Four Original Bar Menu Ideas to Fire up Your Customers This Winter

It’s already looking like an extra-busy holiday season for bars and diners this year, so if you want your dishes to catch the eye amongst all the other modern bar menus, you’ll have to get creative. Bars all across Europe are sure to be serving up juicy chicken wings, classic fish and chips, classic hot dogs, and other popular winter favorites. And you can serve these tasty classics too — while still standing out amongst the crowd — just by experimenting a little and stepping up your side dishes. 

There used to be a time when customers were happy with a simple side of fries with their main dish, but times have changed. Diners today want to see flair, creativity, wow factor, and above all, they want flavor! You’ll be happy to hear, that’s just what we’ve designed these four new recipes to deliver. From spicing up your loaded fries to adding some extra punch to your fish and chips, these innovative bar menu ideas help to modernize some old classics, so you can serve trending bar food in a way that makes diners take notice.

Carrot Dog With Cheese Ziggy Fries: Classic Dish with a Veggie Twist

You’d be hard-pressed to find a modern bar menu without a hot dog on it. But as demand for meat-free dishes increases, we’ve decided to give this classic a healthier re-think.

To keep both the meat lovers and the veggie lovers happy, we’ve created the scrumptiously nutritious carrot dog with cheesy Ziggy Fries.

Here we’ve swapped the standard meat-based sausage with a rich and fragrant carrot-based one. Our carrot-based recipe offers incredible texture and a subtle zestiness that is sure to bring even the most seasoned meat eaters on board. Slather some mustard mayo on top, add some crunch with the deep-fried shallots, and serve with our trademark Ziggy Fries and cheese sauce, and you’ll have transformed a traditional bar menu classic into a game-changing winter dish.

This recipe will also help you serve customers fast throughout the busy holiday period, as the Ziggy Fries are ready to go in just 3 minutes!

Fish and Chips with Fennel Salad: Add Some Flare to an Old Favorite

No modern bar menu is complete without fish and chips, but to help you stand out against the competition, we’ve added a little flare to the recipe.

For our fish and chips with fennel salad we’ve taken a traditional English classic, and reimagined it — street food style. You can use any kind of whitefish for this dish, so it’s a very versatile bar food recipe that you can easily alter to fit with your budget and other menu items.

To really get your customers talking, we recommend serving the fish with our Connoisseur Rustic Fries as they stay crispy for a long time after cooking. Combine this long-lasting crispiness with our fresh fennel salad and you’ll create an irresistibly modern contrast of rich and punchy flavors. Add homemade remoulade sauce to maintain that original touch. (Of course you can buy this sauce ready-made, but quickly whip up our homemade recipe, and customers are sure to notice the difference.)

For an extra festive feel, maybe even add a little green garnish to the fries.

Wings and Wedges: Finding the Perfect Flavor Combo

The tried and tested combination of wings and wedges must be one of the most successful bar menu ideas ever. If you get the recipe right (in a way that stands out), it’s as close to a guaranteed success as you could hope for. That’s where our new wings and wedges recipe comes in.

We’ve taken traditional chicken wings, and marinated them in black garlic so they’re bursting with uniquely luscious flavor. Then, we’ve placed them alongside our seasoned potato wedges, and added homemade garlic mayonnaise on the side for the perfect taste combination. You can also use aioli or bbq dip if you want to mix up the flavor profile.

Finally, the cress adds a nice touch of color, and a little extra spice!

Spicy Loaded Fries: Fiery Vegan-Friendly Goodness

Our final bar food recipe is a fiery vegan-friendly side dish that’s packed full of goodness.

Serve our spicy loaded fries to your vegan customers and even your non-vegan customers, and they won’t be short on flavor. As an added bonus, this completely vegan dish is super cost-effective to put together as well.

To make all this possible, we’ve taken the trending bar food ingredient jackfruit — which is an actual fruit that tastes surprisingly similar to pulled pork — and added it to our famous Potato Dippers. The Potato Dippers are the ideal shape for scooping up all our tasty toppings, so with some fried onions and our jalapeño-based garnish added to the mix, what you’re left with is the tastiest vegan loaded fries around.

You can always include these fiery vegan-friendly treats on your takeout menu too, just always remember to keep the garnishes separate so the fries stay fresh and crispy until they’re delivered.