Welcome To The Feed-Lot

Some years back I was the Corporate Chef for Old Town State Park and the opportunity presented itself to get out of the trenches and start a second career. I was hired at Old Town to reinvent two of their three restaurants and one of the ideas I convinced our corporate was to go the local sustainable route.  I choose to use Santa Monica Seafood because of my relationship with the notorious sustainable savant Paddy Glennon and I also decided to showcase Brant Beef out of Brawley, California.  Brandt was the True Natural of beef and a local family owned and run ranch for three generations.

Eric, the owner of Brandt came to Old Town during my employee trainings and he and I hit it off so well that he offered me a job that would lead to me ejecting from Old Town and the trenches in general.  I was looking to transform into a sales role and Eric wanted me to learn the beef business from the “ass up” as I remember us saying.  That meant me moving to East Los Angeles to work in the Manning slaughter-house in an assistant production role.  I thought I knew something about beef at that point but this was an education in transparency.  We operated in full disclosure in how our animals were handled and harvested.  This is the topic I want to harp on today: transparency and full disclosure.

We live in a world, in a town, where more often then not it seems that writers and PR machines are possessed to write positive editorial and reviews for a free meal.  Often ‘under-qualified’, relentlessly ‘over-exaggerated’ and positively ‘bought’ reviews make their way into written and digital media every day here in San Diego.  Magazine publishers are self-proclaimed foodies and wear straw hats like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.  I remember as a kid and as a young adult working in the New York City elite of restaurants always living in fear of Frank Bruni walking in the door.  We used to have a picture of him hanging in our coat-rooms so that the first line of defense might recognize him coming in for lunch and put everyone on alert.  He was often feared more then the Health Inspector walking into your establishment on a Monday afternoon.  He was objective, clear and concise and certainly could make or break the restaurant he reviewed because readership was so huge and restaurant savvy.

There is a disconnect between reviewers and the masses that spend their own hard earned cash supporting local business and venues.  Ill advised “heat indexes” and horrifying shows on the Food-Network driving business to places that anyone in industry knows are a sham, seep more and more into our local culture and infrastructure. I often write from the heart and have no problem calling a spade a spade.  It is a gift and just a no-nonsense way of life I have always lived and believed in.

As I sit at Tidal Restaurant at Paradise Point writing my own Blog, and review I think about Amy DiBiase’s food and menu are a gem.  Her Natural Ribeye steak is one of the best in town.  I think of artists like Davin Waite and his rockstar wife Jessica up at The Wrench and Rodent and Whet Noodle.  Their food and service is like the first time I rode the Magic Mountain rollercoaster.  Your pulling 3G’s in the dark through twists and turns and every plate brings you back to the light with his presentations.  I look forward to writing more about food in the coming months.  I certainly have the credentials, and with then never-ending march of restaurant opening there is no shortage of material.  Demand transparency and full disclosure in your lives when you are deciding your next Feed-Lot to hit.  It makes the other BS easier to tolerate.

Now That's Famiglia!

Growing up in our family restaurant in New York City, I knew the challenges of making people happy from a young age. We owned a pretty famous restaurant, Mme. Romaine de Lyon, and often attracted a crowd of characters straight out of a ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ episode. Maybe even a GOP convention: the Donald was a regular.  Back in those days, he was with Ivanka or hitting relentlessly on our beautiful Polish waitress, Daniela. My experience with the “Don” is more of a personal nature.  One of the main reasons for our family restaurant’s success over 70-plus years was the personal service we gave our regular (and new) customers.

While our walls were laden with celebrity pictures and autographs, our staff spanned generations of waitresses and family members. Mel Brooks only came in when my father cooked, and Joan Rivers came on Thursday nights to sit in the corner booth under her own autograph. She kept her Yorkie in a Louis Vuitton purse. Celebrities (and regular folk like you and me) came in because staff and ownership knew what they liked, and treated them like family. I remember walking into The Venetian here in San Diego during a cold El Nino night in ’97, where I first experienced that on the West Coast.

Years later, working for the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel as the banquet chef, I came across a more “Systemic” and scalable way to do it. We had a proprietary computer program where we entered the preferences of any guest, and it was automatically shared across all our outlets worldwide. That meant if I, as a guest, requested a certain type of fruit for a room service delivery, an employee entered it into the “Master Brain” (as I called it). When I checked into another Ritz-Carlton on the other side of the world, they’d have a fruit basket ready for me–garnished with the Fiji Apples and Tangerines I requested the last time I stayed with them 2000 miles away.  That kind of service drives return on investment in a way you just can’t measure. It goes beyond ‘want’ or ‘need,’ and hits you straight at ‘surprise and delight.’  People stop looking at prices when you do that.

Joe and Frank Giacalone at Point Loma’s venerable The Venetian have been doing this for me personally since 1997. Their father, Vince, started doing it for locals back in 1965, when he opened his family business to bring a taste of his ‘Old Country’ to San Diego.  I watched kids grow-up working in this “more than a red sauce” joint for well over a decade now. Whether it’s Mike the bartender having a Peroni waiting for me before I even get to my seat, or the kitchen knowing to substitute Capellini for Spaghetti in my Shrimp Puttanesca– they always make me feel remembered and important.  For me, it’s knowing if I can ask Chase or Frank for the answer to a baseball question that’s been bugging me. It’s talking to Ryan, who the owners took under their wing, tell me about finishing culinary school and how the education he got here is taking him to the next level.

One of the things the Ritz-Carlton gave me back in 2000 was a Credo card. The Ritz-Carlton is an award-winning organization, and the only service company get the Malcolm Baldridge award two times.  Their standards are above and beyond, and the card I still carry in my wallet speaks to that. Their credo states “We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed yet refined ambiance.” It is an invaluable resource.

I learned these values from my grandmother, who opened a game-changing restaurant as a woman in the ‘40’s in New York City, and I love to share. Over the coming months, on my blog WordOfMouthSanDiego.com, I will show you how my experiences as a chef, salesman, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker can help you with your day-to-day operations. That’s what I do in my food-service consulting business, BioSystemicConsulting.

For starters, if you want to find out how it’s done, go and pay the crew at The Venetian in Point Loma a visit. Their pizza and pastas are not to be missed. Make sure you crawl up to the bar with Mikey and have a cold beverage and the Scallop Appetizer while you wait for your pie. That’s famiglia!

Have you tried the Beeffy-Ribs?

This past Wednesday, I was invited to a lunch by my friend Jack. The destination was Grand Ole BBQ y Asado, over in a part of town I rarely frequent, and the guest list was a who’s who of chefs, food writers, BBQ experts, and foodie photographer gurus. Todd, Michael, Jack, Mercy, Ray, and Sandi, to be exact. Now, the best part of this story is truly the food, and the people I shared it with. But the other really cool thing about this adventure, is that all these people are rock-stars I met online or on Facebook.

I have been networking Facebook since it began—using it for business leads, sales opportunities, and I even worked a date or two from it.  But the recent crowd-sourcing trend that brought our party together for this lunch is my hot button for today. Anyone can create a simple page and build membership, just by clearly and openly just letting people talk about themselves, their experiences, and themselves again. It is a brilliant approach to PR, that when used effectively creates not only a ‘community,’ but also drives commerce and creates fans, relationships, and revenue streams.

Now, my new friend Jack and I had never personally met. We’d had dozens of emails, chats, and even a telephone conversation, but nothing in person. The same was true for the rest of the party as well. A few people whose hands I’d shaken a couple of times, but mostly it was just comfortable internet chat and my gut instinct that made me trust these strangers, and even come to respect and admire them. By the end of lunch, hands were shook, hugs were had, and even some work deals thrown around.

That is the power of food and the power of the ‘Crowd-Sourced” platform.  Our host Andy Harris put out a spread that made Mercy and Ray Lampe, aka DR. BBQ, lick their chops. Michael and Jack, some of the best food-writers in town, barely came up for air. I say that because I sat in between them, and I barely came up for air. We are talking about Texas Turkey Breast, Pork Spare Ribs, Kentucky Mutton, Tri-Tip, Hot links, Beeffy-Ribs. I put two extra letters in the beef because the crust was the best ever! The sides, the sauces, and Andy’s hospitality on top of it was pure BBQ love.

I need to give Todd Sturtz the devil’s due as well. I’ve learned a lot from this man already, just watching how he conducts himself. Todd not only orchestrated this gluttony of ‘sluttiness,' but also kind of crowd-sourced the players together in the first place, whether he meant to or not. The box of Nomad Donuts he brought shaved another month off my life. But really, a heartfelt thanks to new and old friends alike from Andy’s rock-star luncheon.

The moral of my story here is that I take the ‘systems’ aspect of things very seriously—including BBQ. I own a company called BioSystemic Consulting, which uses systems-thinking to analyze all the moving parts of food companies and make them work better. Systems have a lot of moving parts, and crowd-sourcing, fan-pages, rock stars and BBQ are among them. Come read more at https://www.facebook.com/Wordofmouthsd/ and tawk amongst ya selves!