I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
You’re welcome.
So it’s Advertising Week here in NYC, and amidst all of the marketing jargon being thrown around, there was an event entitled “Team Earth: Empowering a Sustainability Movement.” AdAge called it “an event to seek out,” and a last-minute scheduling snafu did not get the even as much publicity as it probably deserved, but it did allow me a seat.
And, it nicely commenced at 5pm, getting me out of the office and on my way to Locanda Verde to meet BG for dinner.
Anyway, the panel was led by some guy at CNBC that I’ve never heard of. The panel consisted of the Chairman of Conservation International, Peter Seligmann, the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, and the Chairman of Wal-mart, Rob Walton. These heavy hitters in the conservation movement were talking about sustainability and how it has to play a crucial role in business moving forward.
Seligmann threw out a few interesting points. His first point was that the quality of the environment is going down. I guess we all knew that anyway, but he reiterated it. But, he said that engagement, awareness, and understanding is up, and that’s a good thing. The public only really dedicates something like 17% of its interest to the sustainability movement, which is shockingly low, considering that every person on this planet is directly affected by what we’re talking about here. He also stressed the importance of including corporations, hence his sitting on a panel with C-suite execs from two huge global brands.
Schultz, who can’t seem to catch a break these days, despite all of the advertising efforts (did anyone see the Businessweek brand rankings this week– they’re down 16% in brand value), echoed Seligmann’s sentiments, saying that sustainability will simply be part of the rules of engagement moving ahead. There is a balance needed, he said, between making money and having a social conscience. Since everyone refers to coffee as “tall” and “grande” these days, maybe he should have had a social conscience back then when he made us sound like losers when we want a small coffee.
He went on to talk about how people are willing to pay to support it and it has to be a real business change, and not just a marketing ploy. It has to be a truly integrated strategy, part of the company’s DNA, and so on. Now, coming from him, who convinced the country that four bucks is a perfectly acceptable price for a cup of coffee, I’m not sure that he can speak to “willing to pay for it” from the right perspective. If people are willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, they will probably still pay $4 for a very slightly smaller cup of free trade coffee. Or $4 for a smaller cup of coffee and a series of about 40 advertising panels in the tunnel between Times Square and the Port Authority. Either way, people do have a social conscience, and by paying a little extra, they think they are helping.
Lastly, Rob Walton talked about Wal-mart’s commitment to sustainability. The thing about Wal-mart is that when they talk, people listen. I personally am not a huge fan of Wal-mart. I’ve been to one once, and I didn’t enjoy the experience. I think their business practices are questionable, and I think they ruin neighborhoods. All of that aside, I do applaud them for what they are doing to drive the food industry around the world to embark upon a path to more environmentally conscious production (remember that whole “when they speak…” bit?).
Now, being the businessman he is, Walton said that what got Wal-mart involved was the opportunity to make a difference… in a profitable way. Wal-mart got you again! But, seriously, that’s the only way to make big business change their tune. At the end of the day, a business is there to make money. For any of this sustainability stuff to stick, it’s going to have to make someone some Benjamins. Even Seligmann admitted that you’ve gotta keep your feet on the ground and not keep your head in the clouds with some pipe dream. For the big guys to get involved, you’ve gotta tell them what it’s going to mean for them business wise. It it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.
Anyway, interesting stuff. Check out Team Earth. It’s like a feel-good forum for big companies.
It’s Monday night, and I have just been on a fatty food bender. I can’t even remember the last time I ate something either green or something that didn’t involve animal fat or deep frying. I guess it has all been worth it. I’ve got a lot to say.
Since b4b isn’t really all about food reviews, let me just briefly touch upon the meals that have added a special layer of padding around my precious mid-section. Fall is coming, and my instincts are kicking in full gear. It’s time to get ready for a long drought.
On Friday night, I headed out to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to hang out for a bit with Uberchef and his gal. After their most generous hospitality and a bottle of wine, BG and I headed to No. 7 for dinner with a couple of friends, whose nicknames I have yet to come up with. I had known about No. 7 for a long time, since the owner’s wife is a friend of mine from our glorious days in the media business. I guess in the spirit of friendship, I would have to say this meal was great.
The meal was great!
But really, the meal was pretty solid, although there were a couple of misses, in my honest opinion. We started off with the fried broccoli (which I guess was green, so I take back my earlier statement), which was much better than I expected. It wasn’t tempura style, but it was not as heavily battered as a good piece of fried chicken (I must admit, I just got back from Locanda Verde and I still have fried chicken batter on the brain). We also got a scallop ceviche, which was pleasant enough, if not a little bit uninspired. There was also a frisée salad with some fig stuff and a grilled octopus salad. There were ok. That’s about all I have to say about that.
Then we moved on the main courses– two orders of fried quail (see, fried food dominates my life right now), a Wagyu ribeye, and some chicken thing wrapped in cabbage. I don’t really feel like commenting on these items, so I wont. They were good. The wagyu is probably worth going back for, but the quail and chicken are not. I will comment on the buttermilk pudding, which was great.
But really, all of this just ended up being killing time before the main event of the night. Unbeknownst to me, next door to No. 7 and down the block from uberchef’s lair is the Cake Man. The Cake Man, which you may recall, was featured on Bobby Flay’s Throwdown, for his red velvet cake. Needless to say, when you walk into the place, there are a lot of slices of red velvet cake in the display case. A LOT of slices of red velvet cake. In fact, there are so many, it just seems like there is no way that it can be good. But this assumption is totally wrong. This stuff was DA BOMB. I don’t really like Red Velvet cake, and I couldn’t get enough of this stuff. The cake was moist, the frosting was creamy but not overly sweet, it was just perfect. I can still taste it if I close my eyes. Maybe uberchef will find it in the kindness of his heart to give his buddy the BB some…
So that was Friday. Saturday was time to party like it’s 5769 going on 5770. For all of my jewish readers, “l’shanah tova!” BG’s mom had me over for “the Rosh”, so I knew it was time to party and get my brisket on.
I got my brisket on. I got it on good. I got it on again today for lunch with uberchef (man, uberchef has been getting a lot of shout-outs in this post).
What I really got on and what I’m going to be getting on for the rest of the week is some chopped chicken liver. Everyone that knows me (so, basically everyone that reads this blog) knows that I love offal, and BG’s mom made a batch just for me. In fact, I was the only one that got it at dinner. And then I was the only one who took it home. So it really was just for me. And it is awesome. Maybe I’ll post a pic on Wednesday, when I am reunited with this inner-organ deliciousness.
Now for the main event. As heavily touted on my twitterfeed and FB page, I went to Locanda Verde’s fried chicken dinner. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a 4-time occasion at Locanda Verde, down in Tribeca. There are two seatings a night, and for $41 bucks per person, you get half of a fried chicken, a fatty slab of bacon, a bunch of sides, biscuits, and a slice of pie. It’s a lot of food. Serious eats has pretty solid pics, so it’s probably not really even looking at mine. But I am going to make you look at them anyway.
I arrived at LV, and BG was already there. Apparently there was a reservation mix-up, and my reservation wasn’t actually there. After a moment of rage at Eva (WTF, Eva, you said we were cool!), BG confirmed that we were ok, they were going to “squeeze us in.” At that moment, I felt like I needed to overcompensate that we actually belonged there and we weren’t just some losers who wandered in off the street and tried to pull the “but I called ahead… I talked to some woman… she said she would seat us right away…” trick. I felt like I had to name-drop, but resisted the urge. Whose name would I use, anyway?
So we sat down in the back dining room. It reminded me of the lodge at which I stayed while fly fishing in Alaska. It was all deep, made-to-be-expensive-looking wood, and there was a fireplace. In the corner, the Woes were warming up, getting ready to play “some music to stuff yer face to” (I am saying that, they did not ever utter the words, but I would have enjoyed them more if they had). Behind me, one of the floor manager-types got a ragin’ fire burning, reminding me that if I wasn’t sweating my ass off from all of the fried products I was about to devour, I was going to sweat my ass off from the fire that was burning about four feet behind me.
Roaring fire.
The Woes
After a few minutes of hanging out and taking in the scene, the night’s plan of attack on my arteries was placed before me. I knew that it was going to be a tough battle, but I was determined to get through it. As I hoped, I only had two choices to make: what was I going to drink and what kind of pie was I going to have for dessert. Fortunately, I was only forced to choose what I wanted to drink.
The rest of the evening was a blur from this point on. There was bacon slabs with lima beans, disorientating flashes from all of the amateur food bloggers like myself (but I, unlike those oafs, prefer to have blurry dark pictures instead of looking like a tool in a restaurant), buttery corn on the cob, buttery doughy biscuits, buttery fried chicken, buttery butter, buttery water, butter beer, buttery collard greens, and butter on my shirt.
And a small heirloom tomato salad and some cole slaw, neither of which was buttery.
Bacon and Lima Beans
Cornucopia of heart ailments
Then there was pie. I actually felt pretty good going into the pie round. My stomach had not yet reached full capacity, and since I am reading Mindless Eating, I had set aside some chicken in an extraordinary show of self restraint (by the way, BG and I had three pieces of fried chicken left over. I know that we had three because in my head I had already planned out a leftover dinner around these pieces of chicken in which I would make a small salad on the side. I secretly gave myself two pieces of the chicken in this dream while she only got one. Anyway, when we got back to BG’s apartment, there were only TWO pieces of chicken. WTF??? If you’re reading this, Andrew Carmellini, have that extra piece sent to my office.). But the pie really did me in. And, to be honest, I didn’t really love either of them– one was a blueberry crumble and the other was a peach pie. They were both just ok. I know that there was a lot of hype around them, but I wasn’t feeling it.
If you get a chance to go to the fried chicken dinner, do it. Tell them burgerboy sent you. Since that will probably work about as well as my reservation did, give them a ring (you can only make reservations starting the Tuesday prior, and you can only reserve one week in advance, ask for Eva).
Locanda Verde Corner of Greenwich and N. Moore Streets
Courtesy of wickedtastyharvest.com
Sustainable food sources took center stage at a chefs collaborative event over the weekend out in Chicago. Rick “i’m the mexican man” bayless rocked out the mic with hard-hitting talk about sustainability in the food industry. Ok, his talk wasn’t so hard-hitting (I mean, come on, you’ve seen the guy), but he had some great points about sustainable food sources and the progress that needs to be made in order to make this the way that Americans can eat.
As I’ve been saying, locally produced small-scale farming is the wave of the future– everyone has pointed to indepdendent business as the only way to get the economy jump-started again. What better industry that the one that can jump-start the workers, too?
Anyway, check out this article, and hit the greenmarket this week. BB can’t go this week, because of the UN General Assembly.
By the way, I did some serious eating this weekend, and as uberchef mentioned in his post, I’ve got more damage to do tonight. Next up, fried chicken!
And, no I don’t mean the professional bull riding association.
Word of mouth has again been cited as the reason for the success of a brand. This time, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer is the winner. I think that the reason for the 25% uptick in sales is primarily due to consumption in Brooklyn alone, but I can’t prove that with any data. I just feel it to be true.
I’ve been drinking PBR since college, when the Seoul Brother and I would buy cases of beer bottles of Busch and PBR for like 10 bucks. Not to say that I’m a trend-setter, but I like to think that we were pretty far ahead of the curve on that one. I mean, that was like 10 years ago. I’m just saying.
Anyway, PBR spends nothing in traditional advertising. Zero. AND they raised prices this year. So what gives?
Word of mouth gives. That sounded dirty. But it does work. And our natural response to social pressure helps, too (I believe it’s called “social proof”) since we all seek out societal “nods” when we do certain actions, like getting totally blitzed from cheap beer. What PBR managed to do through its marketer-established alternative-cool image is convince a small segment of people that it was cooland hip back in 2004, when they started a small word of mouth campaign among bike messengers (I kid you not, that was the target) and other young drinkers . They planted the seed and let the barley grow. Then, people who were supposedly going “against the grain” are actually very much going with the grain. And falling pray to PBR’s deft marketing strategy. This is the kind of move that Zima could have tried to pull. I mean, that stuff was tasty!
I’m not really one to comment about restaurant cleanliness and all of that. Maybe it’s the complete desensitization from watching too much Anthony Bourdain or my generally cavalier attitude about trusting eating establishments (“if you build it and people come and they don’t come back because they either die or get sick, they won’t keep coming”). And, for those of you who don’t know me, it is true that I will not eat off of my own stovetop, but I will eat food off of tables in restaurants. And, yes, I realize that those two facts diametrically oppose one another.
But sick restaurant workers is something that I do not stand for. I think I saw a waiter blow his nose one time while standing at the POS station and nearly flipped my shit; since I have a really calm and cool exterior, I did it on the inside and hopefully it will stay repressed and come out as a panic attack in about 15 years (while doing something REALLY stressful, like getting my car washed). However, a new New York City proposition might make this a fact of the past, according to an article I saw today on the NRN website.
It looks like the New York City Council is looking to make those tougher-than-thou restaurant biz give some sick days and not have employees worry about paying the bills. Of course, since this would obviously double the hourly pay costs when someone calls in sick, the restaurant lobbyists are against it in full force. According to Rick Sampson of the New York State Restaurant Association (NYRSA), this would place undue burden on the restaurant industry, and that it’s “totally ri-donkey-dick-ulous” (my words, not his).
I have a few issues with this. First of all, who the hell wants to be around sick people? Sometimes I don’t even want to be around healthy people. Secondly, who wants these sick people to be either a) cooking their food or b) serving their food or c) anywhere near their food. Come on Rick, give me a break– next time you walk out of your office, wait on the street corner until someone visibly ill walks by and hug him/her. Really get up in there nice and tight. Then lick his/her hand.
That sounds disgusting? Tell that to the line chef who has to come in to work with 104 fever and a nose running like a faucet just to keep his family fed. Then have him make you a tuna melt.
Rick is quoted, “I don’t know how in this economy an industry such as ours can afford something like this.” Again, come on, man, that’s just a dumb statement. Last time I checked I don’t know what Rick’s credentials are, maybe he is a brilliant businessman who just says stupid things. In this economy when people are hyper-sensitive of where they are spending their money and health care is at the center of mass debate (MASS DEBATE, MASS DEBATE! Get it?), I don’t think you can afford to NOT do this. I mean, think about it this way: I open a restaurant and tout the fact that I give my employees paidsick days. I make a HUGE deal of it. People start wondering, “why is this guy telling me his restaurant gives its employees sick days? That’s really weird.” Then they realize that maybe some other restaurants don’t give their employees sick days. All of a sudden, you are a slave driver and I am a saviour. My restaurants go gangbusters, yours are in the hole. Sure, maybe I have slightly higher fixed costs, but I’m a good guy. People like eating in my restaurants. My employees are happy and people feel good about eating there. Maybe I charge a couple extra bucks for it, too, and buy myself a nice Ferrari.
I mean, let’s think of the worst possible scenario. Line cook Joe comes into work, really not feeling well. He was tossing and turning all night, and then felt nauseous all morning. He goes to work anyway since he can’t afford to miss that day of pay. He gets the whole work staff sick, and a few customers get sick also. It’s not a pretty picture.
Adding some actual history, let’s go back to December, 2006. Dinosaur BBQ, Syracuse, New York. 1,000 people get sick from the norovirus after eating at Dinosaur BBQ; the source of the virus is unknown, maybe it was a staff member, maybe it was a customer. The restaurant closes for THREE days, and all of their food is thrown out AND they have to pay employees to sanitize the restaurant. How much money do you think was lost there, Rick? Step into 2009, homeboy– SWINE FLU is a-comin’, and cooking that bad boy low and slow doesn’t seem to make it any tastier. Stop being so short-sighted, thinking only about today’s profits and failing to think about the long-term.
But wait, there’s more! Rick’s not the only one against it– Robert Bookman has also gotten a sound bite out there. He is the legislative counsel for the NYSRA, so he’s a lawyer or something, and he must be smart (right?). He has said, “We don’t believe the city has the authority to pass such legislation… For one thing, the city has no enforcement mechanism. There is no city department of labor. Who is going to oversee this?”
Are you kidding me? The NYC restaurant business has over 30 percent of its work force comprised of illegal immigrants, and you’re playing the labor enforcement card? Is this some sort of fancy lawyer trick? Or are you going to say, “of COURSE they don’t get sick days, they don’t even get rights!”
Clever.
Anyway, I will go on record that I would pay one dollar more for my food if I knew that the guy preparing it wasn’t heaving in the bathroom prior to making my quesadilla. I’m sure 100 other people would, too. There’s Joe’s sick day right there. If you can’t muster up 100 diners, you’ve got bigger problems.
And I’m done.
By the way, went to Grand Sichuan on 24th street tonight for dinner– tremendous. Any semblance I had of a cold has been sichuan peppered out of my system.
