Artin’s Grill: You’ve Got to Try Their Coconut Sesame Bread Pudding

Most financially successful restaurants pay close attention to the bottom line, pinching pennies here and there, using every scrap of every ingredient to extract the most use possible. While execuchefs often command high salaries, the good ones help a restaurateur recover those expenses by maximizing the value of ingredients, labor and durable goods.

It's not Artin's Grill's bread pudding, but it sure looks good.

So it should come as little surprise, then, that the chef Christopher Short, the head toque of Artin’s Grill in Plano, should win an award for Best Use of Day-Old Burger Buns.

“Our owner is a freshness fanatic,” an Artin’s Grill manager told me during a recent visit. “If the buns aren’t used the day we receive them, they get used in the bread pudding the next day.”

Pretty clever, actually.

Short’s Coconut Sesame Bread Pudding is a hands-down winner, light in texture but packed full of creamy, sweet dairy notes, a hit of coconut, and tiny sesame seeds that add a savory dimension to the custard. If you look closely, you’ll notice

This is Artin's Grill's Texas burger

flecks of seeds stuck to the brown bits of bread tops in the pudding. And if you’d just finished licking the juice off your fingers after eating the half-pound Wagyu burger, you’ll think to yourself, “hey, haven’t I seen those seeds and that bronze bread color before…like…five minutes ago?” Even more impressive, though, was how light and airy the buns made the bread pudding, which can often be laden and gloppy.

Anybody else know of some equally clever ways chefs are reducing food costs without impacting quality?

(Want to know more about Artin’s Grill? Click here for a review by EscapeHatch friend Mark Stuertz.)