Category Archives: Uncategorized

There is a national crisis afoot and it has nothing to do with taxes, trade, or immigration. Breakfast cereals are going the way of the dinosaur. I was a kid during the breakfast cereal heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a glorious time to be alive. We might have only had three channelsContinue reading “Get Off of My Lawn and Start Eating Cereal Again”

A strange phenomenon occurred after I opened our first fine-dining restaurant in 1987. It’s still happening. Most people assume the chef/owner of an upscale establishment must eat upscale food all of the time. They picture a life filled with micro greens, waygu beef, caviar, and foie gras. Nothing could be further from the truth. MostContinue reading “Fries”

A few years ago, I read a restaurant survey that ranked customer’s priorities when dining out. The study listed food, service, atmosphere, and location. The results were a little surprising to me in some areas. Restaurant patrons in that survey listed “service” as their number one priority. Atmosphere came in second, food third, and locationContinue reading “It’s All About the Food”

A couple of decades ago I wrote a column that posed the question, “If you could have dinner with six people throughout all of history, who would you invite?” The column received a lot of response from readers as they sent in their list of six dinner guests. My original list consisted of Paul McCartney,Continue reading “Six Dinner Guests”

Over the past 30 years our company has been busy. We’ve opened fine dining restaurants, New Orleans-themed restaurants, an Italian restaurant, a live-music club, a daiquiri bar, a 20,000-square foot country and western nightclub, a burger joint, a couple of neighborhood bars, four steakhouses, a catfish house, an officer’s club on a national guard base,Continue reading “Mary Virginia”

Community cafes and diners are a dying breed. Years ago, people gathered for breakfast in small cafes in downtown areas. They talked politics, sports, and religion over cups of strong coffee, eggs, and grits. At lunch they often returned to the same café and ate fried chicken, country fried steak, meatloaf and chicken and dumplingsContinue reading “Community Cafes”

If someone is keeping track of honeymoons, mark me down for 23. That might be a lot of honeymoons, though only two are in the typical, “married” sense of the word. The other 21 are associated with restaurant openings. To get the archetypal two honeymoons out of the way, I first married too young toContinue reading “Honeymoons”

An explorer organizes an expedition by studying maps and charts. A petroleum engineer prepares for a drill by scrutinizing geological surveys of the earth’s strata and seismic graphs. A ballet dancer prepares for a performance with years of training and practice. A competitive sailor reads oceanographic surveys, depth charts, and weather history, and a warContinue reading “R&D”

Some people know at an early age what they want to do with their professional life and career. The first job I can remember being interested in was around the time I was six-years old. The year was 1967, and I wanted to be an advertising executive. An advertising executive might be a strange careerContinue reading “Careers and Crushes”