Dining in The Fine

The Starts and inspirations of the Fine Dining Restaurants

By Avaneesh Katappagari

ine dining, the field of heightened artistry in food and pioneer in trends and innovations, allowing customers to enjoy a luxurious yet complicated experience. These restaurants are plentiful in Texas. A famous restaurant in Austin is the Japanese restaurant Uchi’s; started in 2003 and has since grown, becoming famous for its nontraditional approach to Japanese cuisine.

Peacock is another fine dining restaurant in Plano and Irving. The restaurant focuses on Asian fusion recipes and tries to bridge the gap between Indian and American Society. Inspiration, start in fine dining, ideas, and people are what help with the start of these restaurants and are crucial to their later success.

Vijay Nettem is the franchise owner of Peacock in

Plano and Irving, Texas where, along with her husband, owned two restaurants and took care of them for two years until they sold them last year. The inspiration for opening a restaurant was economic and her love for Indian food.

“I am very foodie and I like cooking and all and we thought we just use that,” Nettem said, “and one of my brothers is in that industry experience with sushi,” Stanwyck said. so we thought it’d be a good investment”

Having always wanted to work at Uchi’s, Stanwyck was worried she wouldn’t have enough experience to work at such a prestigious business. This led her to instead apply to a different restaurant that is owned by Uchi’s as she thought she would just apply and one day, they might have an opening and let her to work at the original Uchi’s.

Brigid Stanwyck, general manager of Uchi’s since 2014, entered the food industry as a teenager, working at restaurants in high school before eventually rising to the top of Uchi’s.

“When I moved to Austin, I always wanted to work at Uchi’s but I thought I didn’t have enough

Blake Lueke, the chef de cuisine at Uchi’s, got into the fine dining industry through his father and grandfather who both worked in restaurants, just in front of the house. Lueke got his inspiration from an Uchi Cookbook in California and read the entire cookbook front to back and he found Chef Tyson’s work, the original head chef and creator of Uchi’s, inspirational as it did something unexpected and outside of Japanese culture; something he learned in culinary school.

“I said what the heck, try out culinary school,” Lueke said. “I wanna do something creative and artistic and different.”

He attended culinary school and started working in restaurants before he finished school. He started out as a line cook at a hotel in California. He put in time and effort and over time, he rose up the ranks to become an executive chef for the hotel.

Nettem started her restaurant by getting advice from multiple other franchise owners and researching other restaurant menus. She also got a list of multiple contacts to get her chefs. When looking for different employees, she looked for one main characteristic.

“For me, it is if they have a very good background at cooking Indian food, and especially we are also looking at catering business so someone who can cook for a thousand people’s wedding”, said Nettem.

On the contrary, Stanwyck believes people who work in the front of house, people who work with the customers, don’t need the kind of experiences that the back of house , people who cook the food, need.

“We have the philosophy that we can teach anybody about fish, about sake, how to open a bottle of wine and other steps of service,” Stanwyck said, “but you can never teach people how to be kind and gracious or you can’t teach people to want to learn because you have to have that desire.”

These desires are reflected in Uchi’s core qualities that Stanwyck said make Uchi special.

Nettem got her restaurant by buying two buildings, one in Irving and one in Plano. One was a gym and the other was a completely hollow building and transformed them into restaurants. She hired an architect and an interior designer and she took one year to completely finish her restaurants, which appliances, it’ll be high voltage lines, high capacity lines, both for gas, even for the gas it has to have that big gas outlet”, said Nettem.

Lueke believes that the hardest part about a restaurant is getting products into the restaurant.

“Logistics in today’s world, shipping, and product availability,” Lueke said. “The market changed a lot because of the pandemic so we are all trying to cash back up to before the pandemic.” thing in fine-dining restaurants are the same thing

When it comes to the easiest part of a fine dining restaurant, Lueke believes that it is the people. He has a great team back in Uchi’s and takes pride in their work. His favorite memories are when he did service with his team.

“With a relatively new team doing some challenging menus on special occasions like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day and the team really pulled through seamless nights”, said Lueke.

“The most rewarding and most challenging thing in the restaurant industry is that it is constantly changing,” Stanwyck said. “Every day, there is never a day that everything goes exactly right. There is always a problem to pivot to.”

Stanwyck’s way of tackling this factor in restaurant life is by trying to anticipate these problems. She collaborates with the back of house to were told to leave their personal baggage at the door is wrong to Stanwyck but she also believes it is important to keep giving proper feedback to everyone, regardless of the situation. was the hardest part of starting a restaurant for her.

“We can view direct feedback or constructive criticism as you know being mean and being confrontational when really it’s at the kindness to tell somebody so they have the opportunity to do it the correct way”, said Stanwyck.

“Building the kitchen is the main challenge there. We had to make sure we had food area electrical outlets, the gas outlets and everything is commercial, you cannot have regular residential

Stanwyck, while agreeing with Lueke, thinks that the easiest and hardest ensure there are no problems with the equipment or food products and ensure everything is running smoothly.

Problems come and go in fine dining restaurants all the time and Stanwyck believes that it is important to remember that her staff are people and they also have their own lives. The old ways in restaurants where people

According to Lueke, one of the more important things to keep his staff in good condition is proper nutrition. “Nourishment for the body and setting ourselves up for success,” Lueke said. “You know you don’t wanna go into a 10-12 hour shift and not have proper hydration either especially working in the summer in Texas.”

When service is intense in the restaurant, Stanwyck believes that everyone’s not stressing but having a blast. She said that it’s just a lot of comradery and that working in the restaurant is just like working in a team sport, everyone, regardless of their position, is putting forward their best effort and setting up their teammates for success.

“During the intense part of service,” Stanwyck said, “it is intense, but it is fun and thrilling, and afterward, it’s like, ‘Whoo hoo!’ because we all made it through and time literally flies and you feel really accomplished and proud.”

In the back of the restaurant, Lueke said that even during intense hours, everyone just does what they are supposed to and it can be sort of quiet. Lueke had days with more than 400 dishes and even then, everyone just talked about food and laughed.

While the employees at the restaurant are important, so are the customers. Stanwyck’s best memory comes from a late night in the restaurant with a customer.

“We had a guest that was dying and they asked for their last meal to be Uchi have you brought it to the hospital for them and that you know I’m trying just thinking about that that somebody were so impactful”, said Stanwyck

The fine dining industry is one that displays both luxury and complicity. It has the best sort of experience and also knows how to show its guests the real way to eat. The people in these restaurants play an important role in this.

“The restaurant industry is like the ultimate team sport no matter what position you are,” Stanwyck said.