Where would you rather eat?

Claire's
Claire
Natch's (Nathan Alexander + Claire Hayden) pronounced Natchez
Natch


from our draft proposal

The theme for our restaurant will be American food with a Southern flavor. This will give us a great deal of flexibility in our menu choices. For lunch, we will be able to offer quick buffet style meals, focusing on comfort foods in the price range of $4-8 for soups, sandwiches and salads and $8-13 for other entrees. Dinner will be more upscale, with a menu that changes seasonally and prices in the $5-25 range. We plan to have a full liquor license, primarily to serve our diners, but with some solo bar business as well. On Sundays, we will be open for Brunch only. As much as possible, we would like to include local growers and businesses such as County Meadows Cheese, Sundance Knoll Ranch Beef and 8 o’clock Ranch Lamb in our menu choices. The attached sample menu will show you our current plans. Within a few months of starting the restaurant, we expect to be able to expand to in-house catering. Depending on customer needs, we will add outside catering by our second year. We will aggressively market the catering business for the summer months to capture wedding and reunion business.

We have several ideas that we plan to implement to become involved with the community. We want to mix education with enjoyment by hosting beer and wine tasting dinners. These have been very successful at other restaurants where I’ve worked, and it will be a great opportunity to introduce our neighbors to great brewers and wineries. There is also a rising movement in this country called Slow Food, which encourages the use of local products at the dinner table. I’m sure our community would enjoy having a North Country meal in the company of some local growers and cheese makers. We’d also like to offer short one-day classes in cooking. All of these events will be ideal during the months when we have forecast lower customer levels. In addition, we will be contacting Paul Smith’s College, the C.I.A. and N.E.C.I to offer externships to culinary students. This regular infusion of students from around the country will help introduce us to current culinary trends, and also inject some new viewpoints to our menu.