Category Archives: food

September 28, 2012 · 10:41 am

Heat

For our Foodie Friday topic today, let’s have a cup of coffee.  Actually, let’s get some inspiration from one – specifically from Jerry Seinfeld‘s new web series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.  If you haven’t seen it, Jerry goes out for coffee with another funny person – Michael Richards, Carl Reiner, and Larry David among them.  It was in the Larry David episode – Larry Eats A Pancake – that we get today’s food – and business – point.

Jerry remarks that as a pancake gets cold it becomes less appealing   “Once it cools off it loses its allure.” Why is that?  “Heat doesn’t have any flavor…what does it do?”  Larry’s response – “it warms you” is very Kramer-ish.  But it’s true – heat doesn’t have any flavor although it certainly does affect the things that do.  Many dishes are best served at or near room temperature while some foods are disgusting at that temperature.  Food that’s too hot loses flavor, as does food that’s not quite warm enough (putting aside things such as ice cream, of course).  It’s not just the intrinsic flavor of the food that affects the perceived quality.  It’s also the intangible value of the right temperature.

The same holds in business.  It’s the difference on the customer experience on Jet Blue vs. that on Spirit air.  Two discount airlines with many of the same features and requirements (there’s a charge for everything!) but the “heat” of one is perfect and make it delicious while the other is served cold and isn’t something I’ll go near again.

We need to pay attention to the “how hot” as much as we do to the “what.”  Heat can “warm you” or it can burn you.  It can mask flavors or enhance them.  Focus on the “heat” factor you’re generating and you’ll be surprised how appealing the same old stuff can seem.

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September 21, 2012 · 2:46 pm

Taste

 

It’s always a challenge cooking for others. For me it’s not really the quantity of food or even timing the meal so that all the dishes are ready for the table at the same time. The hardest part is anticipating people’s’ tastes. For example, when I make jambalaya, I like a kick beyond that of some good andouille sausage. Finding a well-seasoned chunk of tasso along with a fairly liberal dose of cayenne can do it for me but there are very few people for whom I cook that like that sort of heat. A splash of hot sauce at the table isn’t the same thing – it’s a sharp “forward heat while cooking the spices into the dish is a slower, more mellow burn. Still, one has to know one’s consumer (as I always remind us here) so I tone it down in most cases.

Taste isn’t just something that applies to food.  It’s easy enough to season a dish in a way that makes you happy as a cook, but unless you’re a well-known chef who has developed a palate that others find appealing, you’re probably going to under-season and let people add salt, pepper, hot sauce, or whatever else makes them happy (I just shuddered as I recalled a niece pouring ketchup over a delectably spiced dish years ago). As businesspeople, we have to assess our tastes continually and remember that there are as many permutations of it as there are people.

Very few business leaders can impose their tastes on others.  Even a guy like Steve Jobs failed to do so from time to time (remember the antenna debacle on the iPhone, which was a design issue?  Customers got fed up with the dropped calls even if it looked pretty).  Listening to the social sphere, reading your data, getting regular customer service reports, sentiment analysis, and lust plain talking to people is a critical part of assessing taste.

How’s your palate these days?

 

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September 14, 2012 · 8:34 am

Naked In The Kitchen

For our Foodie Friday Fun today, let’s get naked.

Ingredients

(Photo credit: Beyond Elements)

Not in the clothes sense – in the foodie sense.  You see, to me the hardest challenge for a cook is to cook something like a roasted chicken.  There’s not a lot of technique to hide behind and generally the seasoning is pretty simple.  Maybe there’s a gravy which is a simple pan sauce but there’s certainly no highly refined, triple-reduced sauce with which to drown the improperly prepared protein.  The quality of the ingredients is naked, as is the cook’s ability to capture and present that quality.

I’m a fan of simplicity in the kitchen as well as in business (an after all, that’s what the screed is about!).  I don’t do molecular gastronomy. I look for great ingredients, prep them using relatively basic techniques (but I practice those basics a lot) an deliver them to the table with a simple presentation,   In short, I try to let the goodness speak for itself.

Ideas are the same way.  Don’t muck up the basic goodness with some overly complex sauce.  Respect the building block, nurture it along carefully and get out of the way of the underlying strength of the idea.  People too – they’re the great ingredients of every business.

We conceal ideas behind layers of complexity and like a heavy sauce that complexity can mask what’s good or bad about what’s underneath.  Generally, if what’s underneath is really excellent, you want it to shine on its own , so when I encounter some idea or business model that’s overly complex I assume there are some serious flaws within.

I like elevator pitches.  They’re the business without the clothing of complexity.  I like one page term sheets – they’re deals without the sauce of lawyer language.  It’s really hard to make a lot of complicated business issues simple.  When you do though you’ll be surprised how much more clear (and delicious!) they are to all concerned – if they’re any good, that is!  If they’re not, you’ll see it right away.

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