When you hear a business has been hacked, it usually spells trouble. When it happened to a diner in Fort Worth, it evolved into something good.
West Side Cafe is a breakfast and lunch place but the neighborhood diner was turned upside down Monday night.
White tablecloths and wine.
Servers in tuxedos. T-shirt tuxedos, that is.
Award-winning celebrity chef Juan Rodriguez in the kitchen.
All for a one-night-only fancy dinner.
“The faincy dinner, f-a-i-n-c-y,” said Gigi Howell, operating partner at Westland Restaurant Group whose portfolio includes West Side Cafe.
The Fancy Dinner was inspired by a hacker who probably never guessed the tables would be turned.
“We had a great Facebook page, and it got hacked. The person who hacked us was kind somehow and posted all these incredible recipes and people were like, ‘Hey, we’re coming in to get the baked apple or whatever the case was,’ and we’re like, you know, we’re really sorry we don’t really serve that here,” Howell said.
But then an idea struck. Why not use the hacker’s recipes, serve them at a special dinner event, and give a portion of the proceeds to charity?
Howell called on Juan Rodriguez of Magadelena’s to lead the team in the kitchen. He tweaked the hacker’s recipes and laid out a three-course menu: baked apples with blue cheese and cranberries, a tenderloin and salmon combo with roasted potatoes and fried Brussels sprouts with a lemon poppy seed pudding cake.
The idea turned into a full house, a sell-out event in support of Roll Call of North Texas, a Fort Worth-based nonprofit that serves veterans.
Whoever the hacker was, the team at Westland Restaurant Group sent out a big thank you.
Read it here: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/something-good/recipes-posted-by-hacker-inspire-fort-worth-cafe/3753308/
