Article by Julia Soldic.
This year the Copenhagen-based Nordic Food Lab revealed another shocking new ingredient that had awakened the lab’s curiosity. The team had examined the re-integration of animal blood into our food chain.
The Nordic Food Lab was founded in 2008 by the brain and hands behind restaurant Noma, Rene Redzepi. The lab has, ever since, shown the world that the uneatable can be eatable if only your stomach can take it.
The famous Australian chef Justin North opened ‘The Burger Shed’ last year. He is the first of many chefs to develop a gourmet burger food concept. Because of the financial crisis in Australia, many customers choose for the opportunity of dining out inexpensively. ‘The Burger Shed’ is designed by Mima Design based on the concept; an inviting restaurant that expresses quality and affordability. The burger restaurant has brick walls, a concrete floor with elements of wooden pallets, raw materials and industrial lighting. Back-to-basics. The menu of ‘The Burger Shed’ focuses on the use of local and high-quality products. The menu offers four types of burgers (beef, lamb, chicken and Portobello), fish tacos and chicken tortillas.
Tripadvisor gives an overview of 10 jaw-dropping hotel pools around the world. Like the Hanging Gardens Ubud in Bali with a beautiful view over the rainforest or the swimming pool located at the 24th floor of the Holiday Inn Shanghai Pudong Kangqiao. The video above shows ‘The Library’ hotel in Ko Samui, Thailand. The name of the hotel pool ‘The Red Pool’ says it all. The pool is not made of the standard blue tiles, but of yellow, orange and deep red mosaic tiles. The pool looks like red blood, but the red mosaic tiles give a warming and special effect. The video is a bit long, but shows the inspiring design of the hotel. Look for the other pools at Tripadvisor.
Late 2013 Maison F opened in Paris, a high-end restaurant specialized in French Fries. They serve the fries with all their dishes. As guest you can choose the size (7 or 10 mm), with or without skin and the taste of the day fries. Clotilde Dusoulier, food blogger from the website Chocolate & Zucchini has eaten fries made of saffron risotto with her duck fillet. The fries are served with dishes that are prepared with products of the best craftsmen. They also have a bar with an extensive cocktail menu. Nice to visit when you’re in Paris!
Master croquette maker Piet Brink from ‘Van Dobben’ travels to Sotsji to make croquettes and ‘bitterballs’. He expects to make an average thousand per day that are sold in the ‘Holland Heineken Huis’. It was hard to arrange the paperwork for the import of frozen croquettes, this way the producer bends a problem into an opportunity.
Bidroom is a commission free booking website where hotels can offer rooms via a reversed auction. The guest selects a city and a room (3 to 5 stars and choice between single, double of triple) and within 24 hours hotels can make an offer, while the prices of competitors are visible. In the future Mark Bradshaw (CEO), Michael Ros (COO) and Casper Knieriem (CFO) want to generate revenue from advertisements.
In 2014, 2015 and 2016 Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the weekend. This means that you have three opportunities in a row to use all your Valentine’s weekend ideas! We gathered some fun suggestions for you here.
Last Sunday Joris Bijdendijk (Executive Chef Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam ) organized a Lobster Night for the hospitality industry in Amsterdam at Restaurant Bridges. The goal of the night was to create more bonding between the Amsterdam hotels, restaurants and cafés. For € 35,- (drinks excluded) invited guests could indulge themselves with unlimited lobster and selected wines by ‘Kwast Wijnkopers’. Chef and DJ Ron Blaauw arranged the musical context.
Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Jonathan Leijonhufvud
Jonathan LeijonhufvudThe Golden Egg Bar is the latest restaurant design by BAM (Ballistic Architecture Machine) and located in Beijing. The design is a blend between Chinese elements and a typical American dining from the fifties. The polished Egg functions as a bar and service counter. The extraordinary combination of contemporary Sichuan cuisine and fifties dinner culture creates a vibrant and convivial dining atmosphere.
Nicky’s is a restaurant concept in Gandia Spain, designed by Oscar Vidal of Ozone Group. Nicky’s is part of a recreational center with cinemas, bowling, a playground, souvenir shop and ice cream parlor. Hispabowling, the source behind the recreational center, was used as inspiration for the design of Nicky’s. A lot of wooden materials is used in the restaurant and it has wooden tables and chairs, some armchairs and to highlight the bowling theme, pins hang on the ceiling. Pins are placed at the end of a long table, so it just looks like a bowling alley. A lamp has been designed using galvanized old wash-basins to add a funny touch to the place. Click here for more pictures.
Always take your favorite tea with you with the ‘Tea Clutch’ by Tea Bar in Amserdam. The ‘Tea Clutch’ is a convenient on-the-go packaging with fifteen tea filters and loose tea. The mini clutch is available in the flavors Choco Chanel, Champ Chique (champagne cassis) and Mango Madness. The packaging has a chic look and is sealed with a reseal able sticker.
The Wahaca Southbank Experiment is a temporary restaurant build of eight recycled shipping containers, arranged in two floors with panoramic views over the river and a tequila bar with terrace. It is a creative and innovative restaurant with retro chairs, lamps made from recycled soda bottles and a relaxing atmosphere created by neon lights. Artists Daniel Melim has made Mexican street art works at the outside of the building. Wahaca is a Mexican restaurant that serves Mexican market food and they experiment with dishes, every month there is a new special on the menu. Wahaca has several locations in the London area. Check out this video of Wahaca Southbank being built.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts guest loyalty program Starwood Preferred Guest advertises on Instagram. It is the first advertising campaign by a travel brand on the social media platform. The campaign runs through February 4 on mobile and desktop devices. The photos used in advertising on Instagram are already published by the brands and promoted within the feed of people who don’t follow them.
The check-in process at a hotel can be long and often much paperwork must be filled in. The Aloft Hotel in Manhattan has a solution: a digital key to open the hotel room. Guests receive a virtual key through the Starwood app, compatible with both iPhones and Android devices. The Bluetooth enabled system will open the door. With this technical development the hotel chain wants to attract young people and offer an additional service.
The Norwegian Burger King has performed a remarkable campaign: they gave way free burgers of their competitor McDonalds as part of their Facebook campaign. The campaign was meant to test the sincerity of their fans. The fans could choose whether they remained loyal to Burger King or would go for a free Big Mac. When the fan chose for the Big Mac, the fan was removed from Facebook. Although the number of Facebook fans significantly decreased, the involvement and interaction with the fine fans increased.
We couldn’t find an immersive Christmas Light Maze in Europe yet, howevere correct us if we are wrong. But we love the idea, another fun read more
We have been sharing inspiration on our website since 2007, inspiration that we find in the hospitality industry or by online spotting of what our read more
We have been sharing inspiration on our website since 2007, inspiration that we find in the hospitality industry or by online spotting of what our read more
Made of cardboard and completely foldable. The Twisttable is the ideal bar table for entrepeneurs that wants to be environmental friendly. The tables are durable, stable and cheaper to transport than regular tables.
Have you had enough of the peer pressure to drink wine instead of a nice beer? Meet the Weineken pil that transforms a beer visually into a Chardonnay or red wine. Nice commercial with a wink from Evil Media Empire.
To celebrate the shortest night of the year, the OpenluchtHotel (Open Air Hotel) will be organized for the second time during the night of the 21st of June in Leiden (Netherlands). The city will be transformed to the largest hotel in the world. About 130 guests will have the oppertunity to sleep under the sky filled with stars, on special and monumental locations, which are disigned by artists. Before bedtime a cultural evening program will take place.
This funny coffee-designs are created by Quantum Graphics for the Interpack 2011 Exhibition, which took place in Dusseldorf last May.
The American chain of Italian restaurants, Fazoli’s, developed a pasta wrap. This populair item is now filled with pasta. This product is still in a test fase, which ends on the end of July, and is available in 5 of the 250 restaurants.
This pink bus sells cupcakes and clubcakes (combination of a waffle, clubsandwich, a hamburger and egg cake) throughout the Netherlands and at festivals. This is a concept of the Dutch patissier and Master chef Rudolf van Veen and Fontys Academy for Creative Industries, and is awarded as best Studentcompany of the Netherlands. In July the Bus Stop Bakery will represent the Netherlands during the European final in Madrid.
Juice bar Shakies introduced frozen yogurt in 4 different locations on train stations; on Amsterdam Central, Amsterdam Amstel, Leiden and Eindhoven train station. The frozen yogurt is made of organic yogurt and will be served with several fruit toppings. Next to the frozen yogurt, Shakies introduced breakfast shakes and salades as well. Untill the 11th of July you can try free samples of the new products.
In partnership with RCRD LBL, Morgans Hotel Group launched a new service for her guests. By scanning QR codes of the keycards, guests can download free music and playlists, which are compiled to suit the unique feeling of each Morgans hotel.
This iPhone app for Swedish sandwich spread Kalles Kaviar not only tells you how to boil the perfect egg, it will put together a playlist that, when finished, means your egg is ready. (It’s all so you can get your egg perfectly hardboiled to accompany the caviar). It’s clearly a hit with caviar/egg lovers – the app already has more than 50,000 downloads and is the third most downloaded in the free app section in the Swedish iTunes AppStore.
This is the way to get a lot of attention in social media! Club Med (in the Netherlands) is looking for a professional in enjoying life! Through their website they are gathering potential professionals and one of them gets the job to visit 2 new resorts this year, and write about it and show photo’s via social media. This idea can also be used as concept when opening a new hotel!
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Via Direct TV on Channel 111 you can compete in the Whopper Lust Challenge. The challenge is to watch as long as possible to a grilled burger. By pressing buttons on your remote, they measure how long you are watching. For every 10 minutes of watching, you earn a free Whopper. But when you switch to another channel, you lose all your earned Whoppers.
A good article at Triple Pundit about Panera Bread’s founder Ronald Shaich who started a Community Café last year where guest can-pay-what-you-can. Bottom line: Panera Bread created the Panera foundation and after 1 year Shaich estimates that about 20% of visitors to the cafes leave more than the suggested amount, 20% leave less and 60% leave the suggested donation. On average, each cafe serves 3,500 to 4,000 customers per week and generates about 75-80% of the retail value of the food.
WaterConcept Nederland delivers Thoreau water, an inventive dispending unit, designed for the hospitality. This system gives tap water the quality of pure and filtered water, which will be served in bottles of Swedish Design, available in still and sparking. Companies in the hospitality pay a fixed price per month for the system.
Illucensie is a Dutch contamination between illustratie (illustration) and recensie (review) created by Janneke Hoeben. She draws her restaurant reviews and creates a win-win situation: building up her portfolio and (free) publicity for her company.
The world’s first amphibious ice cream truck is a fact. The ‘HMS flake 99’ is commissioned by Fredericks ice cream company to celebrate the national ice cream week in England. Its marks the beginning of a UK tour, with plans to visit Venice in 2012.
A big mouth, but pain in the jaws after eating a hamburger? Two students from the MiamiAdd School in Berlin have developed an app that chooses the ideal hamburger for you by using a webcam. As a bonus, McDonalds randomly selects a burger that can be picked up by people with the ideal mouth size.
A few years ago we noted that the Bocuse restaurant group also wanted to create a modern version of a fastfood restaurant. The video expresses perfecly what they categorize as fastfood.
For those who want to visit New York this summer and don’t want to come back with some extra kilo’s there is Energy Kitchen. The restaurant serves low Calorie food and healthy hamburgers. Besides that they advocate a healthy lifestyle.
‘De Culinaire Werkplaats’ is an eating concepts restaurant that among other specialties is particularly known for its fruit and vegetable paper. Founded by textile designer Marjolein Wintjes and chef Eric Meuring, ‘ De Culinaire Werkplaats’ focuses on a blend of food, design and art.
A wide range of fruit and vegetable paper is homemade and used both in their dishes and for conceptual art work. Each meal at the restaurant highlights one of the flavored papers during its five courses.
Wintjes and Meuring have also used the paper in other projects, promoting the idea of sustainable fashion by creating clothing and accessories with the edible paper.
The Press Art lemon squeezer makes it easier to press the juice out of one lemon part. Apart from more juice it makes it easier to dose. The Press Art can be customized with a (company) logo.
A Japanese designer (Terada Naoki) has designed a coaster set that creates a story around your glass. There are three different coasters that express various environments, namely the city (red), a grassy plain (green) and water (blue). By clever folding, the coasters can be combined to create your own scenery.
A modern twist on the American drive-in movie theaters, is the bike-in movie theater, organized by marketing agency Manifold and food blog Forking Tasty. This free event, where hundreds of cyclists were attracted to, took place in Brooklyn, New York and was organized to celebrate summer and bike month. Due to the success more events like this one, will be organized.
The new Sofitel So Bangkok, yet to be opened, will be fully equipped with Apple equipment. All the 238 hotel rooms will feature an Apple Mac mini, an iPod, iPhone and iPad, which connects the guest directly to the hotel services. The hotel will open its doors in the first quarter of 2012.
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On the 11th of June, the first Dutch Smart City Chase took place in Amsterdam. During this existing sports event, teams of 2 have to fulfill several missions all over the city, by using the internet, public transportation, friends and strangers. The first Smart City Chase took place in 2003 in Canada and became a great success.
The Dutch location based marketing is thriving. After the introduction of Repudo it’s now Roamler that launches an app for location based messages. Members of this community can earn money and points with the assessment of products, filling in checklists or writing reviews. Heineken uses the app to check the presentation of their Coolcan in the supermarkets this summer. The City of Amsterdam asks members to send in nice graffiti and has included several other assignments around the theme ‘a green environment’. The app is now available for a select group of 500 people.
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