Around the Kitchen Table: Our Dream Restaurants + 4-Book #Giveaway!

 

PEG COCHRAN/MARGARET LOUDON: Welcome to our November Around the Kitchen Table! We all obviously love food.  We love to read about it, to cook it and we love to eat it.  I started thinking—just for fun—if I opened a restaurant, what food would it serve?  I like so many different types of cuisine—Italian, French, Thai, Chinese.  But what I yearn for the most often is comfort food—but slightly elevated comfort food.  So that’s what my restaurant would serve.  Since it’s getting colder here in Michigan, I’m drawn to warmer, heavier dishes.  My menu would include duck à l’orange (old school, I know,) Osso Bucco, pasta with a really good Bolognese sauce, roast chicken with gravy, coq au vin and boeuf Bourguignon.  Probably some soup as well like Tuscan bean soup.  For dessert?  Crème Brûlée, flourless chocolate cake and bananas Foster. 

How about you? If you could design your own restaurant, what type of food would you serve?

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MADDIE DAY: Well, I did exactly that about eight years ago, when I invented Pans 'N Pancakes, the country store restaurant in my Country Store Mysteries! Robbie Jordan dishes up delicious breakfasts. The regular menu includes banana-walnut pancakes, which I presented here last year. Breakfast also features cheesy grits, biscuits and gravy (both meat and miso-based), oatmeal,  fruit, and the usual array of egg dishes and meats, including the Kitchen Sink Omelet, with a special added every day. 

Banana Walnut Pancakes
with ham and a Bloody Mary

For lunch she offers meat, turkey, and veggie burgers, grilled sandwiches, often a soup, plus seasonal specials. After Deep Fried Death comes out in late December, she'll add items like fried catfish, cheese fritters, apple fritters, and French fries to the menu. Many, many fans have written to say they wish they could find South Lick on a map so they could eat in Pans 'N Pancakes. I wish I could, too!

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LIBBY KLEIN: I've had friends and family try to talk me into opening a restaurant for years. No one wants to work eighteen hours a day with me, they just want free food. Once upon a time, I was going to open a bakery. I loved the idea of baking all day every day. Cookies, and pastries, and pies, and fancy desserts. Mmmm. Then I found out the baker starts at like 2 a.m. every day to make those breads and breakfast pastries and I was like - bump that! I am not a morning person. There isn't enough coffee on the planet for me to voluntarily get up at O'dark thirty day after day to make the same jelly donuts. Then I discovered afternoon tea. Now that is a schedule I could get on board with. Fancy finger sandwiches of different shapes and fillings. Light as air scones in a kaleidoscope of special flavors. And whatever luscious treats for the dessert tier that I feel like making the day before. And all to be done and dusted and home again by four p.m. Now we're talking! Sign me up for the Persnickety Baker Afternoon Tea House. Check out my gluten-free scone recipe here. 

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LESLIE KARST: Having worked in the restaurant business, both as a waitress and also—briefly, during my stint as a culinary arts student—as a cook, there’s no way I would open one myself. It’s gotta be one of the hardest and riskiest endeavors there is (but thank goodness others are willing to do so, because I do love to eat out!)

 

But if I WERE to do so, my restaurant would either be a taco bar, or something similar to the French-Polynesian restaurant in my Sally Solari series, Gauguin. In fact, Gauguin was inspired by the fictitious restaurant I invented as the project for my food costing class during culinary arts school, where we had to come up with a menu that made financial sense, as well as attracting customers. Many of the menu items I came up with for that class are on the Gauguin menu in the books: Coq au Vin au Gauguin, Tahitian Fish Balls, Papaya Chicken Salad, and Seared Pork Chops with Apricot-Brandy Sauce (pictured above). Now I’m wishing I could actually eat at that restaurant.... 

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LUCY BURDETTE: I've worked in restaurants too, both as a waitress and occasionally pitching in in the kitchen--such hard work! But since this is fiction, I know exactly what my place will be like and what we'll serve. I've already written this in THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS and I'd love to have Betty's Comfort Food Shop and Bakery in my neighborhood. Here's how it goes:

As we worked, Betty explained, ‘The idea behind the shop is part bakery and part prepared comfort food. Every day there will be a different specialty main dish. I’m picturing busy mothers and fathers carrying the food out and reheating at home. They don’t have time to cook from scratch, so I’ll do it for them. The recipes will be the kind of thing your grandmother used to make. For the opening launch on Saturday, I’m going with chicken pot pies topped with herbed biscuits. These will not resemble the frozen TV dinner atrocities you might remember from your childhood – these pies will be brimming with real carrots and potatoes and peas and chunks of chicken in a creamy sauce.’ 

‘I’ll have a regular rotation,’ Betty continued, ‘like a beef stew on Mondays, or vegetarian stuffed shells on Friday. Or should it be spaghetti Bolognese or spaghetti and meatballs on Monday? In my mind, it’s always good to start the week off loaded with carbs because carbs make us happy and we need that on Mondays, right?’ She hurried on before I could answer. ‘If it’s only one recipe per day plus the cakes and other baked goods, I can keep up.’ 

Here's what the chicken pot pie might look like:

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VICKI DELANY: I have absolutely no doubt what type of restaurant I'd open, were I so foolish to do so. A tea room! I love everything about afternoon tea. The tea selection, the food, the presentation. And so, just like Lily Roberts in the Tea by the Sea mysteries, I'd have a restaurant serving only afternoon tea. Afternoon tea, served properly, is expensive and intended to be a luxury, an indulgence. Unlike Lily, I wouldn't have to worry about what I'm going to do in the off season on Cape Cod when the tourists are scarce. 

As part of my research into the 2025 Tea by the Sea book, when Lily and the gang to go England, I was recently in that country. Of course, my research had to take me to afternoon tea, and my daughter and I enjoyed the Wolseley, near Piccadilly Circus. Here are some pictures. 

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LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  I've absolutely ADORED creating fictional bakeries and restaurants on the page in my books -- all the fun and none of the work! I too was once encouraged to open a bakery -- thank goodness I never took the idea seriously. My local baker pal is up every morning at 3:00 from April through January, baking cinnamon and caramel rolls, huckleberry hand pies, dunkers, cookies, quiches, and more. Her place is a bit like Le Panier in my Food Lovers' Village mysteries, which itself is a mashup of Le Panier in Pike Place Market in Seattle and Park Avenue Bakery in Helena, MT -- a place where you can get a Date Walnut Bar or a Chocolate Almond Espresso Cookie, paired with a great cup of coffee.   

And Ripe, the deli run by Pepper's friend Laurel in my Spice Shop series is my homage to the long-gone Pasta & Co. deli in the building where I worked for years, known as the Black Box, the old Sea-First (Seattle First National Bank), or the Box the Space Needle came in. The Tomato-Basil Soup in The Solace of Bay Leaves and the Tortellini Salad in Treble at the Jam Fest are both my recreations of food remembered with love.  

And that, of course, is the best flavor -- and memory -- of all. 

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MOLLY MACRAE: When I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the mid-70s, there was a fabulous vegetarian restaurant called Henderson’s Salad Table. They had the most amazing dessert that consisted of nothing but thick, thick, thick whipped cream studded with fresh strawberries, crystalized ginger, and slivers of toasted almonds. Oh. Oh. Oh. I only had it once in my life but I remember every bite. They also had wonderful, savory hot dishes and salads. So yummy. Sadly, after almost sixty years in business, Henderson’s closed in 2020.

From age 14, I cooked at a summer resort, in two delicatessens, at a bar & grill, and in a university dormitory for 2,000 students. As Leslie K and Lucy said, the restaurant business is hard. It’s also hot and can be dangerous. I left all that behind at 22 and in real-life I’d rather not sling hash again. But my characters who run tea rooms or cafes are perfectly happy in their jobs so, channeling them, if I can have my dream restaurant, I will bring back Henderson’s Salad Table. And when I do, you’re all invited to the opening, where I’ll serve you that amazing dessert.

Here's my copy of the official Henderson’s cookbook (that's already a good start!), and a souvenir napkin with a tea stain in the corner. Good times!

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MAYA CORRIGAN: Near where I live are an assortment of restaurants that specialize in the food from a particular country—a French Bistro, a Northern Italian restaurant, a Spanish tapas eatery, a Turkish kabob place, a Mexican cantina. A little farther away I can find Greek, Thai, and Indian restaurants. The Spanish place is the only one in the area that changes its menu regularly, swapping dishes in and out of the tapas list. It's where I eat most often because I know I’ll find something new to try each time. I wouldn’t dream of running my own restaurant, but I’d invest in one with a cuisine that derived from more than one country and with a menu that wasn’t chiseled in stone. I’d particularly enjoy a Mediterranean cuisine restaurant, where I could find paella, pasta, bouillabaisse, quiche, lots of vegetable dishes, fish and meat cooked in creative ways, and for dessert, tiramisu, baklava, crepes Suzette, and tarte Tatin.

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CLEO COYLE: Thanks, Peg, for this creative Kitchen table topic. Marc and I would visit every one of these lovely establishments, and we’re hungry already. As for us, we would be thrilled to open a real Village Blend coffeehouse in New York. Our ideal model would be the one that we described in our 15th Coffeehouses title DEAD TO THE LAST DROP. 

To learn more,
click here.

We kicked of our caffeinated murder mystery by taking our amateur sleuth, Clare Cosi, to the historic neighborhood of Georgetown in Washington, DC, where she faces many challenges as she opens a second Village Blend coffeehouse with a relaxed "Jazz Space" supper club on the second floor. (The challenges include being accused of conspiring to kidnap the President's daughter. She didn't. But she has to prove it by finding the daugther!)

For our dream restaurant, we made up an entire menu (see it here), which we also published in the book. We even made a logo and created a website 👉 The Village Blend Jazz Space.com 🎷🎵 🎹 << so that readers could listen to some of the music that we described in the story.

We wish that we could open our Jazz Space coffeehouse and supper club in reality! It's not likely. On the other hand, one never knows what the future may hold...

Click here or on our image above to visit the
"Village Blend Jazz Space" that we created online,
inspired by our Coffeehouse Mystery
Dead to the Last Drop. ~ Cleo 

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TINA KASHIAN: I grew up in the restaurant business and my Armenian family owned a restaurant for thirty years in South Jersey. As a tween, I rolled silverware in napkins. As a teenager, I was a waitress and my tips paid for my prom gown. It's a hectic business and my parents worked nights, weekends, and every holiday. It was a big place and could seat 250 hungry folks and had a catering room. At one time, they had 45 workers on the payroll. Mother's Day was the busiest day. We served both American and Mediterranean food. We used to joke my dad was the "Pancake King" and there were lines out the door every Sunday morning. My Kebab Kitchen books include my family’s Mediterranean recipes. My favorites are hummus, moussaka, and baklava and I share them on MLK. Here's a pic of me holding a piece of baklava. If I was going to open a restaurant now, I would copy my parents!

GIVEAWAY!

To be entered in this week's drawing

for these terrific mysteries below,

join us in the comments.

How about you? 

If you could design your own restaurant, what type of food would you serve?

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so we can contact the winner!

> A DEADLY DEDICATION BY Margaret Loudon

> MURDER UNCORKED by Maddie Day

> HONEY ROASTED by Cleo Coyle

> A PARFAIT CRIME by Maya Corrigan

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Wednesday, November 8

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