Category Archives: Uncategorized

It’s graduation season. I didn’t speak at a high school commencement ceremony this graduation season, but had I stepped up to the podium this year I would have told the graduates what I have told graduates before. I written about it before. It’s what I wish I would have heard at my commencement. Students, youContinue reading “The Next Step”

On the list of “Things I Love to Do Most,” having a steak dinner with my 15-year old son would be a shoo-in for the top 10. It would vie for placement alongside “having breakfast with my 15-year old son.” Several years ago, I was worried that my son and daughter were growing up tooContinue reading “Dinner with the Boy”

BARBERINO, TUSCANY— Traveling and leading a group of more than 22 people can be challenging. It can also be a blast. I have come to learn that I was pre-wired for this type of work. In 2011, watercolorist, Wyatt Waters and I, spent 10 weeks traversing Italy while working on our third collaborative book project,Continue reading “Stars and Bars and Parasol Pines”

TAVERNELLE VAL D’PESA, TUSCANY— My ongoing love affair with breakfast bakeries and pastry shops continues even when I am out of the country. Actually, it increases when I am out of the country. I spent a month in France several years ago hitting a different patisserie every morning. I never got bored. I believe peopleContinue reading “Italian Breakfast”

BARBERINO VAL D’ELSA, TUSCANY— I dreamed of travelling as a kid. My parents purchased a set of World Book encyclopedias when I was about four-years old, and— for more than a decade— that was my conduit to other parts of the globe. I dreamed of far-off exotic lands and what they must be like, theContinue reading “Travel Benefits”

BARBERINO VAL D’ELSA, TUSCANY— The older I get the more I search for authenticity. Often, I find myself attracted to things, places, and experiences that are “real.” So often when people travel overseas they, by no fault of their own, wind up in the EPCOT version of a European town or restaurant. I always striveContinue reading “An Easter to Remember”

Someone once told me to make myself “available for opportunities” and they will “surely come.” It sounded like a bunch of new-age gobbledy speak when I first heard it, but damned if it’s not true. That has been the story of my life. In 1981, I flunked out of college and headed back home withContinue reading “This Travel Gig”

The restaurant business is a cruel mistress. She has swallowed and spit out more entrepreneurial dreamers than anyone cares to count. Professional foodservice can be a merciless line of work. I have survived over 38 years— 30 as an owner— due to a large amount of luck, good timing, willingness to work hard and doContinue reading “RSJ’s Lessons Learned in the Restaurant Biz”

NEW ORLEANS— The New Orleans restaurant population has almost doubled in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. The exact number, according to USA Today is approximately 1,400 current restaurants vs 800 pre-Katrina restaurants. That is a staggering statistic. In the immediate months after the hurricane made landfall on the Mississippi Coast, and the levies broke inContinue reading “Frank”