It has been 10 days since the restaurant reopened.
Restaurant owners, how are you doing now that the state of emergency has been lifted?
For now, we only get big waves on Saturdays, and medium or small waves the rest of the week.
For those of you who frequent restaurants, are you going out drinking now that the state of emergency has been lifted?
My impression is that drinking alcohol at a bar is still not an option for many people.
The remote issue is particularly tough for restaurants like ours.
The other day, I asked someone who came to the counter about their remote working situation, and she said, "I only come to the office once a month," and I turned pale.
If remote work continues to take hold, the idea of stopping by for a drink after work on weekdays will become a thing of the past . Of course, it will also be difficult to hold company drinking parties.
Depending on the job, the degree of remote work seems to vary, with some people not working remotely at all and others coming into the office about half the week, but I think that in the future, bars will be competing for customers who are not working remotely .
However, the people who are most reassuring are those who enjoy drinking outside as a hobby . They all seem to have been waiting for the end of the state of emergency to be lifted. And they have already been uploading lots of photos of their favorite stores on social media (of course, there are probably some who don't post them due to work reasons).
Whether it's remote or not, the spirit of going out if you want to drink is encouraging. Good luck! Outside drinking people!
However, we shouldn't just keep telling people to do their best and relying on others.
If a restaurant isn't attractive, it won't even be on your list of places you want to go to.
Any store should always make an effort to make itself attractive.
I've always thought that a store needs both the usual and the new .
What will remain as "the usual"?
And what kind of "new" will we create?
That choice will determine the store's attitude toward its customers.
When Bokumo reopens after its closure, the menu, interior and staff will all be the same as always.
One new thing we changed this time was the street signs.
Previous sign: A photo of the sign secured with string to prevent it from flying away in a typhoon
When we opened 12 years ago, we often had people say things like, "The interior design of the store is stylish, but I don't like the 'Bo' sign. It's kind of lame."
However, at the time I thought that things that were a little off-balance were cool (I'm a bit cynical), so when I heard that I thought to myself, "Great, that's exactly what I was aiming for."
Then, I heard someone on the phone inside the store say, "The big Bo sign is the landmark," and I thought, "Yes, that's it! That's why!"
However, as time passed, many customers started to look up our store on the internet and came to visit, so we started to think that the big "B" as a landmark was no longer of any use. Another reason is that we are no longer at an age where we find the imbalance amusing.
The biggest thing is that after 12 years of undergoing minor changes, the store is now quite different from when it first opened.
When it first opened, it was known as "a place where you could drink cheap, delicious wine and beer to your heart's content."
Now it is a restaurant that serves New Zealand wine and food that goes well with it. It has undergone a complete redesign.
When the store decided to express its attitude with a sign, this is what happened.
New sign
I like the words of Neil Young (Canadian singer-songwriter), "It is precisely because we keep changing that we have remained the same." I find musicians whose musical style changes with each generation fascinating.
I think that making small, repeated changes is what makes a store like ours so appealing.
The next change is the menu.
I have a lot of menus that I developed during my break, so I will be releasing them little by little.
However, as a small restaurant run by just one chef, we have to cut back on the "usual" in order to bring in the "new." This always makes me nervous.
The reason is that someone will almost certainly ask, "Is that menu item no longer available?"
Every time this happens I have to apologize, but what makes me feel even more sorry is that it makes the customer think that their favorite dish is unpopular. What's more, it scares me that they might think that this restaurant is out of touch with me.
But, we decide to introduce new menu items because we think they are more appealing than the previous ones. In order to continue to change, we have to make trepidation and heartbreaking choices.
So, I'll be adding some meat dishes to the menu this week and seafood next week, and removing something that was a staple.
However, if the new thing isn't quite right, I quickly go back to the old way, and I conveniently interpret this as a positive change .
This week's pairing suggestions
Starting this week, we would like to introduce the menu items served at our wine bar "Bokumo" and the New Zealand wines that go well with them.
First, this.
"Edamame Lamb Concarne"
Chili con carne is a local dish from Texas to Mexico in the southern United States. It is called chili con carne in Spanish. Usually, minced beef is used, but at Bokumo, we use minced lamb and serve it under the invented name Lamb Con Carne. It goes very well with edamame.
If you're making it at home, it's probably hard to get minced lamb, so I recommend using thinly sliced shoulder meat sold for Genghis Khan, roughly minced with a knife. Of course, you can use kidney beans instead of edamame, and chickpeas are also delicious. The lamb tastes even better with a good amount of spices.
The wine I would like to pair with this dish is...
"Black Cottage Hawke's Bay Merlot Cabernet 2017"
A Bordeaux blend of 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 10% Cabernet Franc. It is mellow but full-bodied. It goes well with any meat dish, but when paired with lamb in particular, you can enjoy the "phenomenon of the lamb aroma returning after you have swallowed the wine"!
The technical term for this returning aroma is "retronasal." It tends to be more pronounced with spicy or strongly flavored dishes.
Use it like this: "Wow, when you drink red wine after eating rum, the retronasal aroma of the rum that had once subsided comes back to life." (Where would you use this?)
This week's Bokumo wine
The new thing for Bokumo Wine, a specialty New Zealand wine store, is a social media follow and retweet campaign .
New Zealand wine is still not well known in Japan. In order to get people to know about and drink New Zealand wine, we ran a campaign on Twitter in August to give away wine, which received a much larger response than we expected.
I believe that we need to continue to promote this wine steadily, so this time we will be giving away this wine simultaneously on Twitter and Instagram.
"Atarangi Crimson Pinot Noir (375ml) 2019"
Ata Rangi is a winery that represents Martinborough, which is said to have the climate conditions most similar to Burgundy in New Zealand. The Pinot wines produced by this prestigious winery are truly elegant. Please come and experience the world-class taste.
This time, we will be giving away a half-bottle size (2,398 yen including tax) to one person on Twitter and one person on Instagram.
Click here to participate on Twitter▼
▼How to apply ① Follow @nzwinelovers ② Retweet this post
The contest will run until October 31st. Winners will be notified via DM.
If you're already following us, just RT!
More details will be posted in the thread
[Bokumo Wine October #Giveaway ]
— Bokumo Wine (@nzwinelovers) October 12, 2021
One lucky winner will receive a bottle of Crimson Pinot Noir 2019 (375ml) from New Zealand's prestigious Atalangi!
▼How to apply ① Follow @nzwinelovers ② Retweet this post
The event will run until October 31st. Winners will be notified via DM.
If you're already following us, just RT!
Details will be posted in the thread pic.twitter.com/PVdYpHwAIF
Join us on Instagram here▼
View this post on Instagram
If you win, make sure you drink it in a large wine glass (Burgundy glass)! The aroma and taste will be perceived in a completely different way.
