Culinary Trickle Down

As many quick service and fast casual restaurants have had an increase in business, the converse is true of many fine dining restaurants across the country. The question is...Can patrons allow fine dining to just disappear? At AZUR, we believe that fine dining restaurants drive the food service market. The passion and creativity of chefs at fine dining restaurants create new and interesting tastes by combining ingredients and cooking methods in new ways. These are then often duplicated by the next level down in more simpler ways. Obviously, they cannot afford to prepare a dish for hours or even days. Hence, culinary "trickle down" occurs. Cut down the ingredients and preparation time and you have something similar but not the original (e.g. chicken cordon blue - prepared fresh vs. frozen "out-of-the-box") Do people want to see the next level below fine dining to become the highest level available in the future? (to be continued)