Who wants a CEO's job? Not some CEOs

This has been a day of eerie coincidences. Bombshell developments required us to change the top story on our website three times in roughly eight hours. In each instance, a big-name restaurant chief was leaving a sizable multi-chain company, to the gape-mouthed surprise of everyone else in the business. Russ Bendel from Cheesecake Factory, Ken Keymer from the parent company of Village Inn and Bakers Square, Clay Dover from Bennigan’s operator Metromedia Restaurant Group—each seemed firmly entrenched in the job, if for no other reason than the ink on his business cards had barely dried. The longest-serving among them (Keymer) had logged a mere 13 months in the job; the most recent to stake out the corner office (Dover) had been there just six months. (Bendel, for the record, had only nine months’ of wear on his office chair).

All persevered for far less than the three to four years that studies have pegged as the average time of service for a corporate top executive. It’d be easy to attribute the simultaneous changeovers at three radically different companies to sunspots, global warming or the behind-the-scenes meddling of mutant Steinbrenner offspring, were it not for another trend emerging in restaurant-executive employment.

Last week, we reported that Phil Hickey, the former CEO of LongHorn and Capital Grille parent Rare Hospitality, had bought the four-unit Jocks and Jills sports bar chain. Phil has the sort of resume that would make every headhunter in the country want to have him on speed-dial, regardless of the industry they served. And when Rare was sold to Darden last year, securities filings indicated that Hickey recieved enough of a payout to make work an option, not a requirement. Yet what does he do? He opts for something entrepreneurial.

Similarly, David Goronkin resigned last December as CEO of the Famous Dave’s barbecue chain to take the top day-to-day management job at Redstone American Grill, a start-up from the same concept creator who hatched Champps.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bendel told Nation’s Restaurant News that he resigned as president and COO of Cheesecake’s restaurant division to pursue “an entrepreneurial opportunity.” He wouldn’t say what it was, but noted that he’ll be switching to the new undertaking in a matter of weeks.

Against that backdrop, it’s easy to understand why executives might stay in a top restaurant job for a shorter stretch than they did in the past. Metromedia’s Dover, for instance, readily acknowledged that he opted to leave because of disagreements with the company’s owners. The times are grueling, investor patience seems to have shortened, stakeholders insist on an active management role, and we’ve reached the age of the plug-in executive, where a chief may be brought in for a very specific task. Vicorp stressed that it chose Harem Ouf to succeed Keymer because of the newcomer’s experience in bringing companies out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, where it slid during Keymer’s watch. (Keymer, for the record, said he would retire at the end of the week).

Restaurant executives can be ground up and spat out in no time in an environment like the present one. The job is so grueling that it's hard not to be dissatisfied--with the individual who's trying to fulfill it, or with the situation itself. No wonder so many seasoned pros are assessing the task of running a big public restaurant company and deciding it’s not for them. They’ve decided to forego the pressure, lessen the hassles, and get back to doing what they enjoyed. Why waste your fruitful years dodging bullets?

Regardless of which party opts for a CEO or president’s exit, there’s little doubt that the foodservice revolving door is going to spin a little faster in the months to come. We were actually investigating reports today that a top executive had left a fourth well-known restaurant company, but couldn’t get a confirmation from the concern itself. But stay tuned. He's likely to be one in a parade of executives who find themselves arising from a hot seat in the near future. By their employer's choice, or theirs.

'No-match'? How about 'no-sense'?

In another sign the donkey from “Shrek” is really running the country, a much-respected restaurant operator in Minneapolis is reportedly being picketed, petitioned, denied business, flayed on the internet and possibly left short-staffed, all because it followed the White House’s rules for countering illegal immigration. Straight from the files of Ripley‘s is this account of a company getting caught in a disastrous tug-of-war. And if that’s not enough of a sideshow draw, consider the really amazing part: It could be a preview of what’s in store for other restaurateurs if the government makes good on a pledge to drop more no-match letters into the mail within the next few weeks.

The tale began last fall when the D’Amico & Sons chain received a batch of the letters from the Social Security Administration. The letters, if you’ve strangely never had the experience of receiving one, alerts employers that the Social Security numbers provided by an employee don’t match the information in the agency’s data banks. Perhaps the numbers were assigned to someone with a different name, or the number just doesn’t exist. Or perhaps the new hire was recently married or divorced and is now using a different surname.

Regardless, the employer is given the heads-up that the discrepancy has to be reconciled. Otherwise, the Bush Administration would like the employees to be canned because they could be illegal immigrants using bogus I.D.s. It tried without success late last year to make that preference an obligation, but was thwarted by the courts.

In any case, D’Amico dutifully alerted the 15 or so employees of the no-match notices. According to reports by media ranging from Minneapolis Public Radio to the Twin Cities Daily Planet, the employees were given seven months to rectify the mismatches of information. Initially, according to the reports, the staffers were told to write the Administration. Later, D’Amico execs advised them to go visit agency and clear up the problems in person.

Only one employee apparently followed the counsel. The rest did not settle anything with Social Security. So D’Amico fired them at the end of March.

The company acknowledged that no-match letters aren’t yet grounds for firing people. But it also argued that some employers have been accused of helping illegal immigrants break the law because the companies had unresolved no-match letters in their files. The unheeded communications were taken as signs of complicity.

According to the MPR report, D’Amico said it terminated the employees, including several with more than a dozen years of tenure, because they didn’t follow the company’s directives.

The weeks since have made D’Amico the targets of such big-name dvocacy groups as the Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World (better known as the Wobblies), and the sanctimonious-sounding Workers Interfaith Network. The discharged workers have also turned for assistance to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that they were the victims of prejudice since all were Latinos.

Meanwhile, petitions have reportedly been drafted, and Minneapolis-based bulletin boards carry consumers’ accounts of seeing picket lines outside the restaurants they’ve known as customers. Some delivery trucks apparently refused to cross the pickets. The Wobblies claim that some D’Amico employees staged an impromptu sit-down at one restaurant.

“I went to D’Amicos often and loved their food and ambiance,” said one poster on the Daily Planet’s website. “I will be boycotting the company from now on.”

MPR said in its report that a banquet customer cancelled its booking with D’Amico because of the situation.

Meanwhile, the federal government apparently hasn’t commented on the situation, much less clarified the obligations and rights of both parties in the matter. Instead, it’s silently leaving D’Amico as its proxy.

After a court struck down the Bush administration’s efforts to require employers to fire staffers who can’t fix a no-match situation, officials from the Department of Homeland Security expressed confidence they’d eventually prevail in their efforts. It indicated at the time that it would address the objections that prompted a federal court in San Francisco to strike down the fix-it-or-nix-it aspect of the law. Among the flaws that were cited by the court was the mere 90 days that was granted to fix a mismatch in Social Security info. That and other concerns prompted the court to bar the Social Security Administration from sending out letters that threatened penalties. The SSA said it didn’t have time to fix the content and resume sending the no-match letters, and suspended the practice.

But the agency said it planned to address a court directive and resume sending no-match letters again in the spring of 2008. The season ends on June 19, or about three weeks from now.

Tales of the talks

Sit long enough in one spot at the NRA show and you’re likely to witness either an awards ceremony or a speech. Yet, my fellow sore-footed conventioneers, where was the event that tied the two together? Honors were bestowed for standout performances in any number of areas, from culinary-school academics to menu making. Similarly, I listened to more than 50 presentations from a podium during my four days at the show. Some of them clearly deserved the distinction of a prize. So here, to plug an obvious hole in the book-sized list of convention activities, is the inaugural presentation of the Outstanding Oratory Achievement Awards, popularly known as the Oo-Aahs.

Return of the Herminator: With Indiana Jones and Batman making their comebacks, is it any surprise that one of the industry’s own action heroes would strut back onto the stage? Herman Cain has been out of the business for eight or 10 years, working in politics and hosting a radio show in Atlanta. But he clearly hasn’t lost his touch for rousing an industry audience. The former head of the NRA and Godfather’s Pizza, who once shot up at a town-hall meeting to out-debate a stunned President Clinton, knocked the dust off chandeliers with two booming presentations. At a luncheon that brought together hospitality-school students and industry luminaries, the one-time senatorial candidate recounted how his father worked three jobs so he could realize his dream of buying a house where Cain and his brother would each have his own bed. “Twin beds?,” Cain boomed. “We’d been sharing a cot in the kitchen. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

That night, at a gala where he was awarded the lofty distinction of Diplomate by the NRA Educational Foundation, Cain sounded a more somber tone. “Some of you may have heard that I had cancer,” he said in a voice that could slip deeper than a foghorn. “I say ‘had cancer,’ because I had cancer. I’m now 100 percent cancer free.” Word that he’d beaten Stage Four colon cancer, delivered in his evangelical style, had the audience roaring.

But he was no match for his fellow award-winner, a thoughtful, a bashful by comparison chef from Washington, D.C.

Ricchi rocks the house: The Diplomate designation was also bestowed that night on Chris Ricchi, chef-proprietor of Ristorante i Ricchi in the nation’s capital. Looking more like a surfer on spring break than a working mom with two grown children, Ricchi was profiled in a video that highlighted an aspect of her life that was unfamiliar to many of us. Ricchi’s son, the tape explained, had a disability that required his enrollment in a specialized school in the D.C. area. The place sounded like a wreck, with a leaky roof, grounds that had all the warmth of a war zone, and a food service whose only recognition would likely come from health authorities. An administrator recounted how Ricchi took a look at the place and calmly informed another parent, “We can do better.” She then proceeded to raise some $4 million for a transformation.

Taking the podium, Ricchi acknowledged that she’d raised the money by turning to her peers in the restaurant business, who “all opened their checkbooks.” Then she asked her children to stand, including the son whose life had been so powerfully affected by people in that very room. The applause could’ve been heard on the space station.

“This is it,” she roared with a fire that could only come from the heart. “This is what’s important. It’s all about how we can help others. And no one does it better than this industry.”

There were more napkins dabbing eyes than you’d see at a wedding.

But Ricchi wasn’t the only speaker to prompt the sort of sniffling you might hear from first graders on Day One of school. The industry was introduced the next morning to the well-spoken young director of training for Whataburger, who pulled no punches about where she came from.

‘I had to get out.’ “I grew up in Haines City, Fla., in a neighborhood where drugs were available 24 hours a day,” Nicole Jackson recounted in the printed bio that was handed out for the NRA’s Faces of Diversity Awards. “My mom worked a lot but partied a lot, so we lived with my grandmother.”

“We lived on public assistance, and I was told I could aspire to be a janitor or a maid,” she wrote. “I knew I had to get out.”

She did, ultimately picking the restaurant industry as her path. The first step was a crew position at a McDonald’s, earning $3.35 an hour. She quickly moved up there, was hired away by Krystal, and then by Whataburger. And there she was on Sunday, winning an award from the restaurant association for showing others how to climb out of their dire circumstances.

“It may seem like an award to you,” she told the directors of the National Restaurant Association. But for her, she explained, it was validation of the good she’d found in the job—not only for herself, but for the people with whom she worked every day. “We are counselors to 16-year-olds,” she exuberantly reminded the industry greybeards. “We are supplemental income because someone was a little short that month.”

Addressing some of the biggest names in the business, Jackson summoned an extra measure of volume and enthusiasm to let them know, “You wrote the lyrics to our new song. And we will pay it forward.”

On the rack at Steak n Shake

Back in feudal times, kings merely boiled alive the serfs who failed to deliver all the wheat that was demanded of them. Today we have the far more gruesome ritual of the quarterly conference call. Expensive suits clearly fail to protect public-company officials from being grilled by disgruntled portfolio managers. And seldom has the sizzle been louder than it was during the recent confab between analysts and the executives of Steak n Shake. When the company’s co-founder dials in to deliver her can of whup ass, you know it’s going to be a tough Q&A session for the folks from headquarters.

Not that they were snapping on the “Applause” sign for the company’s performance. “Unacceptable,” spat acting president Jeffrey Blade. “We remain dissatisfied.” That “we” presumably refers to the whole executive team, though Blade might have been speaking only for himself. In addition to holding the job of interim president, he’s also serving as chief financial officer, chief administrative officer and executive vice president. And, of course, spokesman during conference calls.

At least he’s not responsible for finding a permanent CEO. That task is being shouldered by the interim holder of the title, who’s also filling in as chairman. Here, in full, is an update on the search from that point person, Wayne L. Kelley: “Since beginning the search process back in February, we have seen several well-qualified and enthusiastic candidates and we remain optimistic that this process of obtaining our new CEO will be concluded in the near future.” The decision to hire a new CEO was made in August, by the way. The sort of search that Kelley detailed apparently takes a few months to get rolling.

That wasn’t okay with one of the callers. Sue Aramian is little known outside of Steak n Shake, but she should be hailed as an industry pioneer, along the lines of Jackie Trujillo or Gretchen Mathers. Long before there was a Women’s Foodservice Forum, she was blazing a trail that led to what may well be the first vice-chairmanship in the industry to held by a woman. Aramian quietly oversaw a company called Consolidated Products, known today as The Steak n Shake Co.

“My name is Sue Armanian,” she said during the Q&A portion of the call. “I have been asked many, many times to comment upon the company that I co-founded with E.W. Kelley in 1981. I have refused every request until this statement that I am making to you.”

According to a transcript provided by Seeking Alpha, the online financial-information clearing house, Aramian proceeded to take Blade and another Kelley to task. She cited a “vacuum of leadership” and the “intolerable manner” in which shareholders’ values have dropped.

“You have operated with the same team doing the same thing get the same results,” she asserted, describing the status quo as “undesired.”

Noting that employees have voiced similar concerns to her, she told the officials, “it all stems from lack of good leadership and an understanding and appreciation of the basic concept.”

Blade’s response, quoted here in full: “I don’t believe there was a question in that, so we’ll go on to the next question.”

Skinner to casual dining: Watch your prices

Jim Skinner, the CEO of McDonald's, offered some free advice to casual-dining executives during his keynote address yesterday afternoon at the National Restaurant Association's convention in Chicago. "If I were in casual dining, I would make sure I had an affordable menu, even if it had to hurt a little bit," he said. "That's where I'd spend my time, particularly today."

Skinner cautioned that he was speaking as a consumer, not as someone who's ever run a casual chain. Yet the readiness with which he offered that counsel in response to a question clearly indicated he'd thought about the matter from a business standpoint.

Earlier, he'd cited his own brand's offer of "everyday affordability" as the key reason for the chain's phenomenal success at a time when most chains are struggling.

"It's the most improtant thing right now with our customers, and you all know it," said Skinner.

"People like to say we benefit from a down economy. We do not," he said with considerable emphasis. He termed the chain "recession-resistant, not recession-proof."

Regardless of what type of restaurant or chain you run, he stressed, "now matter how good the experience is, if you don't have an affordable menu, you're going to have problems."

Miscellaneous stuff I learned at the NRA show

The National Restaurant Association’s annual convention abounds in educational sessions, including 14 on green issues alone. But many of the revelations come elsewhere, as these minor gems attest:

Who said restaurants don’t offer health insurance? Oh, sure, you may find an operator here or there that takes a progressive stance on benefits, and there’s always Starbucks, the exception that ostensibly proved the rule. But few people in the general public—much less those in the industry—would expect to find health coverage available from the mega-sized quick-service chains, where the size, turnover and young age of the workforce presumably pushed the benefit beyond the point of feasibility. Not so, McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner revealed in his address to convention attendees this afternoon. All 9,000 of the franchisor’s company-operated restaurants now provide employees with access to coverage. But, Skinner acknowledged in one of several surprising flashes of candor, “it’s available, but not necessarily affordable.” He seemed to suggest that affordable health coverage is one of the goals the industry should pursue in collaboration, instead of each operation scrabbling in isolation. More on that in a later post.

New fruits are ready to drop on the U.S. market. You never know who you’ll see or hear among the tens of thousands who attend the restaurant show. Who, for instance, would have expected to catch a cameo appearance by New Zealand’s ambassador to the United States at the NRA’s board meeting? Yet there was Roy Ferguson (are you supposed to put an “Honorable” or something before his name?), talking about the efforts underway in his country to provide American restaurants with delectable new choices. Among the bunch, Ferguson said, are new fruits like the kiwi berry, a kiwi that could be eaten without being peeled.

But that’s not the only new fruit heading to the States. Tonight a group of us from Nation’s Restaurant News visited the Chicago outpost of Sushi Samba, the popular fusion-cuisine concept from New York. The concept’s Joanna Cisowska mentioned that the restaurant is participating in a Brazilian food festival, a first-of-its-kind event in the city that was scheduled to coincide with the convention. The festival is aimed not at consumers but at American restaurateurs who are visiting Chicago for the show. The government of Brazil hopes to promote the foods of that nation to restaurateurs from all over our country. Among the items they’ll be invited to sample is a fruit called cupacu, which Cisowska described as a new “super-fruit” that could be as warmly embraced by the health-conscious as acai. At the end of the meal, we were surprised with desserts that were made with cupacu, a purple puree that contrasted beautifully with the tapioca below it. Apparently it’s hardly a novelty in its native land.

Pasta prices are hard to hedge. Bakers can try to temper the spike in wheat costs by locking into long-term contracts or otherwise striving to hedge against the inflation. Not so with duram wheat, the sort that’s by pasta makers, a supplier explained. The market for that variation is purely transactional—buy what’s available at whatever price you can, without the benefit of long-term deals. He also revealed that the price of the wheat appears to have topped out.

James Brown has a following on the NRA board. Association director and Golden Corral chief executive Ted Fowler once described the board as “stale, male and pale,” Multicultural Outreach Committee chairman Daniel Halpern revealed to his fellow directors in explaining why his committee had been launched several years ago. Now, Halpern said, the diversification push is bringing results, though the board can’t let up in that effort. The situation, he said, brings to mind the words of “the poet James Brown: ‘I’m not asking you to give me anything. Just open the door and I’ll get it on my own.’” Get down, y’all.

Vegas hookers will run you $250 an hour. That nugget was overheard on the hotel shuttle bus from the convention hall. The speaker was apparently enlightening a less-worldly compatriot who mistakenly thought Sin City was all about gambling, shows, and eating the food of famous chefs. The forced listener looked as if he’d have paid $250 at that moment for a can of Lysol. Given the look of the speaker, he must have had a coupon to get the rate he cited.

Elephant & Castle has the best meatloaf in Chicago. Overheard during that same bus trip.

Curtain rises on Chicago restaurant show

The restaurant industry did its part today for Dr. Scholl’s and the trophy industry, converging on Chicago for its annual epic march through the aisles of McCormick Place, then rousing itself to cheer through a marathon of awards presentations. Yet the usual epidemic of blisters and vocal-chord strains were darkened this year by the whispered laments of business conditions. Operators started off cheerily, then slid into grim assessments of customer-traffic and food-cost trends. And suppliers glumly speculated that booth traffic would be tempered as operators cut back on the number of people they brought to the show, if they budgeted to come at all. Nor, they pointed out, are their ingredients costs any better than restaurateurs’.

Yet the aisles were crowded today at McCormick, with a healthy showing of red badges, that all-important sign of the operator. Trying to navigate my way through the nibblers, tire-kickers and serious shoppers, I spied a McDonald’s director, a top executive of Auntie Anne’s, a large contingent from White Castle, a number of onsite feeders, and more than a smattering of independents. It was hardly a scientific assessment. But equally casual assessments in past years found far fewer of those red badges.

In the way of trends, clearly the green movement is gaining share of tongue. It was a standard add-on to dialogues, as in, “and it’s sustainable, too, because….” Or, “how about the environmental impact?” I was sorry to miss a discussion this morning between culinary educators, students and industry officials, about what’s being taught to restaurant and hospitality students about ecological practices.

I suspect that I’ll notice a marked shift when I poke around the booths tomorrow toward the slanted. Certainly slanted tableware—a soup bowl whose bottom is slanted, so the liquid pools in the bottom for easier spooning, for instance—has been noticeable during some of my recent restaurant visits. The Gage, for instance, sells its wines-by-the-glass in small carafes that are skewed. Their bottom is flat, but the body and neck slant forward, making for a more dramatic presentation and easier pouring. More on this after I check the dishware booths in the next few days.

But undoubtedly the dominant talk of the show was about the difficulties of the time. One person cited a supplier whose costs have jumped by the scale of a moonshot because of escalating grain costs. Several recounted conversations where the participants wondered what casual-dining brands would disappear. Others speculated about what wounded brands in the market would likely be acquired, possibly for conversion.

It would have been nice to check the possibility of an acquisition with some of those brands. But it seems that several decided not to send their executives to the show this year.

The house party

A heads-up to National Restaurant Association show coordinators: There is a second political party out there, you know. The association served up a pleasant surprise Monday by announcing that John McCain is going to drop by the industry’s mega-get-together next week in Chicago, first to speak to attendees, then to powwow with industry leaders about travel and tourism. His participation will follow by two years the unscheduled appearance of President George W. Bush, one of a long line of political speakers that also includes his mother, Barbara (accompanied by her dog, Millie), Ronald Reagan (in his second post-White House public appearance), Gerald Ford and Herman Cain. In one of those uncanny coincidences that no bookmaker in Vegas could anticipate, all were Republican (though I can’t absolutely swear to Millie’s political persuasion).

It’s easy to see why. As James Carville quipped at his recent appearance at an industry event, “I’d like to say hello to all of my fellow Democrats. All eight of you.” This is a obviously a Republican industry. And the whole point of a convention is being with persons of your own calling.

It’s great that McCain will be addressing the NRA’s convention. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the association that it can land figures of that stature, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. This election is truly a race, with the outcome as uncertain as any I’ve witnessed. And you’re talking about someone who can recall listening to John F. Kennedy’s warning about some missiles in the place where Ricky Riccardo came from. A presentation by McCain could stimulating experience indeed.

But even rabid GOPers would have to acknowledge that their flag-bearer may not be the one voted into office six months from now. Nor is there any speculation about the Arizona senator’s claim to represent the team. His appearance may be more of a rah-rah event than a sobering moment of thought.

Face time with Obama or Clinton, in contrast, might have been far headier. If they’ll truly be enemies of the industry, isn’t it better to have a sit-down now, figuratively speaking? Where do they stand on industry issues like menu labeling, no-match letters or foreign tourism promotion? Inviting the trade’s adversaries might have been far more educational than a pep rally. And if the choice of the Democratic candidate has still yet to be decided, wouldn’t it be interesting to determine which one the industry would prefer to see in the race?

For all I know, the NRA did invite one or both of the Democratic contenders, and was turned down by each. Or that there might be a surprise last minute stop-by by one or both, akin to George W. Bush’s unexpected presentation in 2006.

That would be a pleasant surprise indeed, and I don’t say that because of my own political leanings. During times of political uncertainty like these, it’s better to learn what your adversaries are thinking than it is to review the points of agreement with the entrant you prefer.

The King, a spy?

Eric Schlosser, the muckraking author of “Fast Food Nation,” blew the cover this morning off a clandestine operation that explains why so many chain executives take their martinis shaken, not stirred. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Schlosser, about whom I have my own secrets to reveal, disclosed that Burger King has been secretly infiltrating a labor-affiliated group in Florida. Not that the group’s members work for BK, mind you. They’re students who sympathize with the workers who pick the Florida tomatoes that might end up as a Whopper garnish. BK, apparently fearing some sort of tomato-field uprising, hired a veteran spook to go undercover as a college student willing to work for the Student/Farmworker Alliance, according to Schlosser.

The best-selling author and crackerjack journalist said he was told by an unnamed BK executive that the chain had for years employed a shadowy company called Diplomatic Tactical Services for what the source termed “security-related matters.” In March, Schlosser said, those matters extended to infiltrating the Alliance, which supports the mission of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. As we’ve often reported online, the CIW is pushing BK to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes, as McDonald’s and the quick-service chains of Yum! Brands have agreed. The CIW says the money would be used to improve the wages and living conditions of tomato pickers. But BK has refused, citing concerns about the legality of paying part of a wage to workers whom it doesn’t actually employ.

Schlosser doesn’t say exactly what BK hoped to accomplish if, as he alleges, the company paid someone to spy on the Alliance. But he cites the situation as another reason why safeguards against corporate surveillance should be enacted by Congress, if not written into the Constitution.

Lest you write off Schlosser as someone who warns of monsters under the bed because it sells books, consider the other reports that have come to light about BK executives’ other dealings with the CIW. The Fort Myers, Fla., News-Press reported yesterday that the franchisor is investigating Steve Grover, head of the chain’s food safety and quality control functions, for slamming the CIW in blog postings that were written under the screen name of his daughter. “Appropriate disciplinary action will be taken,” BK spokeswoman Denise Wilson was quoted as saying. In the story, she stressed that Grover acted independently, without so much as sympathy from the home office. She did not deny that Grover had written the messages, which the News-Press characterized as “derogatory.”

Yet Schlosser’s account fails to answer the question of why BK would bother to infiltrate a student group that has probably never heard of Che Guevara or Cesar Chavez. At a time of runaway food costs, sky-high construction costs and a severe slowdown in consumer spending, do farm workers or youngsters working on their behalf really pose a significant threat, never mind one that triggers covert operations? Shouldn’t BK’s operatives be trying to turn Ronald McDonald, or maybe waterboarding that pig-tailed redhead from Dublin, Ohio? At the very least it should be eavesdropping on that cue-ball-headed guy who makes commercials for Jack in the Box.

And, of course, there are my personal qualms about Schlosser’s integrity. Many years ago, sometime between “Fast Food Nation” and his subsequent book, “Reefer Madness,” he called me while I was serving as editor of an NRN competitor. He was trying to track down the source for an expert’s assertion that I’d recounted in a column. I had the source material on an audiotape, a piece of pr-MP3 technology known as a “cassette.” It was a recording of a Technomic recording from COEX, and you couldn’t readily find material of that sort in those pre-YouTube days. So he begged to borrow it, swearing he’d return it ASAP. But, alas, I’m still waiting.

Perhaps I should slag him in a blog.

Shooting themselves in the foot?

You have to wonder how gun advocates would reconcile the tragedy that befell a Florida Taco Bell with the push in Georgia to let patrons carry firearms while they drink in public. They’ve hammered a bill through the state legislature that allows gun-permit holders to carry a hidden pistol into restaurants and other places that serve alcohol. The proponents are arguing that Gov. Sonny Perdue should sign the measure into law because it would allow your average citizen to defend his or herself should trouble erupt, like the robbery that unfolded in late February at the Cape Coral Taco Bell.

Sure enough, someone in the restaurant that day was carrying a handgun. And, luckier still, it happened to be a police officer—someone with extensive training in how to handle a lethal weapon. Nor was the officer caught off guard. Local authorities had been warned that the fast-food restaurant might be robbed that night. Officer Doug Coons was sent specifically to protect the staff and patrons. When a man at the back door pulled a gun on manager Paul Price, Coons reacted. He fired twice at the armed robber, hitting him in the shoulder. But Price also caught a bullet, though his wound, like the perpetrator’s, was not fatal.

At first, according to local news reports, Price asserted that he’d been shot by the robber, apparently a not-too-quick fellow named Christopher Ward, who was promptly arrested with three accomplices. But authorities reportedly discovered that Ward’s gun hadn’t been loaded. The state attorney’s office also reportedly learned the bullet had come from Coons’ gun.

All parties agreed the injury to Price had been unintended. Indeed, the state attorney found Coons’ actions to be “reasonable and lawful,” according to the Cape Coral police department, and did not merit any criminal charges.

But it’s a reason to stop and think about the legislation that’s on the governor’s desk in Georgia. An innocent man was shot in Cape Coral because a policeman, a highly trained professional accustomed to carrying a gun every day on the job, erroneously hit him. We’re not talking about an amateur unwittingly finding him or herself in mortal danger, possibly after having a drink or two, in a crowded facility where other people may be packing, too. Do the gun advocates in Georgia really believe that an accident shooting would be less likely in a situation like that?

We can only hope the governor listens to the Georgia Restaurant Association’s plea that he protect the public by vetoing the pending bill. As GRA chief executive Ronald Wolf put it in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed piece on Tuesday, “although we recognize the good intentions of the legislature to provide restaurant patrons with an increased sense of security, the reality is that the bill only increases the likelihood of an inebriated customer putting innocent citizens and law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”

How IHOP plans to fix Applebee's

After crowing for months that it could revive Applebee’s, IHOP started talking this week about how it’ll do it. In a presentation to financial analysts, CEO Julie Stewart spoke of such nuts and bolts changes as scaling back limited-time offers, installing new kitchen equipment, paring down the menu to a few specialties, and, perhaps most important, remembering what kind of consumer is likely to visit the restaurants. “We often overshot the brand in the pursuit of amore upscale customer while frankly failing to deliver on the expectations of our core users,” Stewart explained.

The casual chain’s new owner has already yanked Applebee’s much-ballyhooed “Talking Apple” ad campaign, which featured the sassy comedienne Wanda Sykes as the voice of the apple that’s now part of Applebee’s logo. Both the new logo and the edgy campaign, carefully slanted toward a hipper crowd, were concocted by the chain’s prior regime, which Stewart ousted in short order. The new campaign, “It’s a Whole New Neighborhood,” harkens back to the chain’s earlier positioning lie, “Eating Good in the Neighborhood,” which Steward helped to develop while she was president of Applebee’s domestic operations.

The new spots spotlight food, without any pretenses about attitude or cheeky sophistication. Or, as Stewart put it, “Our message is clearly focused on classic grill and bar food that you can only get at Applebee’s.”

That process of stripping down the concept to its core strengths, then updating those traditional draws, appears to be the basis of Stewart’s revival plan. As she told the analysts, a crowd usually more concerned with ROI than Riblets, “Signature grill and bar items, such as appetizers, burgers, salads, steaks, as well as beer, wine and other specialty drinks, are the key to differentiating Applebee’s from the competitive set while remaining true to our brand position.” Translation: The chain will stop trying to be a Cheesecake Factory or a trendy independent.

Part of the process, she continued, will be paring back the menu and updating kitchens.

In an interview with USA Today, Stewart also spoke about putting more emphasis in Applebee’s marketing on the concept’s bar. Most consumers, she suggested, don’t realize how much the brand offers to patrons who want to unwind with a cocktail.

During the conference call with investors, one of the portfolio managers asked Steward why she was veering from Applebee’s traditional reliance on limited-time offers and frequent menu changes.

“The short answer is that [the] LTO strategy did not work,” she said. “The idea of forcing people to come in for a limited period of time and order that item and somehow come more frequently did not work.” After all, she said, “if your base business and your base menu and your base service platform doesn’t provide enough for the consumer, then the LTO isn’t necessarily going to get you where you want to go, right?”

Stewart said that IHOP has plotted out a new marketing plan for Applebee’s for the remainder of 2008, starting with another flight of ads that debuts Monday. In those spots, consumers will be invited to submit videos they’ve shot inside Applebee’s units.

In addition, Stewart and her team “have developed a road map for all of 2009 that should be finalized in the next couple of months,” she said. In particular, she added, the new operating group will look at takeaway and Applebee’s rights to market Weight Watchers-brand meals.

Stewart also revealed that IHOP plans to “amend” a unit-manager bonus program that squeezed margins at company stores during the first quarter, without commenting how that effort dovetailed with the plan to improve unit-level operations.

'Paging Mr. Ripley'

If a picture is worth a thousand words, headlines should come with volume numbers. Here are a few grabbers that tell a vivid story without a word of explanation, though a dab of context is nonetheless provided for those who wonder how the underlying articles came about. All are real headlines that appeared within the last few weeks:

‘Restaurants go after reviewer's testicles’: It seems that the reviewer for the Metro newspaper in Auckland, Australia, left several high-profile restaurants off his list of the area’s 50 best dining options. One of the overlooked establishments responded with a full-page ad in a rival paper, slamming the critic’s work and providing a recipe for reviewers’ testicles. The ad encouraged at-home Emerils to take a "very sharp knife, [and] slice through the sort of skinnie muscley stuff that you find surrounding each of the Metro Food Critic Testicles (there should be two testicles, they can be hard to find)".

‘China's first penis restaurant,’ also reported under the banner, ‘Members only, but diners don't find it hard to swallow’: Guo-li-zhuang restaurant in Peking, China, specializes in the private parts of yaks, donkeys, water buffaloes, horses and other studmuffins of nature. The best quote in the story that appeared under the latter headline: "Of course, there are other restaurants that serve the bian [penis] of individual animals. But this is the first that brings them all together." You can only imagine the Zagat entries.

'Bruce Oldfield shows off his McDonald's designer duds': Oldfield, in case you’re the gauche sort who buys off the rack, is a clothing designer whose world-famous clients included Princess Diane and who still dresses the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones. He was asked to revamp the uniforms for McDonald’s staffers in the United Kingdom, a crucible for some of the chain’s more progressive personnel policies. Some might say it’s like Oasis or Amy Winehouse playing bar mitzvahs and weddings. But the new outfits, shown last week in Britain, have merited serious commentary from the fashion sheep who ooh and ahh over the latest runway get-ups. The neck scarves for women have been panned, but the brown-on-black shirts for guys have been given well-received. Ditto for the new baseball caps. “Next up, McBurqa's,” quipped one online commentator here in the States.

‘Church’s Chicken Names Fletcher Martin Agency of Record for Eastern U.S. Media and Print’: This was the headline of a press release that was sent to us and that you can probably find online. As a stand-alone, it’s perfectly fine. But the copy below it is an eyebrow-raiser: “Church’s Chicken, a division of AFC Enterprises, Inc…” Church’s was sold by AFC in 2004. Today, AFC’s only restaurant holding is Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, a competitor to Church’s. Since the new agency is dealing with media, it might want to clear up that error ASAP. Otherwise, it could end up being pointed out in a blog.

It's a jungle out there

Here on the Peltz-engeti Plains, the beasts of the restaurant wilds are hitting the watering holes a bit more enthusiastically. After watching Nelson Triarcus carnivorous ruthlessly stalk its prey, the wounded Wendy red-hairus, the herd winced in horror as the predator brought down one of the kingdom’s most storied specimens. But the blood-letting didn’t end there. No sooner had Kerrii Anderson’s head been mounted than another proud denizen of the restaurant jungle find himself being measured for a spot on the lodge’s trophy wall. In a move that shocked everyone, including the prey, Craig Miller found himself at the wrong end of an angry board’s scope. He was summarily dispatched as CEO of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a post he assumed four years after Bill Hyde had been dropped because of a vertical climb in beef costs. No wonder the beasts left standing are taking a big gulp and wondering, Who’ll be next?

Rock Bottom answered that question with the simultaneous resignations yesterday of three top executives, including CEO Ned Lidvall. The smart money says he won’t be the last chain chief to feel as if he’s in a National Geographic special, cast as the wildebeest in a study of investors’ meat-eating habits.

Worst of all, the situation isn’t purely Darwinistic. Everyone is mired in an economic swamp that has customers spending less, suppliers charging more, employees bailing for other trades, and landlords forgetting there’s a real estate glut. Even if you’re better than the competitions’ CEOs, you can still look like a prime cut of meat to an unforgiving investment pack. Outside of McDonald’s and Chipotle, the only executives who are looking fit these days are the ones who’ve dropped out of the restaurant business to work as head hunters.

Of course, if could be worse. They could be among those unfortunates who come to work one day and find a registered letter on their desks from William Ackman, Sardar Biglari or some company whose name starts with T-R-I, the mark of Nelson Peltz and the now industry equivalent of “666.” It’s one thing to pack up all your office belongings in a cardboard box and head down to HR for an exit interview. It’s another to be hounded like a wobbly gazelle trying to limp its way across the African veldt.

And it’s just a matter of time until that happens. In the announcement of its deal to takeover Wendy’s International, Arby’s parent Triarc Cos. specified that the fast-food empire formed by the chains’ merger would grow in part through acquisitions.

Not that you should feel too bad for Anderson, who’s about to be replaced as Wendy’s CEO by her counterpart at Arby’s and Triarc, Roland Smith. News reports say she’ll be paid $20 million in severance, which includes about $5 million to defray her income taxes.

Customers sound off

A rose is a rose is a rose, but restaurant customers come in ever-shifting varieties. Treat them right, even in a crisis, and they can be convincing apostles for a place or a chain, as Chipotle is learning from a consumer poll that’s being conducted on its handling of a food-safety situation. But burn ‘em and they’ll turn into town criers of a far different sort, as I was reminded by an e-mail, complete with a photo documenting the transgression, that was sent this morning by a disgruntled KFC patron.

“The picture I have attached is my first, and likely the last, purchase
 of what was supposed to be KFC's new Grilled Chicken Sandwich,” wrote Chris Donaldson of Westminster, Canada. “[It was] advertised at 
the ordering kiosk in the drive-thru as having a bulging piece of grilled
 chicken layered with a generous helping of lettuce and a slice of tomato.” Instead, Donaldson said, it looked like this:



He said he contacted KFC’s corporation operations, who put him in touch with the franchisee, who offered to give him a free sandwich the next time he’s in the area. Donaldson said he lives 30 miles from the store, and a free sandwich just isn’t enough of a draw.

“I appreciate the efforts by some fast food outlets to present a good fair-
for-the- money product, but this turn in my opinion with KFC has to be done 
properly and without ripping customers off, “ he wrote. He also lamented the chain’s discontinuation of Tender Roast non-fried chicken a few years ago.

Contrast that takeaway with the impressions consumers cited in a poll that’s being conducted by Kimberly Palmer, author of U.S. News & World Reports’ Alpha Consumer blog. The survey deals with Chipotle’s handling of a norovirus outbreak that was linked to its unit in Kent, Ohio, near the campus of Kent State. About 450 people were afflicted in the incident, according to local news reports. As we reported yesterday online, Chipotle is inviting victims to submit their medical bills for reimbursement.

“Imagine this: You go to a restaurant. The food makes you sick—so sick you need to visit the doctor,” writes Palmer. “To compensate, the restaurant offers to pay your medical bills. Does that leave you a satisfied customer?”

The posting includes an instant poll that readers can take to express their opinions of Chipotle’s response. Fifty-three percent said their sentiments were best expressed by the option, “It could have happened to any restaurant, and probably won’t happen again to Chipotle.” Another 31 percent said they’d be “a bit wary” but would eventually go back to the restaurant. Only 16 percent responded, “Medical bills or not, Mexican food would nauseate me forevermore.”

Lucca IV: Fighting faintness

By my calculations, there were 2.7 minutes during my first day in Lucca, Italy, when I wasn’t eating or drinking. My hosts ensured such deprivation would end there by dispatching an English-speaking local to take me on a tour that afternoon of the city’s food shops and cafes. Our objective was to sample some of the delectables that are unique to the area. In true Italian style, we ended up trying most of them, though I drew the line at a local blood-and-pig’s-head sausage (at least until the next day). The experience underscored a brother’s contention that Italians could coax a delicacy out of virtually anything that walks, sprouts, flies or swims.

My guide-cum-enabler started me off slowly, suggesting we merely peer through a bakery’s window at a local specialty called torta di verdura. It looks like a green pie, and usually hits the dinner tables on religious holidays, the guide explained. I was about to suggest we give it a try when she described the ingredients: Swiss chard, maybe a little cheese, usually a few other vegetables baked into it to form a strongly flavored savory dish. There was a long pause. “It’s an acquired taste,” she remarked.

The other cake for which Lucca is known, she continued, is the buccellata, which at times looked like a giant bagel, at other times like a giant bagel whose sides are squeezed together to form a long double-tube loaf.

In what would become the pattern for our tour of gluttony, my guide suggested we give buccellata a try, and shot into a food shop. I started getting my Euros together while she chatted up the store keeper, pointing to me every four or five seconds. After awhile the proprietor brought me a dish with two slices of what looked like raisin bread, along with a tiny cup of pinkish liquid. I went to drink the liquid, but everyone in the place moved to stop me. “You dunk it,” the guide whispered. As soon as I lowered the bread into the wine—vin santo, literally holy wine—the whole place seemed to breath a sigh of relief. I realized why when I tasted the wine-soaked bread. The bread itself was mildly honeyed. But the wine could’ve sweetened a wedding cake. Downing it in a gulp might’ve put me into a sugar shock. Besides, the guide explained, vin santo typically costs five times as much as regular wines, and wasn’t to be gulped.

Not that I would have learned any prices from our tour. When I went to pay the proprietors, the guide invariably stopped me. It seems that ignorance of buccalleta or other local specialties is not to be tolerated in Lucca. And clearly I was more ignorant than most. Though we visited easily a half-dozen emporiums, each readily offered up free samples to a stranger they’d never see again. As far as I could tell, the motivation was pride. Which was why I soon found myself trying a rival establishment’s buccalleta. “It’s the best,” the proprietor confided in English. I skipped any vin santo there, still a little buzzed from the earlier sample.

But that was nothing compared with the near paralysis that set in when the guide took me to one of the city’s oldest and most famous cafes, Di Simo, which has been in business at least since 1846. The proprietor insisted we try one of the traditional local alcoholic drinks, a digestif called biadina. It’s traditionally served with several pine nuts, and local lore notes that it actually restores you twice—once with the liquid, a second time when you eat the pine nuts on the bottom of the glass. “Restores” is a carefully selected euphemism; “kicks your ass” might be a more apt descriptor. “It’s 40 percent alcohol,” the guide explained with a smile—after I’d downed a good lot of it.

We staggered out to take in some of the historical sights of the town. But a food option was never more than a few waddles away. My guide showed me several bakeries that stack trays of focaccia in front of open front-of-the-store windows so locals can grab a slice as they dash to work. But that’s as close as Lucca traditionalists come to fast food.

By the time our tour took us to one of the city’s many meat shops, further consumption would have been humanly impossible. So we merely looked at specialties like biraldo, a sausage that’s made by boiling a blood-and-scrap pork sausage for about six hours, if I understood the shopkeeper's account.

We also forewent a taste of lardo colonnata, or lard cured in a marble box. The process gives the lard a special taste, my guide explained. Locals slice the lard thin, put it atop a slice of bread, and toast the whole thing so that the lard starts to melt.

After showing restraint in the meat shops, we ended our tour at a gelateria. I was too stuffed even to taste anything, but my guide provided explicit directions as to how to get there from my hotel the next day. Which I, of course, did.

But that day of eating our way through Lucca had to end. It was almost time to get ready for dinner.

Schultz tries to foster Seattle's fortunes, too

You’d think Howard Schultz would be jittery enough without a court battle on his hands. But the Starbucks CEO filed a lawsuit Tuesday against fellow tycoon Clayton Bennett to scuttle their Seattle SuperSonics deal. Schultz agreed in 2006 to sell the pro basketball team for $350 million to a group led by the Oklahoma City financier. But when Seattle balked at building a new arena for the Sonics, Bennett alerted the National Basketball Association that he was relocating the franchise to his home town. Seattle restaurants of all stripes—including a few, presumably, in Starbucks green—have warned that the relocation would starve them of much-needed nighttime business.

Schultz may have grown up in Brooklyn, N.Y., but he’s loyal to his adopted hometown. He’s asked a U.S. District Court to un-do the deal because it was based on the assumption that the Sonics would remain in Starbucks’ home base. The team would still be sold, the complaint reportedly states. But Schultz would like to find an “honest buyer” who’d keep the Sonics in the only city the team has ever known, the Associated Press reported this morning.

Bennett, meanwhile, could end up as the trial lawyers’ poster child of 2008. He’s also being sued by the city of Seattle and fans who bought season tickets to the Sonics for future years.

Bennett has already agreed to give up the Seattle SuperSonics name, clearing the way for Seattle to secure another franchise. But he seems to be proceeding with his relocation plan. The NBA gave him a green light Friday to make the move, pending the outcome of his court fight with Seattle.

Lucca III: Food trends & traditions

Hearing the local purveyors tout their wares, you’d think the food trends of Lucca, Italy, were the same currents shaping menus back in the United States. The salespeople—nearly always the farmers or artisans who produced the materials—talked up the organic, healthful and gluten-free items that originated from their fields. Throw in the boasts about everything being locally sourced, processed by hand, and produced according to ancient family recipes, and you could’ve been at a food show in New York or San Francisco. Until you got to the farro beer, the chestnut liqueur, or the savory-sounding jams.

Lucca, a part of Tuscany, may be little-known in the U.S., but it’s renowned throughout Europe for its extra virgin olive oil, boutique wineries, and farro, the grain known in English-speaking countries as spelt. Locals also wax rhapsodically about the widespread local use of chestnuts, either by milling them into flour for cakes, breads or pastas, or as a flavoring.

Those items continue to be the bedrock of the local food culture. But a younger generation of producers and consumers are nudging the heritage-revering area to at least look at other ways of using traditional ingredients.

For instance, at a trade show convened for those of us who were visiting from the States, one of the local craftsmen poured samples of his newest beers. One was an extremely light, almost lager-style version made from farro and orzo, also an Italian signature. The other, he said with nearly bursting pride, was made solely with farro, something he’d been told could not be done because of the production inefficiencies.

The 100-percent farro beer, as yet even unnamed, is the same pale yellow as a wheat beer, minus the cloudiness. Indeed, it was crystal-clear, with a head “that could last for two hours,” the brewer explained through an interpreter. I swear I saw a tear forming in his eye.

The brew also has a much lower alcohol content, a mere 4 percent.

The brewer described the beer was an alternative to the darker, slightly heavier brews that Italian elders in the area might’ve sipped when they were youngsters learning the traditions of their elders.

A tour of local food shops and cafes revealed that younger Italians are indeed drinking differently than their parents did. Aperitifs, my tour guide explained, are the current rage among people in their 20s. They’ll head to the same time-steeped cafés where their grandparents might still stop by in the afternoon for a local digestif called biadina, which is served with a few pignoli thrown into the glass. The young adults descend on the places at 7 for aperitifs of one sort or another, often garnishing them with nuts, raisins or other enhancements that are arrayed in glass bowls on the bar. At 9, they head off to dinner, which of course is accompanied by wine.

A liqueur company participating in the Lucca trade show acknowledged that it’s had to make some accommodations to changing drinking habits. The buzz-phrase is “doing it for the market.” The owner cited such concessions as the introduction of a drink that tastes like dark rum, as well as a creamy limoncella and a liqueur, called Halloween, whose flavor was lost to language differences. His product line also includes a chestnut-flavored liqueur.

Several of the trade-show exhibitors featured jams of local produce—such local fruits as raspberries and currents (or what we’d know as blueberries, judging from the labels), to be sure, but also carrots, pumpkins and basil, to name just a few. Samples were given on bread, leading me to say something extremely intelligent about what a strong toast market Lucca must have. I was quickly corrected. In Lucca, one interpreter explained, persons of taste put jams and marmalades on cheese, as an alternative to using honey. Surely I must put honey on my cheese, she suggested. I couldn’t even bring myself to answer. Clearly it was yet another major setback in other cultures’ impression of America.

My shop-tour guide suggested that the jam-on-cheese phenomenon was getting a boost from another recent trend in the local dining scene. A new preoccupation has taken hold of blending salt and sweet items, like desserts flavored with balsamic vinegar, or salts used in baked items.

I could’ve been home, listening to a bunch of foodies discussing what they’ve been witnessing on the local dining scene.

Fred Turner takes McD's podium again

McDonald’s bi-annual chainwide meeting offered something a little different this year, at least for individuals who’ve logged at least 20 years with the brand. Included among the 15,000 franchisees, executives, employees and suppliers who gathered in Orlando this week for the quick-service giant’s Worldwide Convention were 1,500 people who have spent at least two decades within the system and are still logging days on the job. Another 500 are retirees. Together they constitute what the chain has dubbed—what else?—McVeterans, and they were honored for their role in building the company at a two-day, invitation-only gathering that dovetailed with the larger get-together..

According to an attendee, the turnout included several executives whose tenure dated back to the days of Ray Kroc, including former chief executives Fred Turner and Michael Quinlan. But, the attendee indicated, this wasn’t a then-vs.-now thing. The McVeterans McEvent included presentations by both Turner and current CEO Jim Skinner.

Instead, he said, it was a tribute to the folks who stoked the economic engine that just keeps chugging along.

Lucca II: A few words about green toilets

Green has been a concern for so long in Europe that it may be showing a little gray. Conservation seems to be a standard operating procedure, even in a city steeped in antiquity, like Lucca, Italy. The evidence can be as close as the nearest bathroom.

Toilets like the ones in our hotel, the San Luca Palace, have a nifty feature that must save a considerable amount of water. The flush mechanism is a two-piece touch plate on the wall. One piece is a smaller oval inset into a larger one. No instructions are given, but when you stop and wonder why the device has two components, the intent becomes apparent quickly: Touch the small oval for a lighter flush. For, um, tougher jobs where more water and flush power are needed, touch the larger part of the plate.

Here's what it looks like:


Bathrooms are not the only component of hotels and restaurants to be retrofitted with high-tech features for the sake of conservation. The hotel where we’re staying, for instance, features an impressive electricity-saving measure. When you enter a guest room, some lights will go on. If you put the card key into a slot by the door, they’ll stay on after the door closes, and you can of course turn on others, or snap on the TV. If the card key is not in the slot when the door closes, all the electricity shuts off. That, of course, means all lights will go off when the guest leaves the room with card key in hand. It’s nearly a failsafe way of guaranteeing the patron snaps off the power when he or she doesn’t need it.

Taking a limoncella for the team

Ah, the things we have to do to make a living. Today, for instance, I’m sitting in Lucca, Italy, getting ready to eat and drink my way through local specialties. I’m on a tour to learn what foods and wines—and let’s not forget cigars and coffee—could be feasible for restaurants back in the States that want to differentiate their menus with authentic regional Italian cuisine. Man, what a grind.

The tour began last night with dinner at one of the city’s most historic restaurants, which is saying a lot. Among Lucca’s distinctions is the retention of a wall that was built around the city for its defense back in the time of the Roman Empire (but updated twice, most recently during the Renaissance). Our guides explained that they wanted to start off our visit with dinner at Buca di Sant’ Antonio because it features the foods they ate at the family table while growing up. These were the dishes made by their grandmothers, who in turn learned them from their grandmothers.

We were steered toward the 226-year-old restaurant’s specialties by the crackerjack staff. Meanwhile, our guides, both from companies that promote Lucca business and tourism, selected local wines. My meal started with sautéed chicken livers served with a specialty bread that had a coarser grain than usual. It had almost a nutty taste, like the nut and whole-grain breads you see in health food stores back in the States. Several of my fellow visitors tried the “pies” that were offered as antipasti—one with leeks and ricotta, the other with asparagus and ricotta. All were terrific.

My second course was a pasta and rabbit dish with a very robust sauce—one of the highlights. Something about it was very familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I might’ve had it before. Later, one of our hosts noted that the chef of New York’s Beppe restaurant was from Lucca. I realized that’s where I’d enjoyed a similar dish, though I doubt it was made with rabbit.

My meat course consisted of roasted baby goat, with a simple accompaniment of roasted potatoes. It was delicious--juicy, flavorful, yet mild. The meat had a slight but pleasant musty flavor, like amplified dark meat turkey. It was as tender as a braised pork shank, but deeper in taste.

The meal wrapped up with a local specialty: Cookies that are made with olive oil in place of butter, lard or other shortenings. They were a bit heavy, but tasty. And just perfect with the dessert wine that our hosts chose. The wine was made with the local grechetto grape. The vintner later explained that the grapes are dried on mats for two to three months, until they’re largely dehydrated. Then the pulp is pressed, yielding a wine with extraordinary depth. The sweetness was more of a highlight than the sugary backbone of the wine. And as my wine-centric colleagues noted, it had great fruit.

The experience wiped out the surpisec we got when we saw our first restaurant in Lucca--a McDonald's.

Okay, I’d better rest up before I move to the next sampling. I’ve heard that we may actually have to heft more wine glasses this morning.