The Big Dance Restaurant Challenge
100,000 tacos al carbon, coming up! Ninfa's revs up for The Big Dance
The Big Dance dish — tacos al carbon with queso, chips and pico de gallo.Flatware not included.Photo by Sarah Rufca
Ninfa's is making extra dough for tortillas in the days leading up to The BigDance — but they'll be cooked fresh on site.Photo by Sarah Rufca
For the first time ever, the organizers of The Big Dance Concert Series are including local restaurants in the free outdoor concerts taking place in Discovery Green over Final Four Weekend, April 1-3.
For the four restaurants that earned their way in and the thousands of visitors that will get a chance to eat authentic Houston food, that's great. But it does create an issue: How does a busy restaurant like Ninfa's on Navigation prepare to run a offsite stand that will serve tens of thousands of people?
According to Legacy Restaurants Chief Operations Officer Mark Weissberg, the answer is prep, prep and more prep.
"We calculate everything based on the 'guesstimation' of attendance," Weissberg says. "They say the crowds Sunday will be more than double the amount on Friday, not just because of the bands but because there won't be any basketball games. The number of people could be as many as 100,000 on Sunday."
Ninfa's on Navigation employees have been working steadily for the two weeks since they were selected as a vendor in The Big Dance Restaurant Challenge judging. Details to work out include securing rental equipment, working to satisfy city health and fire code requirements, establishing an Internet source to use to accept credit card payments and more.
"It's a logistical nightmare," says Weissberg. "It presents a challenge on all fronts. It's already going to be a busy weekend at the restaurant, and we do a pretty good weekend business already. But I feel like we have an advantage because we already have an off-premises catering arm accustomed to serving large groups of people."
Ninfa's talked to Aramark, which shared a formula to calculate the amount of product they'd need: Take the estimated attendance and assume about half will eat food at the event, then divide by the number of stands serving food — in this case, seven.
Using this formula, the Ninfa's stand at Discovery Green could serve as many as 10 times the amount of people that would make it through the restaurant doors on Sunday.
Despite the obstacles, Ninfa's has some creative solutions, including potentially letting customers park at the Navigation location and use their shuttles to get to Discovery Green. Ans as always they are committed to serving only the kind of food that put them on the map — a duo of tacos al carbon with pico de gallo, queso and tortilla chips on the side.
"We had to figure out refrigeration both in the transportation and in the tent because we are committed to cooking everything on site," says Weissberg. "The tortillas have to be fresh and the meat has to be grilled fresh and hot, or else it wouldn't be a Ninfa's taco al carbon."
