Menu Talk Winsight Podcast Network

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed national food holidays. In a nutshell, they’re not huge fans of promotions like National Chicken Wing Day or National Tequila Day, but they do acknowledge that promotions around them can be effective marketing tools and traffic drivers, which are particularly important these days as costs rise and guest counts decline.

Pat discussed her recent visit to La Palapa, a Mexican restaurant that has been in New York City’s East Village at least for a couple of decades. She gave top marks to the margaritas, guac and churros, enjoyed everything else, and was pleased to see that the restaurant was busy.

Bret is continuing to explore his new neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, including Wheeler’s, a bar and restaurant that, like La Palapa, has been around for decades and serves large portions of perfectly fine food.

They also discussed New York Restaurant Week, which is actually a month long this year, and shared strategies for the best ways to capitalize on it (in short, don’t cheap out; put your best foot forward).

Then Bret shared clips from his conversation with Trevin Hutchins, beverage director of Aphotic, a seafood restaurant in San Francisco, where he offers a very ambitious beverage program, including house-distilled gin that has seaweed as its main botanical.

Hutchins also offers a non-alcoholic beverage pairing for the restaurant’s tasting menus for which everything is made in-house, and he went into detail about the process for putting that together.

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor at Restaurant Business, shared her take on Blank Street’s summer matcha drinks and the escalating price of lobster rolls, while Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, recounted his visit to Philadelphia to dine at Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant and Zahav, chef Michael Solomonov’s Israeli restaurant.

The guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Dan Kluger, chef-partner of Greywind in New York. Chef Kluger got his start working with Danny Meyer at Union Square Café, then moved on to Tabla, where he was mentored by the late chef, Floyd Cardoz. He talks about how his experience at Tabla really molded his palate and management style.

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, recounted her visit to Fieldtrip, J.J. Johnson’s Afro-Caribbean rice bowl concept with items like jerk meatballs and coconut yogurt, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed his visit with an old friend to an Indian restaurant attached to a Hindu temple in the New York City neighborhood of Flushing in Queens, which led to a discussion of rice-making techniques. Pat uses a fool-proof rice cooker and Bret uses a traditional pot, but he finishes it in the oven to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom.

Pat also visited Chick-fil-A’s first all-digital location, which is designed for streamlined, order-ahead takeout and has a separate section for delivery drivers. Bret also expressed his joy at the return of potato cakes to Arby’s locations nationwide, as it’s one of his favorite quick-service sides, and that segued into an observation of both co-hosts about the increased availability of merch, especially clothing, sold by restaurants, which can be both a revenue stream and a marketing vehicle.

The guest on this week’s podcast was Tin Do, the CEO and founder of Krak Boba in Southern California. The beverage concept is actually named for the legendary Polish King Krakus, who saved his village from a dragon.

Tin Do explained that Krak Boba’s three philosophical pillars are courage, service and joy, and he discussed how he empowers his own team members to live their best lives while also encouraging guests to express their own “personaliTea.” Listen as he describes how he differentiates Krak Boba as the boba tea sector continues to trend.

Despite what are usually characterized as the “lazy days of summer,” there’s been a lot of menu action this week.

Pat and Bret both attended an outdoor pig roast at Back Bar in the Eventi Hotel in New York City. The patio party was hosted by Chef Laurent Tourondel and his team, who operate the dining venues at the hotel. They started cooking the pigs at noon, inside a charcoal-fired China box or “caja chino,” which is a Cuban style of cooking pork.

The pigs were roasted to perfection by 6 p.m. with burnished, crackly skin and tender meat. The cooks sliced the pork and sandwiched it in bao buns with a creamy, garlicky green sauce. Also on offer was chicken shawarma and elote, where the ears of corn were cooked over live fire and topped with cotija cheese and spices.

Bret was a guest at Heritage Grand Bakery, a grab-and-go eatery that’s connected to a full-service restaurant with wood-burning pizza ovens. The owner, Lou Ramirez, is into ancient grains and uses a product called “population wheat” for baking. It’s a type of wheat that results from tossing 17 different grains into a field, and whatever sprouts up is harvested and milled.

Chef Ramirez uses population wheat in pizza crust and in a whole-grain pasta that’s served with a mushroom sauce. Both check the boxes for sustainability, healthfulness and abundant flavor.

Our guest this week was Mindy Armstrong, VP of menu innovation at Perkins and Huddle House. Perkins is on a revitalization journey, recently changing its name from Perkins Restaurant & Bakery to Perkins American Food Co.

But Armstrong points out that the bakery will remain a differentiator, setting the chain apart in the family-dining segment. Pies are still menu mainstays, as are breakfast and comfort foods, but the plan is to offer more portable items, lean into sandwiches and burgers and innovate the beverage lineup.

At Huddle House, the R&D strategy focuses on the core menu instead of creating limited-time specials. And with both chains, it’s risky to get too wild with flavor.

Family-dining chains seem to be on a reinvention streak lately, with Cracker Barrel, Friendly’s, Denny’s and now Perkins and even Huddle House all refreshing their menus and images. It will be interesting to watch this segment in the months ahead.

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, reported from Atlanta, where Menu Directions, a conference hosted by sister publication FoodService Director, had just wrapped up. Meanwhile, Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, reported on happenings in New York City.

Foodservice Director covers on-site dining, so attendees were mostly chefs from healthcare, schools, corporate dining, etc., rather than restaurants per se. Pat reported that they’re a nice group eager to share ideas. This year that included strategies for using artificial intelligence in menu development, as well as approaches for reducing waste—such as using leftover coffee grounds as part of a spice rub for roasted beets and meats.

Bret, meanwhile, attended a party thrown by the Mushroom Council where he enjoyed cocktails as well as lettuce wraps and tostadas made with different varieties of the fungus, and learned that the trade association is trying to make Mushroom Mondays a thing. Mushroom products also were on display at Menu Directions, blended into beef meatballs by Mush Foods, Pat said.

Bret also attended the launch of Pizza Hut’s new Chicago Tavern-Style Pizza, a thin-crust pie that’s actually more popular in the Windy City than the better-known deep dish pizza.

And he interviewed James Wozniuk, the chef of Makan, a Malaysian restaurant that started in Washington, D.C., and just opened a second unit in Charleston, S.C. The chef discussed why he loved Malaysian food, how he discovered it as a non-Malaysian, and how he went about developing the menu for Makan, which means “to eat” in Malay.

This week on Menu Talk, hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor at Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, start off with a beer tasting.

Bret discovered a low-alcohol brew called kvass in his new Brooklyn neighborhood, which is populated by Russian, Ukrainian and Eastern European residents. As Pat visited Sysco headquarters in Houston to get an inside look at how innovative products get into the distributor’s supply chain.

Steak seems to be an ongoing topic of discussion here on Menu Talk. This week, we chat about Michael Mina’s newest branch of Bourbon Steak, which opened in New York City recently. Along with Entrecote and Skirt Steak, two restaurants that offer a prix fixe steak dinner.

Skirt Steak is one of Laurent Tourondel’s restaurants, and reservations are hard to come by. One reason: for $45 per person, diners get grilled steak, fries, salad and bread. That’s a pretty good deal at a chef-driven restaurant in Manhattan.

Tourondel started as a chef in France, but has since operated restaurants in several U.S. locales, including New York, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and South Florida.

Listen as the accomplished chef-restaurateur shares his journey and talks about what’s next. A bakery is in the works. But another French restaurant? Not so fast.