TASTE AWARDS Winner and “Bar Rescue” Star Jon Taffer Launches new Taffer’s Tavern Franchise

Long known to television audiences for saving bar owners from ruin on seven seasons of Paramount Network’s Bar Rescue, as well as TASTE AWARDS winner, renowned hospitality expert and entrepreneur Jon Taffer is bringing his famed level of standards to his own customers with the opening of the franchise Taffer’s Tavern. The first outpost of the casual-dining brand opened in the Fall of 2020 outside of Atlanta in Alpharetta, Georgia, with additional franchise locations coming soon to Boston, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. markets.

“Taffer’s Tavern truly reimagines the modern restaurant, with an emphasis on comfort and trust that spans from the ambiance to the food to the peace of mind that patrons will feel from our dedication to people’s safety”
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Inspired by the quintessential neighborhood pub, a regular gathering place for locals and visitors alike, Taffer’s Tavern is designed with traditional Old World taverns in mind, its ambiance is inviting, warm and comfortable, distinguished by dark woods, soft leathers, copper accents and exceptional food and beverage offerings. With an emphasis on providing the highest quality products and service, the menu highlights include such selections as a 72-Hour Short Rib (slow-braised for 72 hours then topped with rich demi-glace sauce and paired with mac ‘n’ cheese), BLT (Belly, Lettuce, Tomato – slow-cooked pork belly crisped and seasoned with smoked sea salt, topped with lettuce, tomato and zesty tomato aioli) and Tot Roast Fries (an inventive Southern poutine of tater tots topped with slow-cooked shredded beef, mushroom béchamel sauce, and creamy cheese curds).

Taffer’s Tavern boasts a best-in-class beverage program that Taffer crafted with master mixologist Phil Wills of Bar Rescue, featuring a diverse selection of spirits, wines and beers, many of local and regional provenance. Its signature cocktails, employing some of the most advanced mixology techniques, include The Campfire (Taffer’s trademarked Brown Butter Rye Whiskey, bitters and simple syrup is a perfect blend of bold flavors balanced with velvet-like smoothness) and Berry-Impressive (fruit-infused vodka layered with lemon, served bursting with fresh mixed berries in a French Press).

The innovative restaurant concept, developed by Taffer long before the COVID pandemic, features the industry’s highest safety standards for both guests and staff led by the “kitchen of the future” and the latest advancements in food prep/service technology. Always ahead of the industry curve, Taffer established Taffer’s Safe Dining System™ as a signature approach that sets new safety standards for the restaurant industry. Some of these safety and hygiene measures include hand-scanning detection technology to monitor every hand wash for contaminates, advanced glass cleaning technology for all drinkware, and reduced contact through department separation. Other elements include protocols for a no-contact, third-party order pick-up system, eliminating the need for delivery drivers to come inside the restaurant, and a unique meal preparation technology where food is minimally touched to prevent cross-contamination.

“Taffer’s Tavern truly reimagines the modern restaurant, with an emphasis on comfort and trust that spans from the ambiance to the food to the peace of mind that patrons will feel from our dedication to people’s safety,” stated Jon Taffer. “American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg talked about the concept of the coveted ‘third place’ – the first place is home, the second is work, and the third is a gathering place and nexus for human interaction. That third place is Taffer’s Tavern and Alpharetta could not be a better city to open our first franchise location. After spending months there prior to opening, I have found a community that I know will embrace Tavern and the Taffer brand.”

Taffer’s Tavern will open daily at 11:00 a.m. starting October 29 through November 18 for preview and training in advance of the grand opening on November 19. For more information, to make reservations, and for franchise opportunities, please visit.

About Jon Taffer

Jon Taffer is an award-winning hospitality expert, entrepreneur and thought leader with over 35 years of success in the entertainment, hospitality and nightlife industries. He’s best-known as executive producer and star of Paramount Network’s reality TV show Bar Rescue, which just wrapped its seventh season spotlighting Jon as he saves failing bars from looming closure. In 2019, he launched Taffer’s Mixologist, a line of craft, high-quality, pre-made cocktail mixes and hard seltzers available in retail stores across the country, including Walmart. Concurrently, Jon runs Taffer Virtual Teaching, his digital teaching platform, and Taffer Dynamics, his business consulting firm. Over the years, he has consulted for a range of well-known brands, including the NFL Network, Anheuser-Bush, Ritz-Carlton, TGI Fridays, Buffalo Wild Wings, Famous Dave’s Barbecue and Fortune 500 brands such as Hyatt Hotels and Marriott International. Jon is also the author of the best-selling book Raise the Bar: An Action-Based Method for Maximum Customer Reaction and his newest book Don’t Bulls*t Yourself. For more information, visit www.jontaffer.com.

About Taffer’s Tavern

Jon Taffer, Bar Rescue star and award-winning hospitality expert, has launched his own innovative, full-service restaurant franchise concept, Taffer’s Tavern. Taffer’s Tavern is the quintessential pub, a place to gather with your old friends and make new ones along the way. The tavern will feature outstanding signature cocktails, delicious bar food, a streamlined hoodless/ventless restaurant format with small footprint, and the latest advances in food preparation technology, with partners including Cuisine Solutions, Krowne, PathSpot, and Shift4. Taffer’s Tavern will launch its first tavern in Atlanta, Georgia in 2020. For more information, visit www.tafferstavern.com/.

RECIPE: Fresh Steamed Clam Chowder with Chef Marc Dym at the Little River Inn

Little River Inn in California’s Mendocino region is a fantastic place to relax, get away from it all, and CHILL. Fortunately, it also is surrounded by great sources of food, wine, and beer.

Their friend Chef Marc Dym loves to prepare his famous Fresh Steamed Clam Chowder, a staple at Ole’s and a favorite of many of the Inn’s guests. Fortunately he has shared it with them and us for you to try.

Because the Inn is located on the California Coast, this recipe never lacks for fresh ingredients. That means it always tastes amazing. But you can can still make it at home, and enjoy it just as much.

Fresh Steamed Clam Chowder

Broth Ingredients

4 Tbsp Butter
1 cups Roundman’s bacon (Medium dice)
2 ea Onions (Medium Dice)
¼ c Flour
1 bunch Celery (Medium Dice)
1 tsp Nutmeg
1 ea Bay Leaves
4 cups Clam Juice
2 each Potatoes (Peeled and Diced Medium)
2 Tsp Old Bay Spice
To taste Salt and Pepper
Dash Tabasco Sauce

Broth Directions
1. Render bacon and drain fat
2. Add onions and butter sauté until translucent
3. Add celery and sauté until celery is tender
4. Add clam juice and spices
5. Add potatoes and cook until potatoes are almost tender

Ingredients For Each Serving

8 each Small Manilla Clams
¼ cup White Wine
3 tbsp Heavy Cream

Directions for Each Serving

1. Heat up small sauté pan
2. Add clams and white wine
3. Add cream when clams open
4. Add 8 oz chowder base

Little River Inn
7901 N. Hwy. 1
Little River, CA 95456

http://www.littleriverinn.com

A World of Chocolate: Lindt Home of Chocolate opens near Zurich

If you love chocolate then you are about to be in heaven. If you love Switzerland, this is the best reason to travel there.

Starting in 2020, the Lindt Chocolate Competence Foundation invites small and large guests to take part in a journey of discovery into the wonderful world of chocolate. Planned and designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER, the Lindt Chocolate Tour provides information on the origins, history and production of the mouth-watering delicacy, and involves all the senses in an exhibition area covering 1500 square metres.

The museum exhibition is located in the Lindt Home of Chocolate, a new building by Swiss architects Christ & Gantenbein at the headquarters of Lindt & Sprüngli in Kilchberg near Zurich. The world’s highest, free-standing chocolate fountain in the foyer of the museum serves as the prelude to the world of chocolate. It is 9.30 metres high and circulates 1000 litres of liquid chocolate, flowing from a large, hovering wire whip down into a Lindor ball on the ground.

Borne along by the aroma of chocolate, visitors proceed on a tour of discovery on the first floor of the building. Sounds, smells, media stations and visitor-participation systems allow them to become part of the different scenarios. Designed individually, each exhibition room communicates through the senses and with information to convey an aspect of the world of chocolate.

To start, visitors travel to a cocoa plantation in Ghana where they learn everything about the cultivation, harvesting, fermentation and drying of cocoa beans – as well as about the quality assurance process. Being all about the 5,000 years history of chocolate, the “Chocolate History” room features a digitally animated 360-degree panorama picture and has a round media table in the middle. It shows how the preparation and consumption of chocolate has changed over the centuries. How Switzerland became the “home of chocolate” is conveyed in the “Swiss Pioneers” room. The first chocolate factory was opened in Vevey as early as 1819. The all-round, hand-painted Swiss panorama is an invitation to make one’s own discoveries.

The subsequent time tunnel “From Past to Present” illustrates the changes in the manufacture and marketing of Swiss chocolate from 1900 until the year 2000. And how does chocolate production function today? Visitors find this out in the “Production” room, which, with its smooth, shiny surfaces, is based on an actual factory. In this room, three chocolate springs, where the different composition of white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate can be tasted are a special attraction – and not only for young visitors.

The darkened adjacent room with the name “Chocolate Cosmos“, which is surrounded by an atmospheric projection of stars, finally places chocolate as a product in a global context before visitors are taken to the “Chocolate Heaven” where they can taste a sample of Lindt products. Large-format Lindor balls supplement the narrative space. They are designed as photo booths.

Finally, the visitors cross a bridge over the foyer of the building to reach the “Innovation Lab“, which opens out towards the light-filled interior. The exhibition architecture takes up the architecture of the building. This area concerns some questions about the future: Can there be chocolate without cocoa trees? How is artificial intelligence changing the production of chocolate? And can chocolate be made in a carbon-neutral manner? As soon as the visitor approaches, the initially opaque glass of the display case becomes transparent and reveals explanatory films and selected exhibits, including a replicated cell culture.

The heart of the “Innovation Lab” is a real testing system, the entire interior of which can be seen. Specialists use this system to develop new chocolate creations. Augmented animation enables an X-ray view into the insides of the machines. The Chocolate Tour ends with a chocolate souvenir: A small bar of chocolate from the testing system, packaged in a golden ball, rolls through a lovingly designed marble run before it falls into the hands of the visitor.

The Lindt Home of Chocolate is open from 10 am to 6 pm, Monday to Sunday. Inquiries for guided tours and workshops, in which it is possible to design one’s own chocolate creations, can be submitted at: https://www.lindt-home-of-chocolate.com/en/tickets-and-prices/

 

 

Need Bigger Sharks? Sea Monster Cove Gets you Nose-to-Nose with a 25-Ton Prehistoric Shark

If you enjoyed the Megalodon-sized thrills in bestselling author Steve Alten’s The MEG (which Warner Brothers turned into a blockbuster movie), imagine becoming part of the action yourself. Sea Monster Cove immerses visitors in an interactive multimedia experience where prehistoric sharks and other massive sea creatures are anything but ancient history.

Steve Alten, author of the NY Times bestselling MEG series, has created a world like no other. He says that Sea Monster Cove is a revolutionary multimedia entertainment concept that combines virtual reality, a web TV series, a video game and learning platform into one interactive site.

The Sea Monster Cove website of Alten’s imagination is a spectacular, five-star aquarium-themed resort located on Maug, a remote (and very real) island in the Western Pacific. Maug‘s volcano erupted 5 million years ago; today all that remains are three uninhabited islets that had been the volcano’s rim and a flooded magma chamber that serves as its lagoon.

Why place a virtual island resort here? That’s where Alten’s research and storytelling takes over. Eight years ago, a French marine biologist, Dr. Maxime Rostand discovered superheated mineral water rising up through Maug’s lagoon. Through a series of events, including an emergency C-section which saved two pups of a deceased pregnant prehistoric Mako shark, Rostand discovers the source of the hot mineral water to be a primordial aquifer located 2 miles beneath the sea floor — its inhabitants dating back 380 million years.

Having established the backstory about how these terrifying creatures managed to escape extinction (the “home videos” of the two surviving pups growing up is MUST-SEE), it’s time to meet and interact with the critters. Imagine the greatest aquarium-themed park ever conceived, holding the most terrifying prehistoric sharks and sea monsters that ever lived. It’s not hard to do.

At Sea Monster Cove, the special effects are motion picture-worthy, and the wildlife doesn’t just swim around in benign circles; in fact, they seem quite aware that you are watching them, and they clearly do not like it, especially when you enter their domain to do a little “cage diving.” In each of these heart-pounding, 360-degree experiences, the user controls the viewing angle, attempting to track the attacks as they happen (there are day and night versions available). The action is nonstop and the creatures so real that it is easy to lose yourself in a two-hour reprieve from reality.

The adventure is retold and advanced in Alten’s original episodic web TV series, Where Sea Monsters Roam (available to website members). Most unique: what happens in the series also happens during your aquarium visits. As an example, if Snowflake, the park’s 63-foot, 25-ton prehistoric albino Mako drags a crane into her tank in the opening episode, don’t be surprised to see it lying on the bottom on your next visit!

In addition to visiting the sharks and sea monsters, members will soon be able to experience what it’s like to venture into the prehistoric aquifer in a hunter sub and capture them in a Sea Monsters Roam video game. There’s also an education center, and a private library offering enhanced versions of Alten’s novels as well as teacher curriculum materials for distance learning.

One of the most popular features may just turn out to be CELEBRITY CAMEOS — the first one featuring James “Murr” Murray, one of the stars of TV’s Impractical Jokers. Murr, whose new novel, DON’T MOVE (Blackstone Publishing, co-written by Darren Wearmouth) debuts October 20, claims he and his bride, Melyssa stopped by Maug Island on their way home from their honeymoon to visit Sea Monster Cove when things “got out of hand.”

On another note, the MEG sequel, MEG-2: The TRENCH, is in pre-production, as is The LOCH (a thriller about the Loch Ness Monster) along with one other underwater feature, which cannot be announced just yet (but the enhanced version of the novel is available in the website’s private library). Steve Alten is also the founder and director of the nonprofit Adopt-an-Author teen reading program, considered by many educators to be the most effective tool to get reluctant readers to read.

For more information, visit www.seamonstercove.com

Need to Travel with Wine? Try the Wine Suitcase

If you have more than a few bottles of wine from a day trip or a long trip away, you definitely want to get them home safe and sound. Fortunately, there is luggage for that.

The VinGardeValise is a line of tough suitcases that are gentle on glass, thanks to their dense foam inserts created to cradle wine bottles.

The VinGardeValise® Piccolo doubles as an anytime, anywhere airline carry-on piece of luggage or as a checked wine travel case to travel safely with up to 5-bottles of wine – with room for your clothes and belongings on the other side

Available at https://vingardevalise.com

Places to Work Abroad or Retire with a Second Passport

There’s been a lot of movement among people looking at places to work or retire abroad, especially since many now have the option to work from anywhere.

According to International Living, there are several destinations for sourcing a second passport and residence quickly, and without buying or inheriting it. They say that Americans exploring their move-out-of-the-U.S have plenty of places around the world that only take 2-5 years to gain citizenship-by-naturalization, and it’s perfectly legal for Americans to hold dual-citizenship.

HOW IT WORKS

“Second passports and residence in other countries have long appealed to Americans interested in greater flexibility in their travels and investments,” says Jeff D. Opdyke, editor of The Savvy Retiree, a publication of International Living. “These days, that interest is rising—sharply—with more people seeking an ‘escape plan’ should the U.S. no longer suit them in the years to come, whether that be for political, economic, or social reasons.”

It’s possible to effectively buy a passport by investing in certain countries—but to do so typically requires a minimum of $100,000. It’s possible to gain citizenship (and a passport) through family heritage, too. But the genealogy route is hit or miss, depending on the country.

“There is, however, a less-costly, more-organic, nearly assured path: Move somewhere and gain citizenship—and a passport—via the naturalization process,” Opdyke says, “and that’s not as difficult as it might sound.

“While lots of countries require that you live within their borders for a decade or longer before you can apply for citizenship, several impose a much-shorter timeline of between two and five years. And as a U.S. expat who’s lived in Prague now for nearly two years, I can tell you those years fly by quickly.”

It’s legal for U.S. citizens to hold dual citizenship (and two—or more—passports), which means one needn’t give up their U.S. citizenship to avail themselves of the benefits a second citizenship can provide.

“Right now, for instance, a U.S. passport isn’t opening many doors if you’re traveling from the States, but if you had a second passport, you could go on that,” Opdyke says. “It can simply open doors—and provide options not only for greater movement, but for investments, and overseas living as well.”

For folks considering securing citizenship and a second passport, the International Living report explores several countries where the process of citizenship-by-naturalization is relatively quick:

Argentina: 2 Years

Two short years in one of the world’s truly beautiful countries and you can apply for citizenship and, thus, an Argentine passport—the 19th most-powerful passport on the planet in that it gives you access to 170 countries without needing a visa.

There are definitive requirements for Argentina:

• Proof that you’ve lived continuously in Argentina for two years.
• Be over 18 years old.
• Proof of adequate income or employment.
• Passport.
• A DNI card—an Argentine residence permit.
• Proof of no serious criminal record.

Argentina seemingly has a financial crisis du jour. Still, if one’s life is denominated in dollars, their lifestyle in the land of tango will be pretty sweet. Argentina allows you to hold dual nationality as an American.

Peru: 2 Years*

The asterisk here ties to Peru’s requirement that a non-Peruvian can apply for citizenship two years after acquiring residence in the country. That’s not hard; with the correct documents folks can apply for Peruvian residence while visiting on a tourist visa. But it could take several months to complete the residence process.

Once you’ve been a resident for two years, citizenship can be applied for. The necessary documents are similar to those in Argentina, but there are also requirements:

• Write an application to the president of Peru.
• Prove you’re healthy.
• Can communicate in Spanish, and pass an exam about Peruvian history, culture, and geography.

Ecuador, Honduras, Poland, Paraguay: 3 Years

Ecuador demands three continuous years, and if there is an interruption of more than 90 days, folks have to start over.

Honduras shortens the requirement to two years if you are Ibero-American (from a Spanish or Portuguese-speaking country).

Poland is interesting because it’s a European Union member, meaning this is the quickest path to an EU passport. One will also need proof of a stable source of income, such as Social Security or a pension. Perhaps the hardest requirement: proof—by way of official certificate—that you can speak Polish, not one of the world’s easiest languages for native English speakers.

Paraguay is straightforward: Live there for three years as an upstanding citizen.

Brazil: 4 Years

Very much like Paraguay in how easy it is. Four years of continuous residence in the country, command of Portuguese, and no criminal record.

5 Years

Australia, Barbados, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland, Jamaica, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Panama, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uruguay: 5 years

This is not a complete list of the five-year countries. Quite a few others impose requirements that make them less appealing (Indonesia and Japan require that you relinquish your U.S. nationality), or they’re countries most won’t rush to, such as Iran, Congo, or Afghanistan.

Most of these countries are straightforward: five years of continuous residence.

Finland requires folks speak Finnish or Swedish, the Netherlands requires applicants be conversant in Dutch, and Thailand demands folks speak Thai.

Panama wants to know you can speak Spanish and have a basic understanding of Panamanian history, geography, and politics.