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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.

Dan Kluger’s newest restaurant, Port pairings, and Cheez-Its

Menu Talk: Pat and Bret discuss the latest goings-on in food and drink and feature a conversation with restaurateur Nia Grace.

This week on Menu Talk, hosted by Pat Cobe, senior menu editor of Restaurant Business, and Bret Thorn, senior food & 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.

Pat enjoyed them as part of her dinner there, and she noticed other unique aspects of the polished-casual venue. The restaurant has an in-store bakery that customers can use for grab-and-go treats over the course of the day, a smart way to make maximum use of the space. It also has a chef’s counter from which Kluger offers a tasting menu one weekend each month. Guests reserve in advance, buying tickets via Resy, just like theater.

Greywind also has a two-course prix-fixe pre-theater menu, which is handy for guests enjoying performances at The Shed nearby, and also not too far from the city’s theater district.

Bret, meanwhile, went to Benjamin Steakhouse for a wine lunch that included vintages from a Port distributor. He enjoyed the Port and tonic that he and his dining companions had as a pre-lunch aperitif, and also found that Port and steak, though not at all a traditional pairing, go quite well together. He suggested that restaurateurs might consider offering that pairing on top of the non-sweet wine that guests are likely to buy with a steak meal anyway. It provides something a bit out of the ordinary and could be a nice incremental sale.

Related:Nuggets, steak and sticker shock

The guest for this week is Nia Grace, who Bret interviewed about her newest restaurant Grace by Nia at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. It’s Grace’s fourth restaurant, and the second location of Grace by Nia, which she opened in partnership with Big Night Entertainment, a restaurant and club operator in Boston.

Bret quizzed Grace about how she raised capital for her first restaurant, Darryl’s Corner Bar & Kitchen, a South Boston soul food institution that has been open since 1957, and that Grace bought in 2018.

We also hear how the entrepreneurial chef infuses her family’s culinary legacy into her menus.

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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.

Related:Cardamom, caviar, and other trends from the National Restaurant Show

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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