Jagkaratch Grilled Chicken Restaurant Backstage
Many people are doubtful whether people who want to run a restaurant but do not have basis of cooking can be successful. If you want to know the answer, just come visit and taste E-san food in Soi Watcharaphon “Jaqkaratch Grilled Chicken Restaurant” that opens for 20 years from stamina of a couple from Chakarat District, Nakhonratchasima Province that wanted to open a restaurant although they did not have experience about food. “Khun Metta Thaisong or Khun Mate told us that she and her husband decided to move to Bangkok and everything started from zero. We did trial for more than 10 year until we can manage and develop recipe of the restaurant in stable way.
Jaqkaratch Grilled Chicken Restaurant starts from a small shop and expanded to be two-floor commercial building and sells at least 70 grilled chicken a day and one hundred chickens during weekend and public holidays.
It is also northeastern-style restaurant that stars- artists usually come to visit and taste menus. The atmosphere is casual and sincere that the restaurant provides to all customers. For those who used to consume it, they can notice that both shop owners will come out to welcome them and understand the customers’ need very well.
For menus, the restaurant has various kinds of menu as well as special menu that changed by raw materials and season such as red ant egg, eel and others. This is care the both persons dedicate to the restaurant that everyone can feel it.
Fondness comes first
when asking about the beginning point of the restaurant, Khun Mate said to us with pride that she and her husband are northeastern people and they selected to sell E-san food they are familiar. Fondness to open a restaurant at first might be interest of Khun Paitoon (husband) only but when the business is opened for a while, she realized that she love running a restaurant, cooking and taking care of customers.
Khun mate continued that she enjoyed creating new menus and how to make customers impressed including taste and ingredients. Furthermore, listening to suggestion and critiques from customers is important as they would know what to improve and they understand that fondness of each person is different. Therefore, to start opening a restaurant “you should start with fondness and sell food you like and that’s the best”
Adapt various menu from raw materials you have
With doubts why the restaurant has a lot of menus because most people think that selling few menu is what the restaurant can easily control, Khun Mate and her husband believe that adaptation and thinking of new recipes from raw materials they have is what to do to create alternatives for customers. Creating menus is not that tiring they are admired and gain trust from customers and it is to promote interesting points of the restaurant.
“We have raw materials and we adapt them such as fish, why do we have to grill it only, why not just try to steam it?”
Every day, Khun mate and her husband still manage and do everything in the restaurant alone like when they began opening it. They believe that selecting quality raw materials, creating or adapting menus, and taking care of customers themselves can make them to control quality of the restaurant to gain trust from customers. It also proves our attempt and care for food we serve in every dish. Caring for detail is the key”
“Customers are sincere to us and we should be sincere to them too. Supposing that if you would like to have not spicy papaya salad, but the cook makes it spicy, in that case, the customer can return it and we would make another one.”
Khun Mate said “this makes us even sure that the restaurant cares about service and emphasizes taste” furthermore, we know that the restaurant is meticulous in cooking and menu “Jaqkaratch grilled chicken”, the signature of the restaurant, is what every table will order because of its unique taste with coal smell. Chickens we select are young because of softer meat with greater smell. In cooking, we care about details in every step. The restaurant owner said to us that putting ingredients or seasonings require good quality and we put them moderately “like Ajinomoto Plus that is perfect for E–san food, you can put it in every menu, and it makes the foo taste even better”
They stressed that to run a restaurant, admirable service and understanding customers is important”. If you want to be successful, taking care of customers by asking if they want anything more is what you should train employees. Keeping the place clean is important too. All employees need to wear apron, gloves or cooking hat to increase sanitation because every Small detail can make customers impressed in good way.
