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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.

Lettuce Entertain You shares new initiatives, Eggs Up Grill makes menu moves, and the dish on pizza styles and Brooklyn food

Menu Talk: Pat and Bret dig into the latest food and drink trends and restaurant news

 

This week on Menu Talk, Restaurant Business senior menu editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, share their take on some recent happenings in the world of food and drink.

Bret recently moved from one Brooklyn neighborhood to another, and the culinary scene is very different. He’s surrounded by Turkish food and already tried a Turkish breakfast specialty that’s currently trending on TikTok but has been served in mom-and-pop restaurants forever.

Pat shares a virtual taste of the three memorable pizzas she shared with colleagues at Pizzeria Bianco while in Phoenix, which sparks a lively discussion of pizza styles.

We also comment on clips from podcasts recorded at the recent Restaurant Leadership Conference. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ Christopher LaBarbera talks about the appeal of hotels for restaurant locations. Then LEYE’s Kelly Clancy, managing partner with RPM Restaurants in Chicago, describes the sustainability initiatives she’s implemented, including a wide-ranging composting program. She also shares how the kitchen at RPM Steak reduces meat waste by making beef butter and repurposing the trim into tartare and burgers.

Ricky Richardson, CEO of breakfast-lunch chain Eggs Up Grill, also joins Menu Talk this week. The chain is in the process of upgrading its coffee program, adding espresso drinks and specialized equipment to a number of restaurants with the plan to roll them out systemwide.

Related:Menu trends at RLC, how St. Louis chef Nick Bognar is elevating sushi, and hot sauces and LTOs in the spotlight

Eggs Up Grill also launched a new menu item called Scramblers, which takes some pressure off the kitchen during busy brunch periods. Instead of ordering customized omelets, which can bog down service, guests can choose one of three Scramblers: a Crab-Acado Scrambler, Chorizo Scrambler or Veggie Scrambler. They use many of the same flavors and ingredients as the omelets but go a long way in easing execution.

Menu Talk 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. You can subscribe to it wherever you listen to podcasts.

About the Authors

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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