[Sca-cooks] weird idea... medieval restaurant

[david friedman]

>I would also tend to present the
>food in a more modern manner, ie instead of a pottage or stew, serving it
>as meat with a sauce; but that's just a personal thing that I feel would be
>more attractive to modern diners. I would probably also need to substitute
>some ingredients in various dishes in order to make the menu "healthier" ie
>lower in cholesterol and fat, but not at the expense of taste.

At this point, you seem to be moving away from actual period food.
Given the wide variety of period recipes, and the range of possible
interpretations of any given recipe, I cannot see any good reason to
deliberately change things.

>The menu would also change periodically to take advantage of the season and
>produce: a summer meal might consist of a shared period antipasto tray
>including fresh fruit and seafood, followed by salmon in orange sauce
>served with couscous and courgette fritters, with greengage and almond
>cream for dessert.

Do you have period recipes for those?

>A winter menu would be a bit heavier, perhaps a chicken
>stew from Apicius, followed roast pork with apricot and raisin stuffing
>served with roasted onions and turnips, and a turkish almond pastry in
>sugar syrup with coffee for dessert.

At which point not only are you mixing wildly unrelated cuisines, you
are serving at least one thing (coffee) that wasn't in use (at least
outside of Abyssinia) until after the medieval period was over.

>  A range of period drinks would ideally
>be available, as well as mundane beer, wines, soft drinks, tea and coffee.

At which point you are introducing striking unmedieval things to the menu.

While you obviously want to serve people things they will like, I
don't think that requires offering a mix of modern, medieval, and
medievalish, which is what you seem to be describing. The experience
of many of us is that you can do your best to stick to period recipes
and still make things many people will like.

It's worth noting that the problem of exotic foods is almost
certainly less for a restaurant than for an SCA feast. People at the
latter may have some interest in the middle ages, but their tastes in
food represent something close to a random selection from the
population. A specialty restaurant only has to appeal to a small
fraction of the population of a big city. Consider Ethiopian food,
for example, which is a good deal more bizarre than medieval
European--yet there are Ethiopian restaurants, and at least some of
them draw customers from the non-Ethiopian population.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/