Talking with My Mouth Full (13 page)

7:25 p.m.

Home! And yes, I have managed to get some work done today—I have not spent all my time upsetting the company’s food cost, as it may appear. Glancing at my watch, I wonder if I’ll make it to my favorite class at the gym. The phone rings. A friend is in town from Toronto for the night and wants to go for dinner . . . that cute sushi place down the street from my apartment? Hmm, dinner. I almost forgot. My favorite meal of the day. . . .

Before striking out on his own, Daniel was the chef at the original Le Cirque, located at the time in the Mayfair Hotel. In 1993, Daniel left to open his own, eponymous restaurant on Seventy-sixth Street, in the Surrey Hotel. The Mayfair later became a condominium and Le Cirque moved to the Palace Hotel. When the Mayfair was renovated in 1998, Daniel relocated into what was originally that same Le Cirque space. So in a way, it was his homecoming. He bought a condo above the restaurant, turning the original Daniel space on Seventy-sixth Street into Café Boulud.

Daniel was one of the first restaurants reviewed by the
New York Times
critic William Grimes, who took over from legendary critic Ruth Reichl in 1999. Everyone expected Daniel to get four stars, but Grimes gave the restaurant only three. It was a terrible disappointment.

Leslie Brenner, a writer from the
LA Times
, spent a year following Daniel, chronicling his (successful) fight to reclaim that fourth star, which happened a year and a half later, when Grimes returned and re-reviewed the restaurant.

When I was working for Daniel Boulud, Anthony Bourdain’s
Kitchen Confidential
would occasionally come up in conversation. A lot of chefs were frustrated by it, because it became the public’s point of reference for life in a professional kitchen. They assumed every kitchen was the same: people fucking in the walk-in, doing lines of coke off the cooktop—cooking like douche bags, basically. They thought all chefs were these destructive, tattooed rebels. But let me assure you, that is not how a fine-dining restaurant like Daniel operates.

That’s not to say there aren’t chefs in any kitchens who are brutish or masculine or competitive, or that they don’t smoke and drink. But most restaurants don’t have the same aspirations as a restaurant like Daniel. Because of this, they don’t require the same skill, artistry, quality of ingredients, equipment, and highly trained team that a high-end restaurant does. That’s why it costs less than half the price to dine at them.

Everyone at Daniel was wholeheartedly dedicated. You would not last long on his team if you weren’t. There are at least twenty great chefs leading incredible restaurants around this country at any given moment who are who they are because of him, who came up through his kitchens and went on to become the brightest stars in their field. But I knew that wasn’t my calling—I took away something else entirely. From Daniel Boulud I learned about business.

The dining public, and even cooks themselves, often forget that restaurants are businesses. People visit restaurants with the notion they’re warm, lovely, romantic places. But they are, first and foremost, moneymaking operations. People get upset when they realize it’s about the bottom line, not just about the chef’s whim and fancy. Until I worked at Daniel, I never knew the first thing about a bottom line.

I’d come from magazines, and not the accounting department. I was in editorial, doing fact-checking, editing, writing, and research. Then I was in culinary school, first learning how to cook and then on the line. In kitchens, when they gave me carrots to chop, I didn’t ask where they came from, how much they cost, or how many plates they needed to sell to turn a profit. I just chopped the carrots.

Then I was working for Jeffrey, who had little budget to adhere to as the culinary czar of
Vogue.
It was the most amazing gig in New York City. We worked out of his apartment. He had someone else paying for every meal he ate, his groceries, and all his travel. He flew to Thailand, to Paris, to Memphis for BBQ. He expensed everything. He’d order six porterhouse steaks a day from Lobel’s on the Upper East Side. I never asked him how it all worked, how the cogs turned. I was living in an editorial fantasyland.

Daniel gave me a crash course in reality (albeit four-star reality). Sure, Daniel’s kitchen was full of foie gras and caviar. But I was also working with the operations directors and CFO, and they had budgets. I learned how a restaurant is run at the highest level. I learned the vital importance of the waiters, sommeliers, and the rest of the front-of-house staff who sold the product. And, under Georgette Farkas, I learned the tangible value of press and marketing.

In January 2003, the New York restaurant community went to war and—for better or worse—I was on the front lines. I was one of the first to learn Daniel would be adding fresh black truffles to his already famous $29 DB Burger and charging an unprecedented $50 for it.

This may not sound like a reason to get out the battle armor, but this was no ordinary burger. It was filled with short ribs braised in red wine, plus foie gras, black truffles, and root vegetables. Its homemade bun was topped with toasted Parmesan and layered with fresh horseradish mayonnaise, tomato confit, fresh tomato, and frisée.

The extra layer of black truffles sliced and placed on top of the patty not only doubled its cost, but also its cachet. He called it the DB Burger Royale.

Within hours of the Burger Royale having been added to the menu, the
New York Post
published an article about it. What followed was a literal feeding frenzy.

Press from across the country and around the world descended on DB Bistro to taste the $50 burger. Never before had someone charged such a high amount for something usually so ubiquitous: a hamburger. It became the ultimate epicurean status symbol.

Enhancing the excitement, Old Homestead, a downtown landmark steakhouse, added a $41 burger—made of Kobe beef—to its menu. The battle for the best and most expensive meat was on. Thus began the New York Burger War.

For weeks, all we could do to keep the press and public at bay was to make as many burgers as possible. We made that burger for every celebrity and every media outlet in town—no one could get enough of them. In fact, Georgette and I had to cook so many burgers ourselves to keep up with the numerous press requests—from David Letterman to the
Today
show—that we joked about calling our joint memoir
Flipping Burgers in Four-Inch Heels.

I’m often asked if I would ever want to have a restaurant of my own. The public, and many young chefs, romanticize what it takes to run a successful restaurant. They think you only need to be a great cook to be rich and famous—if you just make beautiful food, people will come. You will shake hands in the dining room and fulfill your purpose of making everyone happy.

But if those dining room seats aren’t filled, it’s not going to last. If no one knows about your restaurant, if no one knows where it is and no one eats there, you can make the best food in the world and never be successful.

Daniel taught me the importance of marketing for restaurants. He keeps things fresh and never rests on his laurels. He stays relevant and in the press. He’s out there
working it
every day.

Eric Ripert, arguably another of the greatest chefs in the world, will swear by the power of marketing, too.

At the beginning of 2009, the financial world was imploding. Far fewer people were eating at restaurants like Daniel or Le Bernardin. And if they were, they were certainly not ordering the Dom Perignon and beluga caviar. Luxurious expense account meals were the first to go. Le Bernardin is an expensive restaurant to run. All the perishable food that gets delivered fresh each day! The wine cellar! The immense staff! The linen and florist bills! It’s stressful, if the place is not full every night.

And then Eric’s Season 5 guest judge episode of
Top Chef
aired. The next day, the phones lit up at Le Bernardin. It was packed again, and Eric was breathing a sigh of relief. Since then, he tells me, people stop him on the street all the time and say, not “Wow, you’re one of the best chefs in the world!” but instead: “Hey! You’re the guy from
Top Chef
!”

There’s an irony there, of course. After all he’s done for the food world, the thing that got him recognized on the street was a TV gig. But that’s the reality of marketing. And who cares? If that’s what it takes to get people eating out and eating well, I’m all for it.

I’m one of very few people I know who have moved from editorial to marketing. What I found fascinating in the transition from Jeffrey to Daniel was that I was no longer alone in an apartment or staring at a computer all day on my own. I was in a social universe. I loved working with people. I looked back and realized that while I was writing or doing research I was alone most of the time, with my thoughts and the occasional piece of chocolate or rooster thigh.

Daniel was a nurturing place for me. I got to know the line cooks but also the executive chefs. I was in on the book projects, the recipes, the new restaurant ideas, the ever-changing cocktail menu, private parties, and special events. I said hi to twenty-five people on the way to my desk every morning.

I was enamored of the nitty-gritty of running a restaurant and the people I met working there, especially the general manager, Michael Lawrence, who is now one of Daniel’s directors of operations. He’s from Monroe, Louisiana, and smart as can be, but he never loses his sense of humor. He would run around like a chicken with his head cut off most of the day spouting Southern sayings to get us all through the stress.

“Hey, Michael, have you seen Daniel?” I would ask.

“He’s gone to Jersey to get a load of goats,” Michael would jokingly respond without missing a beat.

“Michael, what’s New Orleans like in July?” I once asked him. “Is that a good time to visit?”

“Girl,” he said, “it’s too damn hot. Louisiana in July is like a freshly fornicated fox in a forest fire.”

Going into my third year at Daniel, I started to realize there wasn’t a lot of room left for me to grow. I’d been through all our events and all four seasons twice. Certainly, there were still a lot of exciting things going on. We’d just opened a restaurant in Palm Beach and were starting to look at a space on the West Side that would later become Bar Boulud. Daniel was signing a contract for his first restaurant in Las Vegas, with Steve Wynn.

But there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for me to move up. Georgette was my boss, but the only person above her was Daniel. There were probably four hundred people working for him across all his restaurants, but I wasn’t going to move to Las Vegas to manage the restaurant or become a captain in the dining room. I wanted to keep learning. I wasn’t actively pursuing other jobs. I didn’t even know exactly what I wanted to do next. But I knew that sooner rather than later I would need to start thinking about the next step.

TEN

A Walk Through the
Food & Wine
Classic Tasting Tents

WELCOME TO THE
Food & Wine
Classic in Aspen. Enter the Grand Tasting Pavilion from the north at Wagner Park. To the south lies Aspen Mountain, looming behind the massive white tents. Green and ominous, with snowcapped peaks, against the cobalt sky. The air is thinner up here, and dry. Pace yourself. As you wander from table to table, there is a head-spinning abundance to sample: cheese from Denmark, Oregon, Greece, Tennessee, Ireland, Wisconsin, Alabama, France, Spain, Italy; beer the color of wheat, the color of sunshine, the color of earth; a whole roast pig that’s been carried through the pavilion courtyard on a tray; Alaskan crab claws; American spit-roasted lamb; brisket sandwiches, prosciutto, bresiola, Iberico ham; spicy barbecued ribs; paella with shrimp and mussels; ceviche; olive oil that’s grassy, spicy, fruity; bread with raisins, whole grains, olives; caviar both American and imported; tangy macaroni and cheese; paper-thin slices of smoked salmon; sushi of eel, crab, yellowtail tuna; potatoes, popcorn; white, milk, and dark chocolate; chocolate-covered cherries; chocolate with ginger, chocolate with orange; chocolate chip cookies; foie gras on toast points; strong coffee, delicate tea; grapes, strawberries; fish and seafood from Hawaii and Nova Scotia; meat from San Francisco ranches and Chicago stockyards; cheesecake;
bibimbap
; South African bunny chow (not real bunnies); jams, chutneys, spreads, relishes, sauces. Plastic tumblers filled with cocktails of vodka, absinthe, moonshine, brandy, bourbon, limoncello, cachaça, grappa, mescal, vermouth, gin, rum, scotch, tequila, agave; elderflower, grapefruit, and pear liqueurs. Flutes filled with Champagne from France, Cava from Spain, Prosecco from Italy, California sparkling wine. Glasses of port, sake, sherry. Dozens of bottles of Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet, Granache, Syrah, Sangiovese, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Albariño, Gamay, Nebbiolo, Malbec, Grüner Veltliner, Tempranillo, Gewürztraminer, Falanghina, Viognier, Verdicchio. If you outdo yourself on the first day, you never quite recover. But first-time visitors never listen and are overwhelmed by smells and small bites. If you’re not careful, the combination of too much food, too much wine, and high altitude wear you out before the sun goes down. And when the sun goes down, that’s when the real party begins, with more delicious food and always more wine.

In the early spring of 2004, Daniel threw a party to introduce his new chef de cuisine. His right hand and longtime chef de cuisine, the incredible, incomparable Alex Lee, had decided it was time to leave. He had four kids. He needed time with them and his wife, not to mention time with himself. Daniel decided to promote a young man named Jean François Bruel. We invited a hundred members of the press for lunch. We opened up the kitchen and let everyone meet the team and explore “backstage.”

Among the invitees was a stylish guy named Kevin, who worked in marketing at
Food & Wine
. We had become friendly through my work at Daniel. I knew his title was special projects editor, but I didn’t know what that meant. I knew he’d been to culinary school. We often chatted about food and restaurants when we saw each other at events around town. Once in a while I’d catch him on television lending his expertise on food and restaurants for a morning segment.

In the entrance of Daniel that day, Kevin turned to me and said: “I have two questions for you. First of all: Who is the gorgeous woman behind the reservation desk? I was out for dinner last night and she happened to be seated at the bar alone next to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t get her name. And here she is. It’s fate. And second: I’m leaving
Food & Wine
. I want to start my own business. Do you want my job?”

The first question was easily answered. The woman was my friend Maite, our head reservationist. She had come to Daniel from San Sebastián. Her godfather is famed Spanish chef Juan Mari Arzak. Chef Arzak had called Daniel when she moved to New York and asked him to help her with a job. She was smart and beautiful. In no time, she had won the heart of everyone at the restaurant. It helped that she had an insanely sexy Spanish accent. She would go on to become the first female head maitre d’ at Daniel, possibly at any four-star restaurant in New York. I happily introduced them.

The second question was slightly trickier. I wasn’t entirely ready to leave Daniel, but I’d always wanted to work for a food magazine and perhaps get back to my original goal of writing. Here was my chance!

“Ummm, yes,” I told Kevin impulsively, “I want your job.”

We joke that he gave me my job and I gave him his wife. Kevin and Maite are now married and have a beautiful son, and I have the best job in the world. I’m still not sure who got the better deal.

Going to work at
Food & Wine
made a lot of sense, and in a way it was still all in the family. Daniel and
Food & Wine
have had a long and happy relationship.

Daniel was in the first class of
Food & Wine
’s Best New Chefs, back in 1988. The award is given each year to ten chefs who have been running their own kitchen for less than five years and who
Food & Wine
believes will be the next great talents in the industry. That first year, along with Daniel, the award was given to a group of young culinary pioneers, including Thomas Keller, Rick Bayless, and Hubert Keller.
Food & Wine
’s goal has always been to get there first—to discover the trends, the people, and the places changing the way we all eat and drink every day. The magazine has a pretty staggering track record of finding these best new chefs very early in their careers.

It’s fascinating to look back at the award winners from those first few years. At the time, they were relative unknowns, Nobu Matsuhisa, Tom Colicchio, Jean Joho, Gary Danko, Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton, Michael Romano, Michael Symon, and Todd English among them. They were all newbies, with their first restaurants, cooking exciting food. They were, and still are, the people who exemplify the industry at its most passionate, driven, and innovative.

It’s safe to say
Food & Wine
, created by Ariane and Michael Batterberry, has been daring and influential ever since its first issue in 1978, when it appeared as an insert to
Playboy.
Its revolutionary goal was to speak equally to both men and women about food and wine. In 1980, it was sold to American Express. The magazine has always given equal time to delicious recipes for home cooks (no matter what their skill level) and to restaurants and chefs, wine and spirits. Travel was always a big part of it, too, but in a very accessible way, covering wine- and food-focused destinations from Maine to Shanghai.

For thirty years,
Food & Wine
’s biggest competitors were
Bon Appétit
and
Gourmet
.
Bon Appétit
was always a little more geared toward home cooks around the country, and a little more simplified.
Gourmet
, which sadly folded in 2009 after sixty years of publication, was much more about elaborate recipes, food essays, and aspirational destinations. Sure, there are plenty of other food magazines in existence.
Cooking Light
, for example, has a massive readership, but its whole focus is healthy recipes.
Saveur
takes a more academic approach, specializing in in-depth exploration of global cuisine.

Food & Wine
has always been about inspiration rather than aspiration. The magazine tries to bring people of all cooking levels into the conversation. The ampersand has always been important to the brand.
Food & Wine
is all about the
and
: and travel, and design, and style. Great quality food
and
wine are at the core of its readers’ active lifestyles.

While working for Daniel, I had come to know and admire many people at the magazine. When Daniel did articles with them, I would help coordinate the details. I also helped arrange his appearances at several
Food & Wine
events, including the
Food & Wine
Classic in Aspen.

When I was still assisting Jeffrey, I’d even interviewed once at
Food & Wine
. My close friend Mindy introduced me to a woman at the magazine named Lily Barberio, who was an assistant editor. Lily and I went out for drinks a couple of times.

Lily, in turn, graciously introduced me to Tina Ujlaki, the executive food editor, who has been there for more than twenty-five years. Tina is the earth mother, soul, and all-around food guru of the magazine. She oversees every recipe and every piece of food that goes into it. I had a lovely meeting with her, but at the time magazines were still reeling after 9/11. As with so many other media outlets, there were no jobs available.

Tina kept in touch, and so did Lily, as she moved up the ranks to become a senior food editor. Tragically, Lily passed away a few years ago, of cancer. Thinking back to it now, it’s unfathomable. She was so young. It happened so fast. I think of her often, and I will always be in her debt for first introducing me to the magazine.

When I told Kevin I was indeed interested in his job, he explained that the first step in the process was a meeting with
Food & Wine
’s VP of marketing, Christina Grdovic. I went in to talk with her and right away there was chemistry. Chris was my kind of woman—strong, smart, and intimidating. She talked a mile a minute.

She sold me on the magazine, which was not difficult to do, as I had been poring over its recipes and articles for years. But I still had no idea what the actual job was. I understood that it was in marketing. They needed someone with a culinary background who had a solid comprehension of the chef world and good connections. They produced a lot of large-scale events and needed more chef involvement on a number of projects. They also needed someone who could speak the language of their events department. We talked about Aspen because she knew that I’d helped Daniel there.

“Everyone gets their hands dirty here,” Chris said. “You will be working hard, late, and long. You will be stuffing some gift bags, too. We all do. No one is too big or too small.”

Chris built her marketing team around that chemistry. She has a knack for hiring and molding a group that works well together—and plays together even better.

“Everyone I hire has to be able to live in close quarters with everyone else on the team,” she said. “Everyone has to be
in it.
”

It sounded good to me.

She explained that part of my job would be courting chefs, and why not start with my current boss?

“Can you ask Daniel to be in the cook-off at the Classic in Aspen?” she asked. They’d been trying to get Daniel to participate in it for years.

“I’m sorry, but no,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t make her question my ability to wrangle top talent. “He’s a four-star French chef. His food is precise and exacting. So is his cooking style. He doesn’t want to compromise himself in that setting. But I’m sure there are other ways in which he would love to participate.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “We’ll stop asking.”

She didn’t seem too disappointed. At least I’d saved her a few phone calls pursuing him to no end. Maybe I could be useful when it came to this kind of planning: I was coming from the chef side. I knew who could—and would—do what.

They gave me a writing assignment. It was based on creating marketing programs that linked the message and capabilities of the magazine with some of their key brand partners and advertisers.

I had to create a proposal for what we could do with a car sponsor, for
x
number of pages of advertising, given their target audience and our assets. I’d only ever worked on the editorial side of media. I knew marketing for chefs, but I had no idea how integrated marketing—or magazine merchandising, as it was called back then—worked. I promptly panicked.

I called my friend Mindy, who had worked at
Saveur
.

“Call my dad,” she suggested calmly.

Her father had been the head of marketing at a prominent Madison Avenue advertising agency for many years. He knew all about ad pages and media buying. I spoke to him for more than three hours. He gave me a crash course in publishing.

I learned that the $30,000 to $100,000 a page an advertiser pays a national monthly magazine is what basically underwrites the operation. If you don’t have the advertising, you don’t have a magazine. The number of pages of advertising determines how many pages of editorial you can create. It’s no secret, but for me it was a revelation: courting advertisers was the same as filling seats at Daniel every night.

I scrambled to finish the proposal and went in for a second interview, then a third. I met with a woman named Sonia Zala. At the time, she was a marketing manager. Young and fierce, she was the team’s secret weapon.

Finally, Kevin called with the offer I’d been waiting for.

“I’ll take it!” I said. Then I delivered the news: “But . . . I need a visa. I’m Canadian.” It would require some work on their part, but I said I would pay for the immigration lawyer or do whatever I needed to, if they were willing to take the chance on me.

“Stay put,” Kevin said. “I’ll call you back.”

He took this information to Chris, who ran it up the chain of command.
Food & Wine
’s parent company, American Express, was not very interested in taking on my immigration issues.

But Chris fought for me. She didn’t need to do it. She barely knew me, but I guess she had an instinct that it would work out well.

The visa process took six months. I was in limbo. I kept working at Daniel through it all, from April to September, wondering if
Food & Wine
would ever come through. I couldn’t tell Daniel. I couldn’t get my hopes up. I couldn’t leave, because I would lose my visa and be out of work for who knows how long if the magazine job didn’t pan out. I refused to go back to my parents’ basement.

Then in August of 2004, Chris called. “We got your visa. It’s done. You start October first.”

After all the anticipation, on my first day at the magazine I still wasn’t totally sure what my position would entail. I knew I’d be working with chefs. I knew I’d be writing proposals for advertisers. I had to learn how to sell brands on partnering with
Food & Wine.
I kept staring at the job description, trying to make sense of it:

The role of Merchandising Manager includes several key responsibilities that contribute and support the success of Advertising Sales. These responsibilities include high-concept program initiation and implementation of integrated marketing endeavors for advertisers as added value for media purchases. A marquis trait required in this role is an intimate working knowledge of the culinary industry, since most
Food & Wine
programs are directly related to talent sourcing (chefs, wine experts, restaurants, and epicurean destinations), being familiar with culinary trends, and experience in face-to-face hospitality management. Additional responsibilities include personnel, account, online, and onsite project management.

My direct boss, Frances, the merchandising director, had also just started. In that first week, she gave me examples of the style in which
Food & Wine
wrote proposals and assigned me one. I stayed late at the office every night trying to wrap my head around the assignment. But there I was alone at 8:30 p.m., staring blankly at my computer. I remember literally banging my head against the desk, wondering when I would adjust.