https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBtIyuoIkkY&feature=youtu.be
A day in the life
- Thread starter WarrantMan
- Start date
The restaurant depot is the bomb. I can't drive through the parking lot without it costing me $300.
The freakin' HEB is a tourist destination for me. It's like the Bass Pro Shop or Nebraska Furniture Mart of grocery stores. My favorite is the HEB+ in New Braunfels. The Dangler's load the family truckster with the giant marine cooler and head to New Braunfels on an annual migration. Fill up the cooler with all of the good shit we can't get in Kansas to take home. Then we drive over to Gruene for beers and tunes.
The freakin' HEB is a tourist destination for me. It's like the Bass Pro Shop or Nebraska Furniture Mart of grocery stores. My favorite is the HEB+ in New Braunfels. The Dangler's load the family truckster with the giant marine cooler and head to New Braunfels on an annual migration. Fill up the cooler with all of the good shit we can't get in Kansas to take home. Then we drive over to Gruene for beers and tunes.
Jetro (which became Restaurant Depot) is an awesome thing. The one here in Chicago on Division & Halsted does close to half a million dollars a DAY in business.
For those who don't know, Restaurant Depot is like Costco or Sam's Club but for restaurants. So when you buy canned green beans at Costco there are 12 fourteen point five ounce cans per pack, but at Restaurant Depot that case is 6 ten pound cans of green beans. The up scale is way real. It's a commercial level food service Costco where you buy 30lbs of skirt steak for $6 a pound, spend the time necessary to trim it out, then grill it and serve the Friday night fajita crowd.
For hot sauce makers Restaurant Depot is a gem. All of you DIY hot sauce makers should have a (free) membership at RD if you have one near - all you have to do is show them your business license and they give you a card. Great and consistent supply of the stuff you make sauce with, at a fraction of the retail price.
For those who don't know, Restaurant Depot is like Costco or Sam's Club but for restaurants. So when you buy canned green beans at Costco there are 12 fourteen point five ounce cans per pack, but at Restaurant Depot that case is 6 ten pound cans of green beans. The up scale is way real. It's a commercial level food service Costco where you buy 30lbs of skirt steak for $6 a pound, spend the time necessary to trim it out, then grill it and serve the Friday night fajita crowd.
For hot sauce makers Restaurant Depot is a gem. All of you DIY hot sauce makers should have a (free) membership at RD if you have one near - all you have to do is show them your business license and they give you a card. Great and consistent supply of the stuff you make sauce with, at a fraction of the retail price.
Ed,
I don't believe the one here carries wine. Haven't looked for any but didn't notice any. Probably due to some odd alcohol laws here I presume.
SNF, HD
Spot on with your descriptions of the place. Could've done an hour vid and not touched it all. This was just on a whim. And you mention meat - great goodness! One whole side of the store is a walk-in freezer/cooler. Hard to stay in there long.... Did score some really good beef mark-downs last week and made gobs of jerky. It's only been open here for perhaps six-months but they've gotten a few $ from me.
I don't believe the one here carries wine. Haven't looked for any but didn't notice any. Probably due to some odd alcohol laws here I presume.
SNF, HD
Spot on with your descriptions of the place. Could've done an hour vid and not touched it all. This was just on a whim. And you mention meat - great goodness! One whole side of the store is a walk-in freezer/cooler. Hard to stay in there long.... Did score some really good beef mark-downs last week and made gobs of jerky. It's only been open here for perhaps six-months but they've gotten a few $ from me.
SmokenFire said:
Not sure if it's the same company because we have a Jetro here.
THP,
It appears to be one and the same. My membership card (front only) for obvious reasons...
It appears to be one and the same. My membership card (front only) for obvious reasons...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNimWe3r9Q&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmrFlrHAV3A&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmrFlrHAV3A&feature=youtu.be
https://youtu.be/prnyBpB8aGA
Ive got some massive Asian markets. Sauce isles close to 100ft long. More kinds of soy sauce that you can imagine but my favorite is LKK Double Fermented and LKK Premium Dark for the Chinese brands. LKK Premium oyster sauce is also the best but also the most expensive.
Get some good black vinegar while you are there if you like dumplings or Sichuan style noodles. Its a must. DONT get the crap vinegar from Taiwan either. Gold Plum brand Chinkiang is pretty good and cheap. Shanxi Shuita 5yr is not terribly more $$ and great. A bottle of it at my markets is about $5-$6 and Gold Plum is around $3.
Most Chinese hot sauce is not that hot EXCEPT........Yellow Lantern. Its made from a chinense pepper from only a few regions in China. It will light you up a little. VERY VERY hard to find even at large Asian markets. It looks more like a pepper mash than a hot sauce. Often sold in jars. Pearl River brand is probably the only one you will find in the USA.
Get some good black vinegar while you are there if you like dumplings or Sichuan style noodles. Its a must. DONT get the crap vinegar from Taiwan either. Gold Plum brand Chinkiang is pretty good and cheap. Shanxi Shuita 5yr is not terribly more $$ and great. A bottle of it at my markets is about $5-$6 and Gold Plum is around $3.
Most Chinese hot sauce is not that hot EXCEPT........Yellow Lantern. Its made from a chinense pepper from only a few regions in China. It will light you up a little. VERY VERY hard to find even at large Asian markets. It looks more like a pepper mash than a hot sauce. Often sold in jars. Pearl River brand is probably the only one you will find in the USA.
DANG, I need stores like that here.
From what I can gather, you need to be a business owner (or be on a business owner's account) to shop at Restaurant Depot.
One way around that, if anyone's interested, is by joining "KCBS" (Kansas City BBQ Society). I just joined the other day, and one of the perks to having a membership is unlimited day passes to Restaurant Depot! At $40/yr (right now), it seems much cheaper than "starting up a business" to get in the door, hahaha
Anyway, I went in there for the first time today, and I was blown away. They carry just about anything you could imagine for cooking/catering (mostly in bulk, and cheap). As a BBQ enthusiast, I was mostly interested in their meat cooler, and I wasn't disappointed:
Wall O' Meat
Pork
Beef
More beef
Whole lamb (they had goat too)
I could've easily spent all day in that place, and spent $10K like it was nothing, haha. I behaved though, and only walked out with a few BBQ essentials (oh, and some Scorpion Tabasco
)
Really cool place. If you ever get a chance to tag along with someone to get in, I'd highly recommend it. Don't say I didn't warn you, but it'd be almost impossible to walk out of that place empty handed, lol. I think memberships are free if you're a business owner. So if you know one, maybe you could talk them into signing up and putting your name on their account
Cheers
One way around that, if anyone's interested, is by joining "KCBS" (Kansas City BBQ Society). I just joined the other day, and one of the perks to having a membership is unlimited day passes to Restaurant Depot! At $40/yr (right now), it seems much cheaper than "starting up a business" to get in the door, hahaha
Anyway, I went in there for the first time today, and I was blown away. They carry just about anything you could imagine for cooking/catering (mostly in bulk, and cheap). As a BBQ enthusiast, I was mostly interested in their meat cooler, and I wasn't disappointed:
Wall O' Meat
Pork
Beef
More beef
Whole lamb (they had goat too)
I could've easily spent all day in that place, and spent $10K like it was nothing, haha. I behaved though, and only walked out with a few BBQ essentials (oh, and some Scorpion Tabasco
)Really cool place. If you ever get a chance to tag along with someone to get in, I'd highly recommend it. Don't say I didn't warn you, but it'd be almost impossible to walk out of that place empty handed, lol. I think memberships are free if you're a business owner. So if you know one, maybe you could talk them into signing up and putting your name on their account
Cheers