Let’s face it, consumers want what they want. Karen Chriqui of Kinneret Grill knows this truism of commerce as well as the next restaurateur. Recently she had it underscored when she stopped serving lunch at her restaurant. She said this: “There was a much larger demand for lunch than we had thought, and once we stopped doing it, a lot of people approached us and asked if we could do (offer) lunch again.”
So, Kinneret Grill is back open for lunch as of Sunday, January 21, after a short while of being closed for lunch. But it’s a better lunch option than in the past for Jewish diners-out and others who want a kosher meal in the lunch time-space, according to Chriqui. She came to realize that for most diners-out who wanted her to reopen for lunch, that what those patrons needed was more of a meal on the go than an elegant sit-down, time being of the essence for them. Not fast food. Not that! But good, wholesome food that came out of the kitchen a few minutes after the order was placed. Not exactly eat and run, but almost. After all, it is a work-a-day world out there.
A classic Kinneret Grill burger, with French fries
Chriqui listened to her patrons and adapted. “We decided if we were going to reopen for lunch, we would target it in a different way than we did in the past. In the past, lunch was an extension of dinner for us,” she said, with a lot of the same style, service routine, and menu items as at the dinner meal. The gloriously retired can afford the time all that can take. Most of the lunch crowd cannot. “So, we decided to redo lunch. We made it a more streamlined menu, without the plates and all that. The focus for lunch is value-priced meals and quick turnaround. The kind of meals we had been serving for lunch were more leisurely, but not all people can do that; have the time for that.”
How has the menu changed? “Well, major changes to the menu, really. Everything is ala carte. People can choose if they just want a sandwich or if they want, say, a burger with French fries, or a sandwich and a soda. There is a lot more flexibility, and not a set lunch special (as was common in the past when lunch was served).” At some point, shakshuka will be added to the lunch menu as perhaps an outlier to all the simple and fast options already in place.
The hummus and falafel plate with salad
She explained that in order to achieve speedier turnaround, lunch now is counter service only. Anyone who has been to a deli or fast-food burger place knows how that works, right? Patrons order at the counter and pay at the time of order. They provide a name and when the food comes from the kitchen, the name is called, and the patron comes up to get the order and take it to a table. The food choice a patron makes is still prepared fresh to order, but the difference is that counter service takes the server out of the process, and with that goes the added time required to come to the table, take the order and relay the choices to the kitchen. In fact, Chriqui stated that no more than ten minutes will be taken to prepare the lunchtime meals on her newly adjusted menu. While there are no hard numbers to go by, Dining Out did some loose observational surveys and estimates that counter service may take as much as 15 minutes out of the lunch experience.
Also, Chriqui emphasized lunch will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, Sunday through Thursday. But there will be no lunch menu service after 3 p.m. on those days. After 3 p.m., the dinner menu is in effect for the remainder of the service day. None of the lunch menu items will be available in the dining room or through online ordering after the end of lunch service at 3 p.m.
Further, Chriqui emphasized that dinner at Kinneret Grill will not change from the adjustments made recently. “The night is different. The night is for more leisurely dining, a more elegant setting, with fabric napkins and (China) plates and lighting that fits the mood of the evening. We’ve rebranded the restaurant (for evening service), making it a newer, more exciting experience; a more elegant experience — a larger selection of wines (from Israel), a broader range of new items on the menu. We’re focusing on our dinner shift to make it more elegant, a different experience for our guests — a different feel to the place,” Chriqui stated.
See you at Kinneret Grill, now for lunch and dinner!
