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A Friend, A Restaurant, A Great City

In a past life, I was a travel writer. It was a great six-year moment in a great 61-year life. I visited  fabulous hotels and resorts, wonderful restaurants and tanned on some of the world's greatest beaches. Today, I have my memories, stored away in four books and lots of newspaper and magazine articles I was blessed to share with my readers.

I flash back to that time today because my friend Gianandrea co-owns a restaurant in Italy. Although no one needs motivation or inspiration to visit Rome, the Dune Restaurant offers both and provides one more reason to feast on the city's treasures.

Located In Piazza S.S. Apostoli, in the heart of Rome, close to Piazza Venezia and the Trevi Fountain, Dune offers a variety of cuisines, from Italian traditional to International, from the typical Roman dish, calles Caio e Pepe, to the more exotic Tandoori Chicken. The Dune fare serves only fresh food prepared especially for you. Tender meats from Italy or imported from Denmark are the house specialty.

On your next visit to Rome, make a reservation and tell them Lew, Gianandrea's American friend, sent you. And be sure to introduce yourself to Gianandrea. He was one of the first people to comment on this blog, and I have grown to love him as a person and to trust him as a friend.

For more information, contact:

Piazza S.S. Apostoli 52/52a,
00197 Rome, +39 -6 69925442, or click here for E-mail and the Web Site

The Pug is No Dog

I just returned from lunch with a friend and a referrer. It is good to spend time with friends, and it can be good for business as well when the friend is a business attorney who knows lots of business executives who might need my services. (We would be friends whether or not it was good for business, and, no, I would not recommend friendship for business sake.)

  We are at a fabulous bar and grill called The Pug. John shared that he and his family were friends with the former owner who never made a go of the business. This is a place where getting a table for lunch any day or for dinner many days isn't easy. Why couldn't the former owner make a reasonable profit?

The restaurant industry works on incredibly thin margins. There is the food inventory waiting to be sold, the beverage inventory awaiting purchase, enough square footage for the number of seats required to make a profit, the furniture, the bar, the staff and high turnover rates, not to mention licensing, the accouterments necessary to lure traffic, and skilled cooks, servers and managers. Finally, the three most important ingredients: location, location, location. It's a tough business in which to succeed.

How do the best food and beverage emporiums make it work? (For the purposes of this discussion, let's eliminate franchises and gourmet restaurants.) Often they rely on bar sales, where margins are excellent. (Ever notice the beer pulled or the bottle of wine served costs several times more than you would pay retail?) But for this to work, the bartenders need to be well-trained, honest, smart, conversational, social and good looking. And although we may want to deny the last trait, it is as important as any other. If you want customers hanging out and drinking, hot bartenders and wait staff will do as much to achieve success as nearly anything else. And this is where I want to focus.

Like most, I am opposed to hiring based on looks but realistically certain jobs are better staffed by good looking people. Wait staffs and bartending are but two of those careers. Why? Because often we choose where we eat and drink based on the environment, and people are a huge part of that equation. Being good looking alone does not equal long-term success. But in the entertainment (lounges, clubs, casinos, etc.) and the food and beverage industry, looks matter. And for long-term success, the brains, personality, emotional resonance, likability, skill and service should be connected to pretty faces and buff bodies.

Be honest. What was your first reaction to the sentence that reads, "hot bartenders and wait staff will do as much to achieve success as nearly anything else." Did it unnerve you at first? What about by the time you read to here? Does it now make sense? If you are troubled, why? What about the business angle related to hiring for looks? I want to know your thoughts.

Many of us were raised by feminist mothers, married feminist wives or husbands (yes, men can be feminists and many are). We believe in the struggle for civil and human rights, especially at the workplace. Is there room for exception?

P.S. For a completely different take on hiring, check out Seth's Maybe not so dumb. 

McDonald's vs Starbucks: No Contest When It Comes to Great Coffee

I love living in greater Hartford, I really do. Yes, it's sleepy, and the arts make a two-hour drive to Boston or NYC worth it. But, having lived in or just outside large cities for the better part of the past four decades, my little slice of suburbia is a nice change of pace.

But today an article in the Hartford Courant reminds me that I live in a backwater village when it comes to taste. In this instance, the taste of coffee. And apparently so does at least one "professional coffee taster" reporting for Consumer Reports.

Entitled McDonald's Boasts Best Morning Roast, we are told that the March issue of Consumer Reports picked McDonald's coffee as the best in taste and price, when compared to Starbucks, Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts. May I respectfully recommend that the Editors find Ms. one unnamed woman, who claims to be a professional taster, opportunities elsewhere.

Her reason for choosing McDonald's: "Although it lacked the subtle top notes needed to make it rise and shine, it had no flaws." Neither does bottled water, but I'm not rushing out to the nearby 7/11 to buy any for its taste or price.

The Courant asked the right question: "Doesn't that leave an awful lot of influence to just one person? Not if you use rigid criteria to minimize personal taste and whim, said Heather Joy Thompson, a spokeswoman for Consumer Reports, based in Yonkers, N.Y."

Excuse me Ms. Thompson--WRONG!

In professional tasting rooms around the world, coffees are never judged by a single palate. Often a half-dozen professional tasters are comparing coffees, taking notes and than analyzing the results. In the case of Consumer Reports, only one taster was used, and there was no side-by-side comparison. Instead she drank two cups of black coffee from each brand and then made her pronouncement.

To us coffee drinkers who pride ourselves on our ability to taste rich brews and discover the subtleties within, her judgment is an insult as is her process for judging. Coffee snobs unite! This is a call to arms. Tell Consumer Reports to get a clue. Forget global warming, Iraq and the Gaza Strip: This is serious stuff.