Saus Tasting Take Two

This past Sunday night we had our second official Saus tasting. 32 people turned out to taste 28 potential sauses. Each attendee gave ratings, written comments and suggestions. You know the turn-out is good when you run out of frites for dipping and resort to little pieces of baguette. Then you know you're just desperate when you run out of frites and baguettes and start opening boxes of Ritz Crackers. Overall, the feedback was great though. Thanks guys! Some early favorites were Cheddar Duvel Ale Sauce, Caramelized Onion Sauce , Roasted Garlic Mayo, Curry Ketchup and Hot Saus. Shout out to Saus' photograher Andrew Ong for the photos of the tasting.

Counters

Our artful woodworker (for lack of a better word), who is building our counter tops, table tops and our burlap wall (it's going to be so cool!), sent over some progress-report pictures of our counter tops being made. Don't worry, they won't be all splotchy when they are installed...

New Question

We got some really insightful responses to the last post, so I'd like to thank everyone for their thoughts. Good rally.

However, I was apparently misleading. When I asked about soda preferences (regular coke/diet coke/etc versus more rare or imported varieties), it wasn't really an either/or scenario. My bad.

We will definitely be having coke/diet coke/sprite/whatevs in a soda gun behind the counter. That is a definite. What I was trying to gauge was people's interest in paying more for unique soda brands. So far we are looking at a "micro-brew" all natural soda line, as well as a few European brands of soda and sparkling water.

Ok, so, new question:
In my research I found one brand in particular from Belgium. Perfect, right? Well I assumed it was soda. I recently found out that it was actually a juice company. It has cool flavors like apricot, pear and mango, but it is juice. Do you think juice is a good inclusion on our beverage menu? Will people be interested in Belgian juice to wash down their frites? Or if you are already gorging on indulgences, will you just want to enjoy a fizzy drink?

Pop Quiz

The last few days I have immersed myself in sleuthing. I am trying to track down some very unique (read- hard to find) sodas for Saus.

To compliment our Belgian menu, we want to serve up some authentic Belgian sparkling juices. Unfortunately, while we've found the perfect company, they are rare within the U.S., so getting them into Saus is proving to be a challenge. (But after working our butts off to open a restaurant -something none of us have done before and therefore didn't know where to start-, we know how to approach a challenge.)

And to compliment our classic-ly American side at Saus, we want to serve some American classics like root beer and ginger ale micro-brew style. While significantly easier to find than Belgian soda, finding people who distribute these "micro-brews" to Boston is still proving to be a challenge.

Anyway, what this long winded introduction is all about is I want to know if I'm wasting my time. Are you guys interested in seeing rare (and extremely tasty) sodas (and probably pay a tad more for them to accommodate the importing costs) or would you just as happily order a coke/sprite/whatever to wash down your frites?

Speak up!

Dust sets off fire alarms?

This is a picture of our space as of Thursday the 18th of Feb. Doesn't seem like much yet but the contractor had just started construction early that week. Funny story though, just earlier the same day I took this picture, I had come to the space at 9am for a standard food supplier meeting. Parked directly outside the space was a fire truck with its lights flashing. And in-front of the building was a large group of people I could only guess were employees from the offices above us. It goes without saying I was a little nervous, and the siren/beeping coming from inside our space wasn't relieving any stress. Thankfully when I got into the space I found out an abnormally large amount of dust in the air from all the cleaning was the cause of panic. Just want to also note our contractor was happily handing out free pens to all the firemen as they were exiting the space!

Lesson of the day: Dust can set off fire alarms, and if that happens, hand out free pens

Who could have predicted that we would become potato experts?

We are currently in the process of locking down the perfect potato for Saus pommes frites. So far we have experimented with Massachusetts Reba potatoes, Idaho Russets, and Yukon Golds. The Rebas were great because they come from a local farm and yielded delicious frites, alas are too small. The traditional Russets work well, but we want to be as locally focused as possible. The next phase of experimentation is with Maine russets, but we have been hearing that the potatoes are too wet due to the nature of the soil there and would therefore make it difficult to create a crispy exterior for our thick cut frites...we'll see.

33 Union Street gets a face lift

Kind of... Not really... Ok, the interior of Saus might look slightly worse for the wear.

As you may have seen on Facebook, Renee, Greg and I tested paint samples. Or more accurately, we all went to a paint store and debated, considered and finally chose 5 different colors to try on our walls. A brightish blue, a lighter blue, an orangey yellow, a lighter yellow, and a neutralish olive green. Then my artistic side took over and I went crazy on our walls.

After painting all the colors in natural light, I moved to the back of the store and painted them in artificial light. We then discussed which colors we liked and which ones we hated. We kept in mind that the color we choose has to enhance our space, match our furniture/overall decor and be consistent with our branding.

We may not have fallen in love with a color yet, but we did make progress on deciding which direction we want to experiment in next. And I wrote SAUS on the wall really big.

Day successful.