Latest news with #CheFico
Wales Online
5 days ago
- General
- Wales Online
Chef says we've been cooking frozen chips wrong - and it's all about how we use the oven
Chef says we've been cooking frozen chips wrong - and it's all about how we use the oven Frozen chips are a staple in British homes, but many people are making a simple mistake that means they never cook to restaurant quality, according to one expert Chips will be so much tastier and crunchier if you do one task before putting them in the oven (Image: Getty Images ) Frozen chips are always on standby in the freezer for a swift side dish or nibble. They're also much speedier to whip up than homemade chips. However, one common problem with frozen chips is their tendency to turn soggy in the oven, which is far from ideal when you're craving a crispy finish. There's one error that can lead to limp chips without you even realising. Chef David Nayfield from Che Fico claims that frozen chips can taste as good as restaurant quality every time you cook them, provided you do it correctly. This means avoiding overcrowding your oven trays or air fryer baskets, which he describes as the 'biggest mistake' you can make when cooking chips at home. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here . To achieve the perfect crunch, your chips need enough room to crisp up. Placing too many too close together will cause them to steam rather than bake, reports Nottinghamshire Live. David also emphasised the importance of pre-heating your appliance before cooking. Putting them straight into a cold oven or air fryer is likely to result in soggy or unevenly cooked chips. Article continues below A useful guideline is to heat your appliance to around 200C before cooking the chips, to achieve that perfect golden texture. And when it comes to the debate between using an air fryer or a traditional oven to cook your chips, chefs have a clear favourite. New York City's famed chef, George Duran, has said that using an air fryer for your chips is akin to 'giving them a fast-track to crispy heaven'. This method is not only often faster than oven cooking, but it also removes the risk of injuries from handling hot cooking oil, making it a much safer alternative. Article continues below
Daily Record
5 days ago
- General
- Daily Record
Your frozen chips won't turn soggy if you avoid making this 'big' mistake
Experts believe there is a easy fix to keep your frozen chips from turning into a mushy mess Frozen chips are a favourite in the majority of British homes, with both children and adults. The tasty staple can elevate any dish making it a huge hit for all the family. They're quicker and easier to make than homemade chips, however experts are warning that one common cooking mistake can turn them into a soggy mess. On average, Brits eat chips or fries three times a week, with 44 per cent describing themselves as a connoisseur of fried potatoes. When we think of chips, especially french fries, we think of golden and crispy. So when they come out of the oven limp, it's far from ideal. Provided you cook them correctly, chef David Nayfield from Che Fico said chips can taste as good as restaurant quality every time you cook them. The professional warns against overcrowding your oven trays or air fryer baskets, as doing so is the 'biggest mistake' you can make when making chips at home, reports the Express. To achieve the perfect crunch, your chips need enough space to crisp up. Placing too many too close together will cause them to steam rather than bake. David also highlighted the importance of pre-heating your appliance before cooking. Putting them straight into a cold oven or air fryer is likely to result in soggy or unevenly cooked chips. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. A useful guideline is to heat your appliance to around 200C before cooking the chips, to achieve that perfect golden texture. And when it comes to the debate between using an air fryer or a traditional oven to cook your chips, chefs have a clear favourite. New York City's celebrity chef, George Duran, has claimed that using an air fryer for your chips is like 'giving them a fast-track to crispy heaven'. Not only is this method often quicker than oven cooking, allowing you to savour those delicious crispy fries sooner, but it also eliminates the risk of injuries from handling hot cooking oil, making it a much safer alternative. During National Chip Week earlier this year, The UK's No.1 Air Fryer and Multi-Cooker Brand Ninja shared their secret to producing the perfect homemade chip. It's not just speed which is key when it comes to making homemade chips, it's also important to make them look and taste like the real deal. And also how often you shake them and how much oil you use. Posting their top tips alongside their recipe on their website, Ninja chefs wrote: "Use at least 1 tablespoon oil when air frying hand-cut chips. "For crispier results, use up to 3 tablespoons oil. Shaking the chips is key for getting them crisp and golden brown, so shake or toss with silicone-tipped tongs frequently." Hopefully you'll never touch a soggy oven chip again.
Edinburgh Live
5 days ago
- General
- Edinburgh Live
Chef says you've been cooking frozen chips all wrong
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Frozen chips are the unsung heroes of British kitchens, always on standby in the freezer for a swift and delicious side dish or a straightforward savoury nibble. They're also much quicker to whip up than homemade chips. However, one common snag with frozen chips is their propensity to turn soggy in the oven, which is far from ideal when you're craving a crispy, golden finish. There's one blunder that can lead to limp chips without you even realising. Chef David Nayfield from Che Fico suggests that frozen chips can taste as good as restaurant quality every time you cook them, provided you do it correctly. READ MORE - Jeremy Clarkson's blunt response to punter who criticised price of pie at his pub READ MORE - Lotto winner Jane Park makes cheeky jibe as Robbie Williams song choice divides crowd This means avoiding overcrowding your oven trays or air fryer baskets, which he describes as the 'biggest mistake' you can make when cooking fries at home, reports the Express. To achieve the perfect crunch, your chips need enough room to crisp up. Placing too many too close together will cause them to steam rather than bake, reports Nottinghamshire Live. David also emphasised the importance of pre-heating your appliance before cooking. Putting them straight into a cold oven or air fryer is likely to result in soggy or unevenly cooked chips. A handy guideline is to heat your appliance to around 200C before cooking the chips, to achieve that perfect golden texture. And when it comes to the debate between using an air fryer or a traditional oven to cook your chips, chefs have a clear favourite. New York City's famed chef, George Duran, has asserted that using an air fryer for your chips is akin to 'giving them a fast-track to crispy heaven'. This method is not only often faster than oven cooking, letting you enjoy those scrumptious crispy fries sooner, but it also removes the risk of injuries from dealing with hot cooking oil, making it a much safer alternative.
San Francisco Chronicle
14-05-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Forget San Francisco. Restaurants see ‘huge opportunity' in this quiet suburb
There's a running joke in Menlo Park, a quiet Bay Area suburb just north of Stanford University: It's full of rug stores. There are indeed six carpet stores in this diminutive downtown, nearly outnumbering restaurants. But that's starting to change: At least nine new restaurants have recently opened or will open soon in Menlo Park. It's a level of activity never seen before for this small, affluent city better known for its Silicon Valley history and excellent public schools than its food scene. Within the last year, a wave of newcomers has included chic Cal-Indian restaurant Eylan; Texas seafood chain Clark's Oyster Bar; tea and cake shop Temp & Time; Middle Eastern bakery LeVant Dessert; cocktail spot Bar Loretta; and Little Sky Kitchen, a sister restaurant to nearby Little Sky Bakery. They'll soon be joined by Yeobo, Darling, a Korean-Taiwanese restaurant from an acclaimed chef couple; Cafe Vivant, a chicken-focused spot from two New York City sommeliers; an outpost of San Francisco's Causwells; and Bubbelah, a Jewish-inspired deli from the owners of Che Fico. The new food businesses come from both local and out-of-town operators who see opportunity in a city perpetually described as sleepy. 'To replace the empty carpet shops with more food options would be super exciting,' said Little Sky owner Tian Mayimin, who has lived in Menlo Park since 2016. 'There's a huge opportunity in the wealthy suburbs, because you're serving a population that really surprisingly has a much lower quality of life in terms of eating than their counterparts in an urban area.' For Clark's, a scene-y seafood spot founded in Austin, Texas, Menlo Park wasn't immediately on the radar for expansion. But as the chain spread to locations in Aspen, Houston and Montecito, customers, friends and investors started talking about the Bay Area city as an 'underserved market' with wealthy customers, co-owner and chef Larry McGuire said. (The median household income in Menlo Park is $206,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.) 'Once we visited, we saw what people were talking about,' McGuire said. 'It's a very affluent market that didn't seem like there were much offerings.' They didn't even consider San Francisco, and instead spent the last three years transforming what was once a longtime, beloved diner into a stylish seafood restaurant. It's been busy since opening last month, with raw oysters, buttery lobster rolls and piles of crispy shoestring fries. 'The general sentiment is: 'We're so glad you're here. We need more,'' McGuire said. Similarly, the owners of Cafe Vivant focused on Menlo Park rather than San Francisco, or even New York, where they already operate a wine business, citing the prospect of lower competition. Their restaurant will focus on heritage chickens raised exclusively for Cafe Vivant at a Pescadero farm, and include a next-door wine shop. Local operators are also homing in on the city. When Meichih and Michael Kim started looking for spaces for a new restaurant, they zeroed in on Menlo Park. Their previous, now-closed restaurant, Maum, won a Michelin star in Palo Alto, a city with double Menlo Park's population of 32,000. But the Kims liked the 'small town vibe' and ample parking of Menlo Park, and saw that it lacked modern Asian food. Yeobo, Darling, which replaced a decade-old Mediterranean restaurant, will serve creative Korean-Taiwanese food that honors their backgrounds. 'A lot of these older spaces are going through a generational shift in the sense of maybe they're retiring or moving on, and a lot of new talent is coming into the neighborhood,' Michael Kim said. Likewise, Clark's took over the former 75-year-old Ann's Coffee Shop space, and Cafe Vivant, a longtime sandwich cafe. 'It's revitalizing the area a little bit,' Kim said. For many existing business owners, the newcomers represent welcome, exciting momentum. When Jesse Cool opened her now-famed restaurant Flea St. Cafe in 1976, 'honestly, even people in Palo Alto barely knew where Menlo Park was,' she said. She said she's never seen this many openings at once in the city. Rather than fear the competition, she said: 'They say you should always hope the best restaurant moves next door to you.' But like any city in the Bay Area, operating a restaurant in Menlo Park is fraught with challenges. Labor is costly and hard to find; given the Peninsula's high home prices, most employees can't afford to live nearby. Clark's brought staff from other locations for the opening, and they've stayed longer than anticipated due to hiring challenges, McGuire said. Rent and construction are expensive. To help entice tenants, Presidio Bay Ventures, the San Francisco real estate firm behind new development Springline, paid to build out all of its restaurant spaces, and charges tenants percentage-based rent, taking a portion of their gross revenue instead of a fixed amount every month. But owners are typically left to shoulder construction and operating costs on their own, said Mayimin, the Little Sky owner. 'For most people who are maybe not backed by a corporate umbrella who are trying to get going, A, can you really afford to live in the area; and B, can you really afford the million dollar buildout?' Permitting bureaucracy can also be frustratingly onerous and slow. McGuire, who has opened Clark's locations throughout the country, said Menlo Park's process was particularly complicated. For example, the city required the business to hire a biologist to conduct a bat roosting survey to ensure the building wouldn't disturb the animal's local habitat. The city is also currently at odds with local businesses over a controversial plan to build affordable housing on three downtown parking lots. A group of downtown business owners sued the city last month in an effort to block the development, arguing the project will harm them by limiting parking and increasing traffic congestion. Mayor Drew Combs said he hopes small businesses see the city more as a partner. The City Council is considering loosening downtown zoning rules to allow more types of businesses to open there. Current zoning only permits retail businesses on downtown's main strip, Santa Cruz Avenue, which excludes something like a yoga studio, for example. He credited Springline and a large mixed-use development from Stanford on El Camino Real with spurring new business in Menlo Park. 'It is very important for us to lean into these investments that we see being made in the city in the private sector,' Combs said. Still, not all of the new ventures have been successful. Canteen, a wine bar at Springline from the owner of Menlo Park's popular restaurant Camper, closed in December, and Che Fico's high-end Italian market closed last month, but owners will soon replace it with the casual Jewish restaurant. To replace Canteen, Springline successfully lured another popular San Francisco restaurant: Causwells, which is in final talks to take over the Canteen Menlo Park often gets second billing to neighboring Palo Alto, whose downtown draws more foot traffic. Because of this, Ayesha Thapar looked to downtown Palo Alto for her first restaurant, Ettan, which opened in early 2020. 'I would not have dared to open Ettan on Santa Cruz Avenue,' she said of Menlo Park's main downtown street. But now she's taken a chance on the city. Thapar designed her group's new Menlo Park restaurant, Eylan, with this in mind: a stunning, vibrant space that, despite its location in a somewhat soulless development, feels like a portal into another universe — or perhaps, a livelier city. 'It's still a sleepy town that I'm trying my hardest to wake up,' she said.
San Francisco Chronicle
21-04-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area is getting a Jewish-inspired restaurant from the Che Fico team
A specialty market run by Bay Area Italian favorite Che Fico has closed, but a new restaurant from the same owners will take its place. Il Mercato di Che Fico in Menlo Park shuttered on April 19, a year after opening at the buzzy Springline development at 1300 El Camino Real. (The owners didn't provide a reason for the closure; their second outpost of Che Fico there remains open.) Back Home Hospitality owners David Nayfeld and Matt Brewer are replacing the market with a fast-casual restaurant inspired by the Jewish diaspora, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Called Bubbelah, it will open in May with house-made breads, dips, sandwiches and soups. Che Fico's menu has long featured dishes influenced by Jewish cuisine from Rome, honoring Nayfeld's heritage. At Bubbelah (named for the Yiddish term of endearment), expect a range of mezze, from baba ghanoush and chopped chicken liver to hummus with merguez and pickled peppers, or ful (a Middle Eastern fava bean dip) with pecorino cheese. More substantial dishes include arayes on house-made pita, veal pelmeni (dumplings), potato spring onion latkes and matzo ball soup. A range of proteins, like lamb shoulder shawarma, poppy seed chicken schnitzel and harissa rotisserie chicken, will be available a la carte or wrapped in house-made pita for sandwiches. The kitchen will also bake fresh challah, rye and lavash breads. For dessert, there will be artikim, or Israeli popsicles, in flavors like banana-date, halva and mango-labneh, as well as ice cream. (Il Mercato di Che Fico was known for its gelato window, which will return this summer.) Bubbelah will be a counter-service restaurant open daily but will have seating for up to 50 people. Back Home Hospitality, best known for the original Che Fico on Divisadero Street in San Francisco, now operates three restaurants in San Francisco and Menlo Park, and is opening a splashy new Tuscan restaurant in San Francisco. The owners closed their more casual Che Fico Alimentari in San Francisco last year.
