If you owned a little restaurant what would be your signature dish?

interesting you'd bring this up, i was just catching up on some podcasts and came across one about street foods and takeaways from the BBC Food Programme

you can listen here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wdctn
From Caribbean to Thai and Vietnamese - Simon Parkes looks at the latest trends in British street food and takeaway meals. And we hear from some of the finalists in the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards.


PAUL FROM CA PHE VN WITH HIS CONVERTED ICE CREAM VAN


ANGUS DENOON MAKING BENGALI JHAL MURI

Bean soup, with a harvest salad on the side.

i'd probably be a soup nazi too, only not so much the nazi bit, i love the winter and making soup, i make an especially good turkey noodle soup with savoury cheesy corn bread muffins on the side

Let's go into biz together. I recall you're a Virgo, yes? Can we be 2 Virgins on Wheels?

sagittarius (at least according to the old chart)

Hmm then can we be 2 Smart Alecks on Wheels?

cow cock and collards

Yum. I'm hungry. I'd love to visit a little street cart pod that offered up this variety of dishes!

Thanks for the link, tsar, I'll give it a listen. I think the street food movement is pretty cool. My brother is living in Korea and every time I talk to him he talks about the street food there so I'm really dying to visit. I love going to Pike's Market in Seattle where you can just wander around and eat amazing foods all day. Here they're springing up in little clusters of three or four carts on otherwise unused space. I've also started noticing little windows in the back of non-restaurant shops where they're selling specialty foods.

Mr. B and I sometimes fantasize about buying this little market that's been tucked into our neighborhood for the last 60 years or so. It has a full kitchen and a few tables in addition to the groceries and produce they sell. We have fun in our pretend little store.

names of places are great

there used to be a frozen yogurt place in Toronto in the 80's called Lickin' Chicken, it was originally a chicken place that went bust, the folks who took it over (so the story goes) couldn't afford a new sign over the door, but got a little neon sign that said Sorry, Out Of Chicken, it's since changed hands and is now called By The Way Cafe, but it was a pretty cool spot at one time

Gourmet takeout is huge here. ((Yuppies DINKS, and Yippies don't cook)

One of my favorite places, Modern in Keego Harbor, MI, serves 3 small bowls of soup together with a roll. They have a Mediterranean plate, short ribs and awesome specials.

I love to stir-fry. So I would do small plates with several different tastes.

A several course meal with wine pairings would be fun.

Small plate of really good chocolates with a cup of coffee to end it all (of a Spanish or Irish coffee)

I make ground bison hamburgers like meatloaf, with parsley, garlic, bread crumbs, egg, garlic, salt, pepper - all mixed together. I make smaller patties
and fry them in the pan. At a Christmas party I once made good 40 of these
small hamburger patties along with German potato salad. They were gone in no time.

Or the "chez what" in Chicago

There's a sushi restaurant here in Tulsa that converted a building that had been a drycleaners (Dunwell Cleaners) since the 1940s. They kept the cool old neon drycleaners' sign, so everyone now refers to it as "Dunwell Sushi."

we've got a c'est what in downtown toronto

good music and adult beverages

little resto? I'd probably have a short list of my favourite Northern German/Prussian dishes. Hot potato salad, 2 or 3 types of grilled or fried fish, beet salad, composed green salad, cold cherry soup.

one dish only from a cart? potato pancakes like they make them in Hamburg

And grits? Oh, hell yes. I'd dine at your place every day.

I suppose the best I could manage would be something along the lines of a Southtern-style breakfast. Grits and eggs, cathead biscuits, hog jowls, etc.

Then again, I can manage a passable fried catfish, squirrel, rabbit, venison stew or steaks, crawfish and shrimp gumbo. I don't think I could manage a menu wide enough to keep a restaurant going, tho. My cornbread always sucks, too. Don't know why.

I would like to have one with open Danish Sandwiches.
I have an old "menu" from one in Copenhagen and there are 172 different ones.

Chile

Or Peru