic ($18), with sesame mayo and plenty of Cajun-spiced slaw, is always available, but seasonal specials are worth a peek as well. A recent offering featured ingredients you might find on a torta — piquant tomatillo salsa, cilantro, avocado — loaded onto a Parker House bun with grilled spring onions and fried chicken. If I have one quibble it's that the wet ingredients led to a bit of a soggy bottom, but the flavors didn't miss. Pair it with a side of furikake-spiced fingerling potatoes ($11), served with more of that delectable sesame mayo. Belfare. 1410 S McDowell Blvd. # D, Petaluma. While in Petaluma, I took a stroll through downtown and passed a sandwich board at the entrance to an alley advertising a business called Once Upon a Slush. After walking past a row of industrial garbage bins, my expectations were low, but I perked up at the sight of two women eating layered frozen desserts out of tiny plastic cups. Once Upon a Slush sells both Italian ices and soft serve, and the trick, one of the women told me, is to combine them. The full menu was overwhelming with various syrups, floats, shakes, frappes and such, so I just copied her order — creamsicle, with a belt of vanilla soft serve bisecting two bands of orange Italian ice ($5). As the owner of the shop handed over my kiddie cup, he said confidently, 'See you tomorrow.' If I lived in Petaluma, he probably would.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
McDonald's, Wendy's and other burger joints are leaning into chicken
Chicken: It's what's for dinner — even at major restaurant chains long known as temples to beef. The first permanent menu item McDonald's has rolled out in four years consists entirely of white meat. In introducing McCrispy Strips last month, the fast-food giant acknowledged that diners 'have made one thing clear: they want more chicken.' Wendy's launched a new Cajun-spiced chicken sandwich in April, the same month Taco Bell brought back chicken nuggets, declaring it wants to become the 'go-to destination for crispy chicken.' Fast-food brands long known for beef have been pushing chicken menu items recently. The poultry push comes amid fast-food operators' broader battle for customers who've been tightening their dining-out budgets. McDonald's last week reported its worst quarterly U.S. sales decline since the depths of the pandemic in 2020, with a 3.6% drop. Wendy's saw first-quarter global sales shrink by 1.1% and reduced its outlook for the year. Chipotle, which also flagged a slowdown, said its limited-time honey chicken offering helped prop up sales, which slid 0.4% for the quarter. Consumers have been demanding more chicken even as they've rebelled against menu price hikes during the past year, sending many restaurant chains racing to roll out value deals and find other ways to keep customers coming back. Chicken featured in nearly 40% of all Grubhub restaurant orders last year and was purchased almost three times as often as beef by grocery customers, the delivery company said in December. Visits to chicken chains swelled by 4.3% in the third quarter of 2024 from the same period a year earlier, according to the location analytics firm while quick-service and fast-casual traffic dipped by 1.3% and 2.4%, respectively. These trends play to the strengths of chicken-focused brands including Dave's Hot Chicken, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers and Church's Texas Chicken, while putting pressure on burger-centric incumbents. Taco Bell said its limited-run chicken nuggets sold out nationwide in less than a week. 'The reason they're doing this, as much as anything else, is really about competitiveness,' Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business magazine, said of fast-food chains' embrace of chicken. Consumers are seeing more stable prices for poultry than they are for many other animal proteins. Chicken costs were up just 1.3% in March from a year earlier, federal data shows, while pork rose 2.9% and beef and veal prices surged 8.6%. But Maze said the biggest factor may simply be a shift in diners' tastes — as fast-food brands themselves have acknowledged. Chicken at Wendy's 'consistently resonates with our fans, and we do not expect this momentum to slow down,' a spokesperson said. 'Our focus on chicken is more intensive than ever!'
NBC News
06-05-2025
- Business
- NBC News
McDonald's, Wendy's and other burger joints are leaning into chicken
Chicken: It's what's for dinner — even at major restaurant chains long known as temples to beef. The first permanent menu item McDonald's has rolled out in four years consists entirely of white meat. In introducing McCrispy Strips last month, the fast-food giant acknowledged that diners 'have made one thing clear: they want more chicken.' Wendy's launched a new Cajun-spiced chicken sandwich in April, the same month Taco Bell brought back chicken nuggets, declaring it wants to become the 'go-to destination for crispy chicken.' The poultry push comes amid fast-food operators' broader battle for customers who've been tightening their dining-out budgets. McDonald's last week reported its worst quarterly U.S. sales decline since the depths of the pandemic in 2020, with a 3.6% drop. Wendy's saw first-quarter global sales shrink by 1.1% and reduced its outlook for the year. Chipotle, which also flagged a slowdown, said its limited-time honey chicken offering helped prop up sales, which slid 0.4% for the quarter. Consumers have been demanding more chicken even as they've rebelled against menu price hikes during the past year, sending many restaurant chains racing to roll out value deals and find other ways to keep customers coming back. Chicken featured in nearly 40% of all Grubhub restaurant orders last year and was purchased almost three times as often as beef by grocery customers, the delivery company said in December. Visits to chicken chains swelled by 4.3% in the third quarter of 2024 from the same period a year earlier, according to the location analytics firm while quick-service and fast-casual traffic dipped by 1.3% and 2.4%, respectively. These trends play to the strengths of chicken-focused brands including Dave's Hot Chicken, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers and Church's Texas Chicken, while putting pressure on burger-centric incumbents. 'The reason they're doing this, as much as anything else, is really about competitiveness,' Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business magazine, said of fast-food chains' embrace of chicken. Consumers are seeing more stable prices for poultry than they are for many other animal proteins. Chicken costs were up just 1.3% in March from a year earlier, federal data shows, while pork rose 2.9% and beef and veal prices surged 8.6%. But Maze said the biggest factor may simply be a shift in diners' tastes — as fast-food brands themselves have acknowledged. Chicken at Wendy's 'consistently resonates with our fans, and we do not expect this momentum to slow down,' a spokesperson said. 'Our focus on chicken is more intensive than ever!' One upside for restaurants, Maze noted, is that chicken makes for ideal finger food, which operators are encouraging by rolling out new dipping sauces. 'It offers different flavor profiles, allows you to get creative without overcomplicating your operations,' he said. More chicken options are expected to pop onto menus soon. McDonald's last month teased plans to reintroduce its chicken Snack Wrap, and Taco Bell says it's considering permanently adding a crispy chicken option after the limited-run nuggets sold out nationwide in less than a week. Tyson Foods said Monday that it saw 'double-digit growth' in its business supplying chicken to quick-service restaurants, a bright spot for the meat producer that said its beef segment is facing 'the most challenging market conditions we have ever seen.' In chicken, though, Tyson said a key measure of quarterly earnings nearly doubled last year's. Not all chicken chains are benefiting from the trend, nor are fast-food brands all leaning into chicken because they're struggling. Taco Bell saw sales jump 9% in the first quarter, boosted not just by chicken nuggets but also by its Steak and Queso Crunchwrap Sliders, parent company Yum Brands reported last week. Meanwhile, Yum's fried-chicken mainstay KFC has struggled, with its U.S. sales notching a 1% drop, outpaced by those of Wingstop and Raising Cane's. digital upgrades and subscription programs to sleek new remodels. But for now, chicken looks like one of their most powerful tools. 'Americans love chicken, frankly, and these big fast-food chains are pretty intent on giving it to them,' Maze said.
BBC News
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
John's 'Wheely Big' Brunch Stacks
Scroll to find the recipe for the dishes Chef John Gregory Smith made for Gethin and Helen after they completed their 24 hour "Wheely Big" challenge in aid of Comic Relief! John says: "I wanted to rustle up some well-deserved comfort food for our skating heroes. I decided to cook Cajun-spiced sweet potato fritters, topped with with a dollop of harissa soured cream and a poached egg, followed by Gethin & Helens' proteins of choice. Garnish as desired, but I recommend a good wedge of lemon, chopped parsley and some sliced red chillies for an extra fresh kick of flavour!"Ingredients (Serves 2)For the Sweet Potato Fritters:2 sweet potatoes, peeled and grated – (around 350g total)1 onion, grated2 tbsp plain flour1 egg, whisked2 tsp Cajun seasoning2 tbsp olive oilSalt and pepperFor the Poached Eggs:4 free range eggs1 tbsp white wine vinegarFor the Soured Cream:300g soured cream2 tsp rose harissa (optional)Method:To make the fritters, grate the sweet potatoes and onion, and then pop them into a clean tea towel and squeeze out all the moisture over a the squeezed and grated ingredients into a mixing bowl. Add plain flour, a whisked egg, Cajun seasoning, and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Mix well and divide into four some of the olive oil in a small non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Take one portion of the sweet potato mixture and shape it into a round shape, about ½ cm into the pan and fry for 3-4 minutes each side until golden and crispy. Repeat with the rest and keep warm by wrapping in kitchen add the white wine vinegar to a saucepan of boiling your egg one at a time into a fine mesh strainer over a bowl, and then carefully place into a small add the egg into the boiling water and poach for 3-4 minutes or until just set. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the eggs cook, mix soured cream with the rose harissa and a pinch of serve, pop two fritters onto each serving plate and add a dollop of the harissa soured with two poached eggs and serve immediately with your choice of bacon, smoked salmon, avocado... whatever you fancy!Top tips:Squeezing the grated onion and sweet potatoes will ensure your fritters turn crisp and golden after can find fine mesh strainers in most high-street supermarkets for a reasonable price; using one for poached eggs will ensure you get a neat and 'cheffy' end-product!Using a splash of white wine vinegar helps keep the egg in shape - but don't worry, you won't be able to taste any you don't fancy rose harissa, you could try adding freshly chopped dill or parsley to your soured cream.
