On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discuss a week’s worth of eating experiences, starting with a dine-around in Chicago. The two editors were in Chicago for the last conference of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, familiarly known as IFEC, and the opening event featured a tasting tour of three restaurants in the city’s Fulton...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed their recent eating adventures. That included Pat’s visit to a Hampton Inn, home of the original waffle bar, created by the midscale hotel chain 40 years ago.  That historical milestone is being celebrated by the hotel chain and promoted by Paris Hilton, since Hampton Inn is a brand of her family’s...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, share highlights from their recent eating and drinking excursions. Both editors attended a media preview of Taco Bell’s chef-created Crunchwrap Supremes. The chain tapped three emerging chefs to come up with variations of this wildly popular menu item, and the results included Indian and Thai versions as well as...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discuss a week’s worth of eating adventures, starting with the CREATE conference in Nashville.  The conference, geared toward emerging chains, is organized by NRN, so Bret and his colleagues were on the ground hosting sessions and networking with operators. He was super-impressed with the quality of the...

Bret was a bit of a homebody last week as he prepared for CREATE: The Event for Emerging Restaurateurs, a conference that Nation’s Restaurant News is hosting in Nashville this week, but he did enjoy traditional Jewish brisket for Rosh Hashannah at a friend’s home in Manhattan.  Pat attended two Broadway shows that were preceded by tasty and affordable meals, which can be hard to find in New York City’s Theater District. She had a prix fixe pre-theater dinner of creamy parsnip soup, grilled...

Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, kicked off this week’s podcast by briefly introducing a friend, of sorts. He had asked ChatGPT to greet the audience of Menu Talk, and the chatbot, which can now simulate a human voice much better than the electronic messages we have grown accustomed to, inferred pretty accurately what sorts of topics would be discussed in a podcast with that name. Real co-host Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, start off by chatting about the joys of grazing. Neither editor is in the Gen Z or Millennial age group that popularized the “girl dinner” on TikTok, but both like to try small tastes of a lot of different things—whether they are eating alone or dining with friends. On a recent visit to Boston, Bret went to a...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, talk about the post-summer flurry of restaurant activity in New York City. Bret was treated to a pre-opening preview of Alessa, a new Italian restaurant where the chef created a menu spotlighting mushrooms in many sizes and shapes. His first bite was a white pizza topped with assorted mushrooms and lots of...

On this week’s podcast, Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality senior food & beverage editor Bret Thorn is joined by Lisa Jennings, executive editor of Restaurant Business, who subbed in for Pat Cobe. Lisa came fresh off of the launch of Rokusho in Los Angeles, which has an eight-seat omakase room upstairs that’s an outpost of a Udatsu Sushi, a Michelin-starred restaurant based in Tokyo. It’s headed up by chef Shingo Ogane, but it will also host visiting Japanese chefs for...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed the time they spent on and near the water in New York City. Pat took a ferry down the East River to Wall Street to check out Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Tin Building, a much-ballyhooed food hall that neither co-host had had a chance to visit yet. Pat enjoyed a savory buckwheat crêpe, and observed that...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, talk about how tennis players aren’t the only stars at the US Open, which kicked off on Monday. There’s a lot of star power off the courts, with more than 20 top New York City restaurants and chefs offering their specialties over the next two weeks. The podcast guest this week is JJ Johnson, a well-known TV...

On this week’s podcast, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed pumpkin spice season, which is upon us in August just as it is every year, despite annual complaints that it arrives too early. But as Pat observed, operators know when their customers want to start buying those autumnal items, and that time is now.  It's also “Restaurant Week,” in New York City, which...

This week on Menu Talk, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, zero in on Japanese tasting menus and a trendy pizza style. Bret paid a visit to Hakubai in the Kitano Hotel, a restaurant known for its kaiseki menu. Kaiseki is a Japanese tasting menu similar to omakase, but it’s more specifically focused on pristine, seasonal ingredients. Hakubai’s 11-course menu was paired...

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed their visits to Tara Kitchen, a Moroccan restaurant run by Indian chef Aneesa Waheed with three locations near Albany, New York, one in Wildwood, New Jersey, one in Hyderabad, India, and one in the New York City neighborhood of Tribeca. Pat and Bret took separate trips to the Tribeca location, where Pat had brunch...

The team behind Brine, a fast casual with a location in New York City and another in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, invited 100 of the restaurant’s regulars (plus some media folks) to taste test new menu items and evaluate them. Chef-partner Joe LoNigro was behind the counter as guests helped themselves to grilled chicken with a “umami” sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts, a spicy chicken sandwich, elote corn ribs, tostones and Brine’s new take on its house-made Pop-Tart-inspired dessert. It will be...

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed national food holidays. In a nutshell, they’re not huge fans of promotions like National Chicken Wing Day or National Tequila Day, but they do acknowledge that promotions around them can be effective marketing tools and traffic drivers, which are particularly important these days as costs rise and guest counts...

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor at Restaurant Business, shared her take on Blank Street’s summer matcha drinks and the escalating price of lobster rolls, while Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, recounted his visit to Philadelphia to dine at Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant and Zahav, chef Michael Solomonov’s Israeli restaurant. The guest on this week’s Menu Talk is Dan Kluger, chef-partner of Greywind in New York....

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, recounted her visit to Fieldtrip, J.J. Johnson’s Afro-Caribbean rice bowl concept with items like jerk meatballs and coconut yogurt, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, discussed his visit with an old friend to an Indian restaurant attached to a Hindu temple in the New York City neighborhood of Flushing in Queens, which led to a discussion of rice-making...

Despite what are usually characterized as the “lazy days of summer,” there’s been a lot of menu action this week. Pat and Bret both attended an outdoor pig roast at Back Bar in the Eventi Hotel in New York City. The patio party was hosted by Chef Laurent Tourondel and his team, who operate the dining venues at the hotel. They started cooking the pigs at noon, inside a charcoal-fired China box or “caja chino,” which is a Cuban style of cooking pork. The pigs were roasted to perfection by 6...

This week, Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, reported from Atlanta, where Menu Directions, a conference hosted by sister publication FoodService Director, had just wrapped up. Meanwhile, Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, reported on happenings in New York City. Foodservice Director covers on-site dining, so attendees were mostly chefs from healthcare, schools, corporate dining, etc., rather than...

This week on Menu Talk, hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor at Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, start off with a beer tasting. Bret discovered a low-alcohol brew called kvass in his new Brooklyn neighborhood, which is populated by Russian, Ukrainian and Eastern European residents. As Pat visited Sysco headquarters in Houston to get an inside look at how innovative products get into the distributor’s...

This week on Menu Talk, hosted by Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, we discuss the latest news in Cheez-It crackers. The snack food has partnered with Taco Bell to offer giant versions of Cheez-Its, and chef and restaurateur Dan Kluger is offering his own take at Greywind, his new restaurant near Hudson Yards in New York City. The guest for this week is Nia Grace, who...

This week on Menu Talk, hosts Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor at Nation’s Restaurant News, share their take on high menu prices. Their editors at both publications have had a lot to say about fast-food inflation, but how about sticker shock at full-service restaurants? Fogo de Chao has found ways to keep prices reasonable without hurting its margins, as CEO Barry McGowan revealed in a chat with Pat. We played clips from...

This week on Menu Talk, your hosts, Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, caught their breath after a whirlwind long weekend at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, and they shared insights into what they saw and tasted there. Pat was struck by the prevalence of cardamom on the show floor, including in an Indian lassi and a new soda flavor from Tractor Beverage...