When Your Favorite Restaurant Tells Lies

When you read a menu these days, there are a lot of descriptive words. There are the words: natural, organic, artisanal, and sustainably grown. You see the names of a lot of farms and ranches, especially if the restaurant is farm to table, another term. What do all these words and terms mean? Most of us think we know what they mean but do we really? Do these words and terms mean anything at all? Are they just a marketing gimmick? Is it really important, if the food taste good? Isn’t it all about the taste?

I started in the restaurant business back in the early 70’s. That was a long time ago. I didn’t have the money or the time to attend culinary school. I learned at the elbows of established chefs and I stole their secrets with my eyes. I read a lot of cookbooks and food magazines. This was before the internet. Today I think you can get a culinary degree via the internet. My path was different. I did everything I could to self-educate. It was a passion for me, not work.

In the mid 70’s, I started reading about a lady out in California who opened a restaurant in Berkley in 1971. This was about the time I started my culinary career. It was called Chez Panisse. The lady’s name was Alice Waters. There was an awful lot written about her. I figured she had a very good PR person. I didn’t realize until much later she had started a Food Revolution. Her focus was on ingredients over technique. This was a novel concept in America. I was worshiping at the altar of French technique at the time. She was the original farm to table restaurant in the United States. She encouraged Laura Chenel to make natural goat cheese, Bob Cannard to grow organic and sustainable vegetables and fruits and Steven and Suzie Sullivan to bake artisanal bread at The Acme Bread Company. 

Even more, she bought their products. She helped support them in the beginning, when they needed it. She bought the best ingredients she could find, no matter what the cost. Her restaurant struggled financially at first. She also created and nurtured a whole generation of like-minded chefs: Mark Miller, Jeremiah Tower, Paul Bertolli, Judy Rogers, Jonathan Waxman, Deborah Madison and I could go on for at least 30 minutes but you get the idea.

If you read her menu today, no where will you see the term, farm to table. You will see credit given to the producers of individual ingredients that she uses. I am sure that the item she describes on the menu is what’s on my plate. I know this because I have grown to trust her. Since the early 80’s every trip I have taken to Northern California has included at least one visit to Chez Panisse. Some trips it has included several. It is my favorite restaurant in the entire world.

When you visit a restaurant for the first time, you have a transaction. They feed you and you give them money. When you visit a restaurant continually over a period of time, you develop a relationship. They have had the time to learn your likes and dislikes. They know that you like a twist of lemon in your martini, not olives. You like Caymus Cabernet but are willing to try something different. You like your steak very rare. You like yellow-tail snapper but will try fresh king salmon. You have a relationship. You have built a relationship on trust. You trust that they are giving you exactly what you like, what it says on the menu. They trust that if they take care of you, you will support them through good times and bad. Sounds just like a marriage, doesn’t it.

There is another term you see a lot today. It’s “greenwashing”. It sounds innocent enough, like cleaning salad of any residual dirt. There is something dirty going on here but not on the lettuce. This “greenwashing” is an old practice that is utilized in other businesses too. It’s when a company uses association with an environmentally friendly brand to “wash” another not so environmentally friendly brand.

California has hundreds of small family owned farms that raise some of the best produce in the world. It’s organic, chemical free and usually heirloom varieties. Apples that taste like apples. Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. You won’t find this produce down the street at your local supermarket. A lot of times you won’t find it down the street at your local farmers market. A lot of the time in Florida, the farmer’s market has a lot of folks who have gone up to the Tampa Wholesale Produce market and purchased goods that do not even come from Florida. I know that is hard to believe, but it’s true.

Tom Chino is one of the farmers in California. Alice Waters started raving about his produce back in the 70’s. He is still around today, working his family farm. He is a victim of a type of greenwashing. “Chefs will come, write notes, leave without buying anything, and then say they’re serving our food at their restaurants.” – Tom Chino. Chefs come to his farm, find out his current crops and then say they are using his produce when they haven’t even bought the first case. What’s happened to their moral compass? Did they ever have one?

Numerous other farmers relate similar tales. Tim Connelly had tried selling his produce to a restaurant. They didn’t buy any and then he found out 8 years later that for the 8 years they had been claiming to serve his lettuce. Other farmers have had restaurants claim to use items from their farms that they don’t even grow. Sometimes a restaurant will buy one case of an item of the 10 they use in a week and claim all of it is from a particular farm noted for that product. Is this wrong? Yes, it is. It cheats the customer, the farmer and other restaurants where 100% of the items they list come from that farm or ranch.  

Suppose you find a restaurant you really like and you’ve visited it several times. What if on one visit, you find out they have lied to you. What if the Great Hill Blue Cheese on you prime New York strip steak is Publix brand blue cheese and that the steak is choice grade not prime. Would it be like that antique plate your grandmother had? You remember, the plate that you accidentally broke, the one that you tried to glue back together, and the one that was never going to be the same again. Would your grandmother hold that against you or would she always look at it with two cherished memories. Hemingway said, “The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places”. Is it that way with trust? I don’t know. There is always going to be that little thing in the back of your mind, a little warning bell. Can you ever really forget it? Will the trust ever come back?

What if it wasn’t their fault? What if they were duped too? I remember a few years back, the big grouper scandal. State investigators took samples of grouper from 20 local restaurants. They sent them to a lab to test the DNA. It turned out that 17 of the samples were something other than grouper. It also turned out that 14 of the 17 came from the same seafood supplier, Sysco. 

Minor fines and slaps on the wrist were handed out to the supplier and the guilty restaurants. 14 out of the 17 restaurants were told by Sysco that the fish they were serving was grouper, so were they responsible? I have too many faults to be judgmental. Should they have known better? Probably, real gulf grouper is never cheap even when frozen. It could have been an honest mistake and they were too busy running a business to check. Were they wrong? Did their moral compass get hijacked on the way to profit? It did if they are still doing it.

On my menus, if I used a precise descriptor on a product, I did so for two reasons. One to give credit to the producer in hopes of increasing his business, they were mostly small business people too. Second and more self serving, I was presenting a case for why my menu was more expensive than my competitors, hoping to increase my business. Some consumers get this and others do not. In my zeal, I was caught up in the great Kobe Beef scandal.

From 2001-2012, Kobe Beef was all the rage in upscale restaurants and surprisingly mid-priced eateries. It was everywhere, especially in its slider and burger form. This is quite surprising since until recently it was illegal to import it into the United States. Even now there are only 9 restaurants in the entire country where you can get true Kobe Beef, none of which are in Florida. If you Google Kobe Beef Scandal, you will get all the information you could possible need on this subject. Larry Olmsted of Forbes Magazine was one of the first to expose this deception and has covered it in depth. I would recommend his articles as they give a broad history and analysis of the problem.

If you look at my 2009 menu, you will see a menu item labeled 8 Oz. Kobe Style Wagyu Beef Burger. What in the world is that? According to Mr. Olmsted, “Wagyu” translates to “Japanese Cattle” not a specific breed but simply cows that come from Japan. I had briefly researched Kobe when it first started getting exposure and found that a number of U.S. ranchers had imported “Kobe” cattle and were raising them out West. They were also cross-breeding them with Angus and other breeds to produce “American Wagyu”. I also found out, by checking the price per pound that I would have to charge upwards of $125 per steak if I put the expensive cuts on my menu, like filet or strip. I was running a neighborhood place and that was more than my traffic would bear. Wagyu ground beef was offered as an alternative at a reasonable price. Most of my research was influenced by the brochures supplied by my meat purveyor. Snake River Ranch was listed as a quality producer and this was the name on the boxes that came in my back door. I felt I had done due diligence. I had not.

When the beef hit the fan in 2010, I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar. There was no way the beef I was using was even close to Kobe or even a Wagyu hybrid, not if I was able to sell it for $16. I read Mr. Olmsted’s articles and figured I had been scammed. I took the product off my menu and went to a “USDA Choice” Angus ground beef for my burger. Did I acknowledge my failing? No. Did I ever mention it? No. Where was my moral compass? Not where it should have been because I should have known better. Shame on me.

In my travels, I once went to a seafood restaurant outside of Chicago called Bob Chinn's Crab House. It was a large seafood restaurant. As you walk in, on the wall, they had a bulletin board. On this board, they posted copies of all the bills of lading for the seafood they had received that day. They had salmon and king crab from Alaska, scallops, lobster and cod from New Bedford, stone crab and grouper from Florida and other seafood from all over the world. They were proud of their seafood and wanted you to know it was fresh.

It would be nice if restaurants did something like this. Instead of bills of lading, they would put up copies of invoices of all the food items they have purchased that week. The invoice would list the supplier, the item, the quantity and the price. That way we would have a clear picture of exactly what we were eating. Of course the requisite word is all, as in all their food invoices, not just the ones they want you to see.

Next to this board maybe they would also have a copy of their current profit and loss statement. That way you could see the cost they pay to serve you quality ingredients. Unless they are charging you $100 or $200 a head for dinner, you will see after all their expenses and overhead, they work on a small profit to serve you food fit to eat. You know what I’m talking about, food that won’t eventually kill you.

In addition to this, it would be nice to see the giant food companies, like McDonalds, Adecoagro and Agria Corporation, grow a conscience and start promoting food produced without chemicals and offer heirloom varieties of vegetables and fruits that taste good and are good for you. Will any of this ever happen? No. Why? Economies of scale and greed. But…”Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

What we need to do is start building relationships. Find a small restaurant and get to know them. Start asking questions. Let them get to know you. Start building trust. Let them serve you food that taste like it should and food that is actually good for you. Support that restaurant in good times and bad. You know, build a marriage. Trust is good. It’s not perfect but it’s all we’ve got.