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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.

Edible glitter, tainted onions, and the evolution of American sushi

Menu Talk: Pat and Bret chat about the latest food and drink trends and share an interview with chef and certified oyster master Aaron Juvera

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 hospitality empire, in the form of special pink waffles with edible glitter that guests can add.

The hosts observed that there’s a lot of edible glitter on menus these days, because it’s fun and dazzling on social media and, one hopes, safe to eat.

It turns out that some onions being served by McDonald’s probably weren’t safe and allegedly sickened a number of people, resulting in one fatality. Pat and Bret discussed that turn of events.

First, however Bret discussed his visit to a sushi restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, which he said was fine, just like a lot of sushi is fine these days, but not with the attention to detail that came with sushi in the past — the server didn’t even bother to explain what fish he had been served.

Pat suggested that this is what happens when food like sushi becomes ubiquitous.

Related:Worlds of Flavor, pastrami with horseradish, and Cambodian food

She had a chance to visit the newest location of Kernel, a heavily automated quick-service restaurant developed by Chipotle founder Steve Ells, and was happy to report that the formerly meatless chain is now serving chicken.

While Pat was at Kernel, Bret went to a preview of Hudson Club, a new restaurant in Midtown Manhattan headed up by chef John DeLucie. He particularly enjoyed oysters with an apple mignonette, and that was a nice segue to this week’s guest, Aaron Juvera, a level one certified oyster master and chef de cuisine of Southerleigh Fine Foods & Brewery in San Antonio, Texas.

Juvera discussed the oyster master certification program, Texas’s burgeoning oyster-cultivation industry, and Southerleigh’s increasing use of lesser-known fish species.

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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