To all you marketing gurus out there (or anyone who just wants to weigh in with their two cents’ worth): I need a new name for an old dish. Here’s why:
Several years ago, I had the following description of a dish on the menu:
“Crostini – Toasted ciabatta bread is topped with a relish of marinated black olives and red peppers, Italian Taleggio cheese and marinated, grilled Portobello mushrooms.”
Great tapa, but not a great seller. I had a group in the restaurant one evening who were eating it, and raved to me about the dish. I told them, “That’s a shame. I’m changing the menu next month and that dish is coming off, because it doesn’t sell”.
“Noooooo!!!”
When I wandered by their table again twenty minutes later, they told me that they were in marketing, and they had decided that the problem was not the dish, but the description of it on the menu. The best thing about this tapa is the Portobello mushroom, and that was the last thing mentioned in the description. The word Portobello needed to be in the title.
Because I really believed it was a good dish, it didn’t take too much to convince me to give it another chance, and so when I reprinted the menu, this is what it became:
“Portobello Crostini – Toasted ciabatta, roasted red pepper spread, gouda
Which brings us to the problem at hand:
“Lettuce cups with Twice Cooked Pork Belly – Slow cooked in a Chinese-style stock, shredded, then baked with a spicy mango tamarind glaze, served with crispy five-spice wonton strips”. It’s one of my best dishes, if I do say so myself. It has big, interesting flavors that you won’t find anywhere else. The richness of the pork, that spicy-salty-tangy-sweet combination in the sauce, the coolness of the lettuce, and that little crunch from the wonton strips….it all works so well together. But it doesn’t sell. So put your thinking caps on, people, and let me know what you think I should name it!
