Isaac Laquedem

Stanford's says it was the cheese bread. Isaac says it was the mints.

The October 25 Sunday Oregonian carried a story about the company that two years ago bought the Stanford's restaurant chain and the others under common ownership, including the Portland Steak and Chop House, Manzana, and Newport Bay restaurants.   The gist of the story was that the buyer (a private-equity firm and not a restaurant company) has at last figured out that it drove away the loyal customers by jacking up the prices and changing the menu.  The author says that Stanford's removed from its menu the cheese bread, the house salad, and the prime rib sandwich, favorites of its regular customers.

I hadn't noticed those changes, but I had noticed one other that irritated me: they changed the mints.  The hallmark of the restaurants in the Stanford's group was their after-dinner mints: not the little disc-shaped peppermints that have the peppermint color but not much flavor, and not the even smaller things that are so small as to be barely noticeable, but stout barrel-shaped red and green mints that no other Portland restaurant served.  Stanford's and the Chop House kept them on display in gargantuan brandy snifters, and I never left the restaurant without pocketing three or four for later. They were the best restaurant mints in town; no one else came close.  And they were famous: if I put one or two on my desk, my co-workers would nod knowingly and say, "Stanford's for lunch again?"

With the buyout went the barrel mints, replaced by the smaller and presumably cheaper little discs.  It was a little thing, but enough to tell me that the new management cared about cost and not about value.  I went from 15 visits a year (always with guests) to one.

The lesson for restaurateurs, and in some form for anyone in business, is that if you become known for doing something (in this case mints) better than all of your competition, don't change it just to save a few cents.

The fox was guarding the peanuthouse

The salmonella outbreak, tied to contaminated peanut products from a Georgia processing plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America, has produced one delicious irony.  In 2005, the Bush administration appointed the owner and president of the company, a man from Lynchburg, Virginia named Stewart Parnell, to serve on the Peanut Standards Board.  The Peanut Standards Board is part of the Department of Agriculture that advises the USDA on how to grade and classify peanuts.  It also helps set quality-control and safe-handling standards for peanuts.  Mr. Parnell must have done well, because the Bush administration reappointed him in 2008 to serve another three-year term.  Things work differently in the current administration; Tom Vilsack, the new Secretary of Agriculture, removed Mr. Parnell from the Board on Thursday, and banned his company from receiving any more federal contracts.

The company's website, which used to describe the company's history and included quotations from Mr. Parnell, has been revamped.  As of this morning it includes only the press releases about the contamination and the recall.  Actually it includes one more practical bit of information: the name and address of the company's agent for service of process in Georgia -- the address where, if you are suing the company, you're to send the summons and complaint.

Uncle Farmer sparks a thought on hospital catering

Years ago I read a cartoon showing a doctor visiting a patient in the hospital.  Doctor and patient were each smiling broadly and holding a wineglass, and an opened wine bottle was on the bedside table.  As doctor and patient lifted their glasses as if toasting, the doctor said, "Mind you, only one doctor in nine recommends this."

I thought of that happy cartoon when I got the report that the very venerable Uncle Farmer has recovered sufficiently in the hospital, not to the point of being released, but to where his physician has allowed his family to bring him beer every day.  His physician is sensible: first, because a beer or two in the hospital isn't going to lead his nonagenarian patient down the path of ruin; and second, because the malt and hops make the hospital food more palatable.  Beer isn't what I would think of drinking if I were myself hospitalized, but it occurs to me that if I should be fortunate enough to pass my 80th birthday, I should lay in a supply of Bordeaux for my family to bring to me if I'm similarly institutionalized.   

Mrs. Fields needs us to eat more cookies

Not only is America getting coffeed out (Starbucks announced last month that it's closing hundreds of its stores) but we're getting cookied out as well.  The owner of the Mrs. Fields chain announced that it's filing a Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy petition, showing that it's not only its customers that need to slim down.

A dinner-only restaurant offers a lunch discount

I received a pack of promotional postcards this week, one of which proudly proclaims that the restaurant Oba, in northwest Portland, is now open for lunch.  The reverse offers a $10 discount for lunch for 4 or more persons.

Someone at the advertising agency wasn't thinking.  Down at the bottom of the card, it proclaims that Oba offers dinner only, and doesn't open until 4:30.

Legal Weed in your beer? ATF says yes, but no

Some brewers name their beer or their company after their home town.  One brewer in California proudly advertises its home town (named after the town's founder, a California state senator of long ago) on its bottle caps, but the  Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (part of the federal Department of the Treasury) wants the brewer to stop. 

Why?  The brewer's home town is named after Abner Weed, and its bottle cap slogans include "Try LEGAL Weed" and "A friend in Weed is a friend indeed."  The Treasury Department doesn't like the slogans, for two reasons:  (1) they promote the use of illegal drugs, and (2) they falsely suggest that the beer contains marijuana.

Here's a paradox: the federal government doesn't want sick Oregonians to smoke marijuana, but it complains that California beer drinkers are missing out.

[Thanks to Martha Neil and the ABA Journal.]

Max Birnbach (1912-2008)

The Oregonian didn't do justice to Max Birnbach in his obituary, which ran on March 19.  Mr. Birnbach is best remembered in Portland for buying Rose's Restaurant -- the original one on NW 23rd Avenue, from which calories dripped like cake frosting -- in 1968 from its founder, Rose Naftalin, and running it until 1992 when he sold it and the two other Rose's locations that he'd opened in the meantime.

Mr. Birnbach's life story went far beyond the impossibly outsize pastrami sandwiches and towering cake slices that made Rose's famous.  He was born in Vienna in 1912.  As a young man he was sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis after they overran Austria.  He escaped to Switzerland and made his way to the United States.  He entered the restaurant business and rose to become the restaurant manager of the Benson Hotel, leaving it in 1968 to buy and run Rose's.  His was a remarkable story suitable for a movie, such as this one, called "In Vienna They Put You in Jail: The Max Birnbach Story." 

He was spry and active well into his nineties.  A few months ago I spotted him lunching in a quiet corner of the Benson's London Grill restaurant.  I think he skipped dessert.

Mr. Bacardi shares a tip with Isaac

I had occasion this week to meet a Mr. Bacardi, one of the elders of the family whose private company makes the famous rum of the same name.  We were in a small, quiet bar, and I noticed that he was, not surprisingly, drinking Bacardi rum.  ¨¨In college,¨ I said, ¨we drank Bacardi with Coca-Cola, but I later thought that I wasn´t doing justice to this fine spirit.  Mr. Bacardi, how do you recommend drinking Bacardi rum?¨¨ 

Although he didn´t criticize my college choice of rum and Coke, Mr. Bacardi did kindly tell me how he likes to drink Bacardi rum, and instructed the bartender step by step, in front of me, how to do it.  So as a sort of un-Isaac-like public service, I will describe Señor Bacardi´s favored method.

Take a tall, narrow glass and fill it loosely with ice cubes.  (Don´t use crushed ice.)  Half fill the glass with Bacardi, then fill the glass nearly to the top with still or sparkling water, according to taste.  (He prefers still water.)  Gently squeeze a lime quarter into the glass, stir briskly, and sip slowly.

I tried his method for mixing Bacardi rum -- several times, in fact -- and I have to admit that he has a point.  He did add, however, that his son likes Bacardi and Coke.

Rose Naftalin: why March 18 beats out March 17

Americans of Irish descent may claim March 17 as their own and celebrate with green beer and cabbage, but in Portland March 17 loses to March 18, the anniversary of the birth of Rose Naftalin, in 1897.  Mrs. Naftalin came to Portland from Ohio and opened Rose's Restaurant in 1956, which under her management and later that of Max Birnbach because famous for its food,  not so much for the quality, though the cakes were always a delight, but for the sheer size of the portions, which were always just a little too big for one person to manage.  The style of food would make a cardiologist cringe -- everything seemed to have beef, chicken, cream, eggs, chocolate, or sugar as its principal ingredient -- but it didn't hurt Mrs. Naftalin; she lived to celebrate her 100th birthday, most likely without ever hearing the words "Atkins Diet."

The Laquedem Plan to Promote Tourism With Every Bite

In the midst of its annual fundraising campaign, an August Institution tells its alumni that it has provided two of its college kitchens with special waffle irons that imprint the college shield upon each waffle.  Bleary-eyed students at the breakfast table who forget which college they're attending will thus find a clue to their whereabouts beneath the butter and syrup.  Mrs. Laquedem spotted the glint in my eye when I saw the picture of the imprinted waffle and has, alas, forbade me to buy the Alma Mater waffle iron for Laquedem Manor.

If a college can advertise itself on a waffle, why not a state?  That thought inspired me to devise the Laquedem Waffle Tourism Promotion Plan.  Consider: our state has perhaps 2000 restaurants in Oregon that make waffles.  For an investment of perhaps $200 per waffle iron, or about $400,000 (plus shipping and handling) the state could supply any restaurant that wants one with a free waffle iron that promotes our fair state with each bite of the waffles that it produces.  As each state-sponsored waffle iron would last for 5 to 10 years in use, the annual cost of the Laquedem Waffle Tourism Promotion Plan is very low compared to traditional magazine, mail, and television promotion.

Imagine the surprise and delight with which the weary traveler on Interstate 5 would greet a waffle that read, perhaps, "Oregon: Pacific Wonderland."  Or "Oregon: Still No Sales Tax."  Or even "Oregon: Home of the seven-month school year."  I've barely begun to think about the potential for using waffles in political campaigns.