Hot-button issues top menu at Aspen Food & Wine Classic

Nation's Restaurant News, June 28, 1999 by Milford Prewitt

ASPEN, COLO. - Even three perfect days of alpine spring, reflected in the radiant purple, white and green peaks of the Rocky Mountains, couldn't often concerns voiced here by prominent restaurateurs that American fine dining is at a crossroads.

Dominating formal and informal discussions among upscale operators at the 17th annual Aspen Food & Wine Classic was a broad menu of challenging topics. Keeping good workers from defecting to higher-paying jobs in other fields, securing high-quality food vendors, handling depleted seafood stocks, opening new restaurants in large and expensive urban cities and making inroads to new consumer groups, especially a rising tide of affluent minorities.

The fine-dining restaurant experts even debated questions about whether to open their establishments for celebrations on the vaunted Millennium Eve.

"I think before we look ahead, we ought to look back," said chef-restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, the celebrated pioneer of California cuisine and chairman of Wolfgang Puck Food Co. "When I came to this country 25 years ago, our profession was not really a profession.

"Today that is changing. But we need to teach chefs that there is more to this business than money or trying to be a celebrity. We need chefs to become businessmen, and we need entrepreneurs to relate to the kitchen. It's a sad fact about this industry, but if you want to be a good businessman and a good chef who uses the best ingredients, it really does not mix well because the best ingredients are also the most expensive.

Puck's solution to the dilemma: Chefs should be taught to appreciate the front-of-the-house, while entrepreneurs and businessmen ought to appreciate the kitchen and the craftsmanship of cooking.

As if saluting the attending hospitality experts for their en-route endurance of severe storms and 11-hour airport delays, the weather gods rewarded the nearly 5,000 chefs, restaurant owners, wine distributors and food lovers at the Food & Wine Classic with golden days and clear, starry nights.

Recognized as a leading conference in American fine dining, the Aspen event gave many of the nation's most admired hospitality operators a chance to share business and cooking ideas while enjoying outdoor recreational activities in the lush forests and foaming rivers of this picturesque Rockies-region resort town.

Puck was one of four prominent panelists on a rousing opening-day seminar whose candor and humor seemed to set the tone for the Aspen Classic. Hosted by Caroline O'Neil, CNN's food journalist and the first woman broadcaster inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who in Food and Beverage, the panel discussion made such an impact that it was frequently mentioned at cocktail parties and other social gatherings during the three-day event.

American Express, which owns Food & Wine magazine, presented the panel as part of its annual trade program component of the epicurean extravaganza.

Puck's co-panelists were Danny Meyer, head of the Union Square Hospitality Group in New York; Drew Nieporent, head of the Myriad Restaurant Group in New York; and Larry Levy, president and chairman of Levy Restaurants, Chicago.

Levy said one of the major issues his diversified company faces is how to maintain his patrons' loyalty in the face of explosive growth and competition from others.

Great food and the right price are just small parts of the longer-term plans operators need to make in order to attain success, Levy said.

"I find the most difficult issue is how to remain popular [because] people, whenever they get together to decide where to eat out, as a rule pick the newest places," he observed. "For us, I think the answer is to remember our philosophy of cooking: great, honest food and low prices.

"I think we are the leaders when compared to other places, but the issue of staying current is a big issue going forward, and it ultimately gets back to service."

Meyer agreed, noting that even service is a slender thread in a larger fabric called hospitality.

"Nothing makes me prouder than the notion that Union Square, after 14 years, was the most popular restaurant in the [New York City] Zagat Survey," he said. The Manhattan restaurant "has improved and stayed on people's minds when so many outstanding chefs have opened new places, making it harder and harder to stay fresh."

Meyer noted that the year Zagat declared Union Square to be the most popular restaurant in New York, the establishment's food, service and decor all received modest grades from the surveyors who visited the restaurant.

"So I thought there must be something else that we are doing off the charts that the Zagat Survey is not asking, and I determined that that something is hospitality, which is very different from service," Meyer explained. "Service is a technical act. How you decant the wine. How quickly you get the food to the table. How nice the waiters' uniforms are pressed.

"Hospitality is an emotional skill. It's how well you care for people and the definition for hospitality in our company is simple: You know you are in the face of hospitality when you believe the other person is on your side."