Winner of Foodie Freebie Friday: Under the Table

It's Foodie Freebie Friday and a glorious one at that! Chicago is beautiful and warm today... let's just all hope the sun and temps carry through the weekend. So this week's Foodie Freebie Friday I'm giving away a wonderful book that's hot off the press called, Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School written by Katherine Darling.

This book is about the author's experience as she attended culinary school at the French Culinary Institute. If you're into food, perhaps you've considered or thought about attending culinary school. I was enrolled last year but due to some unforeseen events, I wasn't able to attend and complete the program. However, I hope to get back into the culinary program within the next year or so. We'll have to see...

And if culinary school didn't interest you, maybe the idea of owning your own restaurant or cafe came to mind! This week, I asked readers what they would name your restaurant/cafe if they were a professional chef. The names many came up with were pretty cleaver or had a great deal of meaning... including:

A Cookie a Day - bakery
Roux the Day - Cajun/Creole restaurant
A Movable Feast - high quality deli
Savor The Thyme - restaurant
Cake, Batter, and Bowl - pastry shop
Sweet Endings - dessert shop Serendipi-Tea - restuarant/tea shop
Lulu - named after a reader's grandmother
Evita - named after a reader's nickname
Munch - named after a reader's daughter's nickname
Le Petit Pierogi - named after a reader's Polish background and love of French food

These are all lovely names and perhaps someday I'll happen to come across your establishments in the future! For me, we were in the process of opening up a culinary center of sorts. We had a location in mind, specifics figured out but when the economy started to decline and small business owners were struggling, we decided to put things on hold. The culinary center would have been called, What's Cookin Chicago, since it would be the namesake of the culinary group I run here in Chicago.

However if you ask my husband, he's definitely pushing me to open up a restaurant separate from the culinary center. If we decide to go that route in the future, it would be an asian restaurant featuring Filipino and Chinese cuisine that we would name, Kasama. Kasama in tagalog means, in the company of, companion or fun to be with (as in masayang kasama). That captures not only our personalities but the feeling we want our patrons to feel when with us. Maybe someday our dreams of opening up a place will come to fruition... but until then, we've got a great book to giveaway!

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8

Timestamp: 2009-04-24 15:07:19 UTC

Comment #8 comes from Scate who said...

I would open a bakery/cafe in my favority neighborhood (my own) and name it Sarah Cate's - my nickname that is the origin of Scate. This book looks fun - i really enjoy reading Anthony Bourdain's books and like learning about the "underbelly" of the restaurant world!

April 20, 2009 10:26 AM

Congratulations Sarah! Please email me at itsjoelen@gmail.com so I can have this great book sent right away!

Thanks again to all those that commented and stay tuned to the next Foodie Freebie announcement on Monday, April 27, 2009! Don't feel discouraged if you haven't won yet - I have a whole year's worth of freebies ahead and next week is one that you won't want to miss!