It Took 50 Years But I Finally Get It

I was in the hospitality business for 50 years. I’m retired now. Most of that 50 years, I worked in the restaurant business. The rest of the time, I was in the wine business. Most of the time I spent in the restaurant business was in restaurants I owned. I was an owner/chef. I was always the cook. I enjoy cooking. It’s not work to me. Well, it wasn’t until the very end.

In the beginning, I worked in restaurants that other people owned. I learned how to run a restaurant and I learned how not to run a restaurant. A lot of restaurants take shortcuts. Most of the time those shortcuts cut quality as well as time. I never wanted to do that in my restaurants.

I was a firm believer that the restaurant business was composed of 3 things - food, service and ambiance. I always felt that food was the most important. I felt that people would wait, even in a hole in the wall in a bad section of town, if the food was good. I had seen hundreds of examples of that. I was wrong. I was also of the opinion that the customer is not always right but he is always the customer. I was wrong there too. I should have taken it a bit further.

Recently I saw an Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes interview with Danny Meyer, the owner of Union Square Hospitality. He is one of the premier restaurateurs in this country, if not the world. He has 15 successful restaurants and the booming burger chain Shake Shack. The interview was quite compelling. It exposed Mr. Meyer as an extremely successful and caring restaurant owner. It also told the reasons behind that success.

I have read the book “Sweetbitter” by Stephanie Danler, which shows a different side to the Union Square story but doesn’t come right out and name the restaurant. Much like Anthony Bourdain’s book, “Kitchen Confidential”, this book wallows in the culinary underbelly. It seems that sells books.

Nevertheless, Ms. Danler hits upon the foundation to Mr. Meyers success. He hires “people” people. She calls it being a fifty-one percenter. These are employees who have the God given gift of understanding people and being able to engage them. That is the fifty-one percent part, the gift. 

Most of the job is the forty-nine percent, the knowledge and skill. The ones with the gift find out what the customer needs and gives it to them. They make the customers feel good. Of course the food has to be great. The service has to be great. The surroundings have to make them feel like they want to be there. The end result is customers walk away happy. They are happy about their whole experience, not just the food. They feel this way because of this restaurant. They feel this way because of these "people" people, the fifty-one percenters. That's hospitality.

There are a lot of knowledgeable, experienced and skilled people in the restaurant business. There are a lot fewer people that are adept at making people feel good. There has to be an underlying compassion in their approach to other people. This is something you have or you don’t have. It can’t be taught. People can be taught about service, food, wine, liquors and how to flame a duck but you can’t teach them to care about people. I will admit that there are scam artists out there that can fake this. We have all met them at one time or the other. We eventually figure out they are scammers.

The real "people" people are rare because they actually care. My old friend, Mr. Bernie Smith is one. Both my wives, ex and existing, are too. They accounted for a lot of my success in the restaurant business. I had a lot of employees that were "people" people. I had some employees that weren't. Shame on me.

The benefit of this gift is the restaurant gets return customers, the best kind. These return customers also tell their friends. This is free advertising, the best kind.

Mr. Frank Bruni, the former restaurant critic for the New York Times understands this concept. He wrote, “I think back to my pre-critic days, in Rome, and to the handful of restaurants I kept circling around to. The servers and owners there would exult when I walked through the door, because they understood how to make me happy and they could have a conversation with me different from the ones they had with newcomers, a conversation built on shared history and reciprocal trust, a dialogue between honest-to-goodness friends. I wasn’t special. But I was special to them.” This gift is not a purely American phenomenon. The Italians have it too.

Mr. Meyer appears to be psychic when it comes to restaurant trends. He’s always on the cutting edge, sometimes way ahead of the cutting edge. He was one of the first to eliminate smoking, provide single diners with comfortable fine dining and provide quality wines by the glass. He helped develop the concept of fine casual and is trying to eliminate tipping to do away with the disparity between the back of the house and front of the house incomes. I could go on and on but you get the idea. It’s hard to argue with success. From this interview, you get the idea that these concepts might not have started out to be trend setting. They just might be the way Mr. Meyer likes to eat. Obviously, he is not alone. Other people want to eat this way too.

I think his most innovative concept is the little sign he imagines around the neck of his customers that says, “Make me feel important by…”. The answer is different for each customer. He goes on to say that it is up to his people to figure what that answer is and to supply it.

His concept of figuring out who at the table is the "boss" and focusing on them first is spot on. If you make him or her feel good, he or she will be back and bring others with them. All this takes “people” people.

I was lucky to have my wives as partners in the restaurants we owned. I am not a “people” person. They are. I do recognize that quality in others. I realize I don’t have it. I know food. I love to cook. After watching this interview, I realized that food is not the most important thing in the restaurant business. Of course, if the food is not great people will not come back. But it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is how you make your customers feel about the total experience. After 50 years I finally get it. Sometimes I’m a little slow.

This makes you wonder, what does Mr. Meyer get out of all this? Of course he gets the money and prestige of running successful restaurants. Is that all? No. We all know there are easier ways to make a buck than the restaurant business. I think the major part of his motivation is revealed in the last part of the interview. 

At the beginning of the interview, Mr. Meyer takes Mr. Cooper to the first Shake Shack which is in Madison Square Park. Mr. Cooper has a ShackBurger, fries and a coffee shake. This is his first. He has walked by this restaurant a thousand times. He has never eaten here because of the lines, usually an hour wait. The next day as they are finishing up the interview, Mr. Cooper tells Mr. Meyer that he is not really a food person but that over the last 24 hours he has thought about that burger and shake a lot. 

Mr. Meyer tells him, “so all you need to know about me, after all these questions, is that nothing in the last 24 hours makes me happier than hearing what you just said”. He said this with a big grin, a sincere grin.

For some the restaurant business is like living at the beach. Once you get that sand between your toes it’s hard to shake. That’s why he does it. It makes him happy. Now that I think about it, that’s why I did it too. 

The Promise

He slowly opened one eye. He was still half asleep. It was cold, overcast and that time before sunup when it starts to hint at light. They were staying in the apartment with the tall antique windows. They had been on the island for a few days and had left the windows open the night before. The cold wind was blowing in and he was under the covers. He was warm. He drifted off for a moment. When he woke again, he could hear the voices and movements of the people on the street. He could hear the children as they hurried to the school at the end of the block.

Then it started. The images came slowly. They appeared. They were gone. At first this scared him. Was it his time? When you get old that’s always in the back of your mind. A palm tree, a young boy, a young girl, a beach, white sand, a sandwich, a plate of woven palm fronds, a guard gate, a P X, a high and tight haircut, a wooden television console, rabbit ears, Roy Rogers and a masked man. He squeezed his eyes. What was happening?

Rows of corn, a green tractor, a black bull, a yellow chicken, a pig pen, wild asparagus in a fence row, a large Victorian house, a red barn, a soybean field, weeds, a plastic communion cup, purple juice, a graduation, body bags, a slender youth, his father in a coffin, his mother with the look of those who can't remember. His heart started to race.

A keg, a bra on the floor, a rose garden, a roof, a trailer, a bottle of Everclear, a dance floor, leather bound book, a pixie cut, eyes the color of the water off Key West, a crowd, a wooden cigar box, a small wrinkled piece of paper. Stairs, Eden Alley, the sign above the door of the Shack, a bicycle, a tip tray, a cold raging ocean, a tall sand dune, an old butcher block, a chef's knife, a flaming pan with half a duck and cherries, skis, snow, a narrow mountain trail, a copper bar, the sign at the entrance to Sawmill Farm, a simple village church, a wine glass filled with ice cream and chocolate sauce, a player piano, a gold chain with a small gold bear, a worn baby's locket, a gold ring. He calmed and let the images flow.

A picture of a pear, a Gorman print, a framed photograph, the Ponte Vecchio, an antique mirror, The Rebel, an old quilt, bookcases of cookbooks, a Zero's grub steak and cheese, a silver hair brush from Tiffany's, a bundle of letters.

The images started to speed up. There were cars. He had owned all of them. There were houses. He had lived in all of them. There were restaurant stoves. He had cooked on all them. There were finished entrees waiting in the window for service. He had cooked all of them. There were perfectly garnished plates served in hundreds of restaurants. He had eaten them all. There were images of vineyards and wineries. He had been at all of them. There were rows of wine bottles and half filled wine glasses. He had drunk them all. There were tables of food, wine and friends. He had sat at all of them. There were copper pots and pans hanging from a rack. They all belonged to him. Uneasiness crept into his heart.

The faces started. There were friends from school, teachers, bullies, pretty girls. There were friends who had died, friends who still lived and friends who were no longer friends. There were women he had known, his mother, Gran, Abby, Ellen, Brenda, Maggie and Mary, the faces of his stepchildren, the faces of his grand babies. The images were flying by.

He closed his eyes. The images stopped. He looked at her head on the pillow. The dark hair had flecks of gray. Her eyes were closed. He knew they were the color of the water off Key West.  He had watched them sparkle a thousand times. The skin on her face was tan. It had wrinkles. His heart caught in his throat. She was beautiful. He smiled. Perhaps it wasn’t his time yet.

He rolled over. He looked at the old tile roof on the ancient church across the narrow street he heard its bells begin to clang. He wanted stay in the warm bed but he remembered his promise. He got up and quickly dressed.

He walked down the stairs and out into the street. As he walked he remembered how content he had been. She likes pain au chocolat with her morning coffee. It can’t be the one from the first boulangerie he came to or even the second. No. It must be from the third, the one at number 78. This baker used two pieces of Valrhona chocolate and Bordier butter. It was the best.

He entered the small shop and wished the owner a good morning. He bought two pain au chocolat and a baguette. He walked to the far end of the street and stopped at the bridge. He looked up at the magnificent old cathedral. He never tired of the overwhelming beauty of it.

On the way back, he took the street by the river. It was longer but he liked looking at the water. He thought he would get back in the warm bed. No, it wouldn’t be the same. It’s never the same and he had a few miles to go.

The Messenger

I saw the blue box. I got a tight pain in my chest. I always got that when I saw the box. I always got it when I saw that medium robin’s egg blue. I can’t stand that color. I can’t walk by a Tiffany’s store.

It was a Tiffany’s box, a large one with the wide white ribbon. It once held a silver bowl. It was a gift from one of my two failed marriages. I couldn’t remember if I got if from the union to the spawn of Satan or the nice guy I could never love. It didn’t matter. I had gotten rid of that bowl a long time ago.

Now it held relics from the marriage that never was. There were fading pictures, well creased letters, clipped yellowed newspaper articles and old ticket stubs. 

“Damn you. Damn you to hell.” I said this to him but he wasn’t here. I didn’t know where he was. Over the years, I heard stories, rumors. He sold his restaurant and moved to Florida. Then it was Colorado. He got hooked on cocaine and was dealing. He got busted and was in jail. He died from an overdose. He scored a big hit and was living on an island in the Caribbean. In these rumors he was always with her, not me.

“Damn her too.”

I was in my attic. I was downsizing. My kids were out on their own, pursuing their dreams. I was alone. I didn’t need 4000 square feet of house. I was moving into a 1500 square foot condo, modern not colonial like this drafty old house. Changes were afoot.

The box was in the bottom drawer of a nice Queen Anne chest. I hadn’t used the chest in years. I hadn’t looked at that box in years. I wasn’t going to now. Changes were afoot. That chest needed to be sold and that box needed to be burned.

I put a tag on the chest with a price I thought reasonable. I picked up the box. I threw it into the black garbage bag I had for trash. I went through the rest of the attic. I’m pretty neat so the garbage bag was only half full when I had finished with my tagging. My friend was going to be by the next day to pick up the furniture to sell in her shop. She had a passion for old things. Perhaps that’s why we had been friends for so long.

I took the bag downstairs to the kitchen. It was raining. I decided to wait to put the bag in my bins out back. Then I thought about what was in the bag. I grabbed an umbrella and made my way outside and dumped it into the nearest bin.

Back in the kitchen, I made a cup of tea. I sat down at the table to enjoy it. It was cold outside. I looked at the china cup. In the pattern was a medium robin’s egg blue. I had never noticed it before.

I jumped up. I dashed out the back door into the pouring rain. I tore open the bag in the bin. I found the box and ran back in. The next I knew I was on the floor of the kitchen with the box opened. The wide white ribbon was beside the lid. I held a picture in my hand.

“Damn you”. A single tear slid down the wrinkled skin of my right cheek.

I Opened A Cookbook And I Liked It

My love affair with cookbooks started when I was 24. I worked as a waiter all through college. I became addicted to the easy money and short hours of that profession. I was a military brat and at the end raised on a farm, so it was an understandable transition. I tried real jobs after college, but I was living at the beach. I fell back into my addiction without much trouble, squandering my education.

As a waiter, I started tableside cooking as I went more upscale in the restaurants where I chose to work. Also in the small inns and restaurants, I would occasionally help out the kitchen doing prep work. Sometimes I would work a shift if someone failed to show up in the kitchen. A chef saw my eagerness and bought me a professional chef's knife. It was a Sabatier. It was French.

I found that ladies liked it if a guy could cook dinner for them. That provided motivation for me to become more educated in the art of cooking. I got bitten by the bug. I enjoyed cooking. I needed to get better at it. The cooking schools like the CIA and Johnston & Wales were just starting. This was the early 70's. I couldn't afford to go to culinary school so I started buying cookbooks and stealing with my eyes from the chefs where I worked.

The first book I bought was The Joy of Cooking, the original version. It was written and self published by Irma S. Rombauer in 1931. If I could only have one cookbook, this would be the one. After Irma died, they tried a fancy modern update. It almost ruined the book. Older editions are the best. Isn't that always the case. It was my mom's favorite cookbook. I had to buy my own copy. Mom wasn't giving up hers.

It became my first love. It's like Irma and I are sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and she is telling me how to cook a dish. I always go back to it, time and time again. You can tell it's my favorite. The paper cover is long gone. The backing is bruised. There are stains on my favorite recipes. There are also handwritten notes. It's a dear old friend. We have developed a relationship. We have trust. There's a comfort in opening those pages. It's funny how we always return to our first love. I did that with wives too, but that is another story.

At this time, French haut cuisine was the major influence in upscale restaurants in the United States. California was just beginning. Alice and Wolfgang were just getting their feet wet. I picked up a book by this fellow named Auguste Escoffier. He's French. It was titled Le Guide Culinaire. This was not like talking with Irma. Auguste was formal. He taught a method of organizing the professional kitchen and organizing cooking. He taught me the "Mother Sauces". Here was the foundation for becoming a professional chef. I also picked up Larousse Gastronomique by Prosper Montagné. Prosper was supposedly the creative force behind both these books. They made a nice set. Larousse has a lot of drawings and pictures. You know what they say about a picture and a thousand words.

I watched cooking shows on television back then so Julia caught my eye. Her cookbooks did too. I bought them all, starting with The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle . Of course that led me to Jacques Pépin. His La Technique changed the way I felt about cooking. There was art in cooking. There is a craft to cooking. This led me to La Methode and many more of his books. 

Jacques led me to Great Chefs of France by Anthony Blake and Quentin Crewe. It is one of my most worn books. I read it dozens of times. I read cookbooks like other people read John Grisham novels. I don't know if this is really a cookbook. There are recipes in there but it's more like a food voyeur's glimpse into the lives of 13 culinary visionaries. Blake is a talented food photographer. He took over 30,000 proofs for this book. Don't you love food porn? The premise is simple. It describes 13 Michelin 3 star chefs and their restaurants in the late 1970's. The level of detail is extraordinary. It made me want to be a better chef.

I collected Bocuse, Verge, Blanc, Roux, Troisgros and many more French chef's cookbooks. As I scan them on the shelves, I remember the recipes I took from each one. They too are like old friends.

I had opened my own restaurant by now, so technically these books were a tax deduction. I never viewed them that way and never treated them that way. Silly how love makes us stupid.

 I started collecting professional cookbooks too. The first was The Professional Chef by The Culinary Institute of America. It's packed with tips and techniques I needed. I bought books on butchering, sauce making, wine, fish, meats, herbs, spices, vegetables, fruits, edible flowers and anything else I could find that would make me a better cook.

 By the time I moved to Florida in 1983 and opened a restaurant on Captiva, I got turned on to the California revolution and American Regional cooking. As I scan the American section of my shelves, I see some old favorites, Puck, Waters, Tower, Beard, Claiborne, Bourdain, Waxman and a book by Bill Buford titled Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It's not really a cookbook but I liked the way it sounded. It's a good book and it's about a love of cooking.

I've got regional chef's cookbooks from cities where I have lived and worked. There's books by Ben and Karen Barker, Edna Lewis, Norman Van Aiken, Jasper White, Frank Stitt, Paul Prudhome, Lee Bailey, Cindy Pawlcyn and a few others. I bought some of the Beautiful Cookbook Series, France, Italy and Australia. You know the really huge ones with the fantastic photography. I bought some of the Foods of the World Series by Time-Life. I have a lot of New Orleans cookbooks. I like the way that city's food sizzles.

 I bought from the beginning, Art Culinaire which is technically a hardback magazine not a cookbook. I loved the artwork. The pictures told me a lot about the food. I think it's that way with most serious cooks. We see some things others don't.

Some folks say I'm crazy to have cookbooks. I can find everything I need online. That's not completely true. Cookbooks provide a feeling that key clicks can't. They provide an emotional bond. Here are recipes you can count on. Ones you have tried and they worked. Recipes you trust. That bond can't be broken.

Cookbooks provide a reference to a time or place, as well as recipes and techniques. Sometimes they contain recipes that have gone out of style but with the tweaking of a serious cook can be new again. That is their magic. They can make you love again. You can't put a price on that.

Through the years and restaurants, I have always bought cookbooks. I had to buy several bookcases to house them. I averaged around 10 books a year. You can do the math. I'm an old man. That might sound excessive to you but to me it was barely enough. I still buy them but now I am more demanding.

I've bought some modern big name books, A Day At El Bulli by Ferran Adrià, The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and others. I like the artwork. After I look at them, I usually give them to friends who cook and would benefit from them. They don't fit me. The books by all the Food Network people fall in the same category, Rachel Ray, Guy Fieri, Tim Allen, etc. I'm not saying they aren't good cookbooks. They are if they educate people about good food. Too often there is too much celebrity not enough cook in these books.

They just don't fit my style of cooking. I think there reaches a point where a cook messes with the food too much. The word I usually use is much more forceful but I'm being polite. I think food should taste like what it is. There are ways to enhance that without deconstructing and over massaging it. Quality of ingredients is paramount. Maybe I have been influenced too much by France and California. I might be wrong but that's my opinion.

The books I've bought recently lean toward things I want to learn about. My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey and Rustic Italian Food by Marc Vetri, are two. No matter how long I live or how much I study, I will never know everything about cooking. I will admit that I have met some people who have forgotten more about cooking than I ever knew.

Some people have told me I should write a cookbook. Most of the recipes I "borrowed", I tweaked and standardized for a restaurant kitchen. I have several hundred written down, in my head or in word files on my computer. I could put together a cookbook. Somehow I can't do it. I feel like I would be cheating. You're thinking, you're having an affair with cookbooks and you're worried about cheating? It's sad but I am. Love makes you stupid.

I think my wife knows about my affair. She suspects I have an obsession with these books. She's right. I do. It should be that way with anything you truly love. I have an obsession with her too.

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.

Does A 1969 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tache Go With A Corned Beef Sandwich? How About A 1966 Chateau Haut Brion?

Corned beef on rye with spicy mustard is a classic example of simple goodness. A 1969 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tache is a classic example of complex goodness. Do they belong together? Does it really matter? If you happen to be eating a corned beef sandwich and you are offered the opportunity to taste a 1969 La Tache, are you going to turn it down because the spicy mustard might overwhelm the elegant nuances of the wine? If you say yes, that's fine. This is America. You are entitled to your opinion. I, on the other hand, am entitled to mine as well and I didn't turn it down. I didn't turn down the 1966 Chateau Haut Brion or any of the other bottles that day.

In the late 70's and early 80's I knew a man by the name of Eddie Ausch. Eddie and his wife Erica owned a local business named Reisner's Delicatessen. They had two stores, the original location opened by Erica's family in 1943 at Janaf Shopping Center in Norfolk and another location at Hilltop in Virginia Beach. They had the best wine selection in the Tidewater area. Eddie loves wine. Eddie knows a lot about wine. Eddie loves to talk about wine. Eddie has the same affliction as I. He has never had a problem pulling a cork.

In fact, it was Eddie who infected me with this malady. Back then I had just opened my first restaurant with my first wife, Sherrill. I was like a sponge when it came to food and wine. I was absorbing everything I could. There was no Internet back then so I spent time at the Hilltop location walking the aisles looking at the different wines from all over the world. Eddie worked those aisles too, but his focus was sales not free education. He is a fountainhead of knowledge and it's not in his nature not to share, even with a non-buyer like me. He could see that I had an interest in wine and so we struck up a friendship. I have always thought that a cook should have an understanding of wine. Food and wine are both parts of the equation of the table. They are linked together and therefore a cook needs to know about wine. The fact that I like to drink wine made this education easy to swallow, pun intended.

Eddie was one of those guys that Malcom Forbes was talking about when he said: “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." Here I was, this young arrogant food punk who thought he knew a thing or two about wine. After talking with Eddie for about two minutes I realized I knew nothing at all about wine. My new friend didn't accept my current position and went about teaching me the ins and outs of wine. There is only one way to do that. You have to taste wine, all different kinds from all over the world. He believed that included tasting the good stuff, the really good stuff. He was like that really good tennis player you want to play against because it will improve your game. You have to realize that it does absolutely nothing for his game. So, why should he do it? He does it for the love of the game.

We started eating in each others restaurants and those excursions always included a bottle of wine or two. (or three or four or five or six) Educating one's palate and mind takes time and bottles, lots of bottles. I know that sounds crazy but it's true.

On a Monday in 1979, I wandered over to the Janaf location knowing that was "wine buying day" and Eddie would be there and not at Hilltop. When I say "wine buying day" I mean that is the day the wine reps from all the different distributors would meet with Eddie and get their orders for the week. It was my day off and a good day to taste wine, as Eddie would always pull a cork. Whenever he came to my restaurant I would do the same. I had been infected. These reps occasionally had sample bottles of new vintages or new wines they had picked up, so sometimes there were other new things to taste too.

When I came in I saw that Eddie was busy so I sat at a table and ordered a corned beef sandwich on rye with unsweetened ice tea. The spicy mustard was on the table. As my sandwich was served Eddie walked by and said, "Would you like the perfect wine to go with that corned beef?" "Sure" was my reply and I assumed he was thinking Zinfandel or Syrah.

When he set the bottle of La Tache down on the table, he saw the "you must be shitting me" look on my face because he said, "Are you game for this?" I looked up at him and said, "I'm game if you are." He laughed and pulled the cork. I'm sitting there wondering if I have enough cash on me to pay for that bottle. In all my trips to his stores I hadn't seen any Grand Cru Burgundies sitting on his shelves. I just accepted my fate and knew I had plastic in my money clip.

I'm not going to tell you that after 38 years I remember exactly how this wine tasted down to the nuances of fruit flavors and aromas. I do remember there was a depth of flavor I had never tasted before and a deep earthy quality in the overall impression of the wine. A lot of people will say that to drink this wine from the Burgundy "vintage of the century" with only 10 years of age was a crime. That wine is still drinking good today. Eddie infected me with another of his axioms. "It is a greater crime to drink wine too old than to drink it too young." Neither Eddie nor I had any problem drinking this wine. Neither did the 4 or 5 sales reps that came by. When asked if they would like to taste the La Tache, they all said yes with happy grins on their faces.

I had about a third of my sandwich left when we ran out of wine. Eddie jumped up from the table and returned in a minute with a bottle of 1966 Chateau Haut Brion. "This will go great with the rest of your sandwich." was all he said. He had that cork out of the bottle before I could say a word. I sighed with acceptance and tasted one of life's great pleasures.

Again I don't remember all the nuances of the wine. I do remember an intense depth of flavor and a nice sense of balance in the wine between the fruit, acid and tannins. There was also a deep sense of place in this wine. I noticed this in the La Tache but more in the Haut Brion. It's what the French call "terroir". It was as if these wines had absorbed all the special characteristics of the geography, geology and climate of the place from which they came. For me this was more pronounced in the Haut Brion. So much so that to this day it is my favorite wine. I have never been to this vineyard but I like to think if I were dropped into it, I could tell you where we were.

Needless to say this was not the last bottle brought out that day and there were a few gems from the sales reps. I remember a Grand Puy Lacoste, a Brane Cantenac, a trip back to Burgundy with a Nuit St. Georges, a trip out to his car for a sales rep for a bottle of Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape and another rep's bottle of Ridge Vineyard Lytton Springs Zinfandel. There might have been one or two more but I can't remember.

I do remember when I got up to leave after five hours, Eddie wouldn't let me pay for a thing, not even my sandwich. I managed to slip a $50 bill under my plate for the waitress and walked gracefully (gratefully?) out the door. To this day I call this my "$2000 lunch".

Eddie and Erica's 25th wedding anniversary was the next year, 1980. My wife and I were sent an invitation. Eddie had secured one of those supper boats and everyone had a tour of Norfolk Harbour with food, entertainment and of course wine. I managed to secure a bottle of 1961 Chateau Haut Brion. Eddie and I both have a love affair with this wine. As I gave it to him, I could sense he was going to open it. I convinced him that it should be something he and Erica have later. The look in his eyes told me I had passed my final exam.

Over the years I left Virginia Beach and lost track of Eddie. Over the years I heard that Eddie and Erica's families were 'Holocaust refugees". She and her family got out of Austria in 1938 when they were sponsored by a cousin in Norfolk. She was 3. Eddie's family got out of Vienna in 1939 for New York when he was 8. When I knew them in Virginia Beach, they never spoke of this past. They were too busy living the present.

Whenever I see a bottle of Haut Brion or a corned beef sandwich, I think of Eddie. I see a lot more corned beef sandwiches than bottles of Haut Brion. For my last meal, I would choose a bottle of Haut Brion even in a bad vintage over any other wine. (Not that Haut Brion has ever had a bad vintage.) I don't say that because I love the wine and I do. I say that because it's my link to Eddie, the one who taught me that wine is for sharing. It brings family, friends and acquaintances together for a brief moment of peace. He taught me a lot about wine and living. And he did it all for the love of the game.

Thank you Eddie.