restaurants

As she sliced a raw jumbo shrimp and dropped it into her sweet coconut calypso sauce, Siobhan Letchford said her customers at The Islands know she runs a clean kitchen. They can’t help but notice – the homey Jamaican joint in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn that Letchford owns and operates is so small that diners pass within six feet of the frying pan as soon as they open the front door.

Prospective diners may begin to prejudge her as soon as next year, though, when the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene posts letter grades showing restaurant inspection results.

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With food and energy prices rising faster than dough in a brick oven, virtually everything that goes into making and serving a slice has gotten more expensive, New York pizza makers complain.

From flour to boxes, overhead costs for pizzerias have rocketed, prompting some on Manhattan’s East Side to commiserate with the competition and talk about how much to charge for a slice.

“It’s very hard, very hard to stay in this kind of business,” said Nicola Camaj, co-owner for 20-plus years of Adriatric Restaurant on 19th St. and First Ave.

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When the city Board of Health voted to ban trans fats from city restaurants in December 2006, many small business owners had no idea what the transition would entail.

Now the city is sponsoring a series of free workshops for restaurant professionals intended to ease the burden of figuring out how to comply and cook without partially hydrogenated fats.

On October 2, 30 food professionals gathered in the Bronx, all with the same goal: to learn how to make their restaurants trans fat free.

Click here to hear one food professional’s experiences. Click here for a slide show of the Bronx training session.