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Menu Talk with Pat and Bret

Menu Talk with Pat and Bret is a collaboration between Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.

Seamus Mullen shares how chefs can live happier, healthier lives

The culinary director of Rosewood Sand Hill tries to free people from their ‘antagonistic relationship’ with food

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 4, 2022

 

“It’s very easy to find something that’s both delicious and that you’re going to feal really good eating,” said Seamus Mullen, who is currently the culinary director of the Rosewood Sand Hill resort in Menlo Park, Calif. Responsible for overseeing that property’s culinary outlets, developing recipes, training and so on, Mullen also has a broader mission to help people live better lives by embracing the joy of eating well.

The chef first rose to prominence in 2006 as chef of Boqueria, a Spanish tapas-focused restaurant in New York City. He went on to open his own restaurants, Tertulia in 2011, followed by El Colmado in 2013, both also in New York, while also working the celebrity chef circuit, appearing on the Food Network’s “Next Iron Chef,” “Chopped” and “Beat Bobby Flay” as well as the morning news shows etc.

Simultaneously, he was battling rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease he was diagnosed with in 2007, and which he has fought using the weapons of diet, exercise and lifestyle changes.

For years Mullen has, in his own words, been beating the drum of eating delicious food that makes you feel good, trying to free people from their “antagonistic relationship” with what they eat.

That doesn’t just mean limiting eating things that we all know are bad for us, but taking the time to sit down and really enjoy our meals, and also devoting time to taking care of ourselves.

Mullen recently shared advice for how chefs and other people working in foodservice, can adjust some of their habits and live better lives.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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