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Trending Tables: Restaurants with stories to tell

Unique touches attract customers

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

April 18, 2018

1 Min Read
Trending Tables
Booth OneBooth One

It’s becoming a cliché that consumers are increasingly interested in the story behind their food, but clichés come into existence because they’re generally true, and this class of Trending Tables shows how good popular restaurants have become at casting themselves in a unique light.

The owners of Anoush’ella in Boston evoke their Armenian-Lebanese heritage for their lentil rice and kofta. Taking a different tack, Booth One in Chicago draws on the heritage of its space — formerly the legendary Pump Room, where Booth One was a sought-after table reserved for celebrities.

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High Street Wine Co.

At Smitty’s Garage in Kansas City, the chain’s home state of Oklahoma is evoked in the decor, while High Street Wine Co. in San Antonio tells the many stories of its namesake beverage — wineries are experts, after all, at spinning tales to add perceived value to fermented grape juice — by preparing food to pair with it.

In Seattle, White Swan Public House tells the story of its city. The dockside restaurant naturally served seafood, but with the multicultural verve that Seattleites expect, with a seafood version of poutine, and octopus paired with kimchi fried rice and the sweet Malaysian soy sauce kecap manis.

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White Swan Public House

 

All of those restaurants, and the others featured in this spring’s edition of Trending Tables, manage to find something specific that makes them unique that helps bring customers through their doors.

Link_2520-_25201-TrendingTables-logo1000.jpgEXPLORE HOT RESTAURANTS IN:
San Antonio
Kansas City
Seattle
Boston
Chicago
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Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]  

Follow him on Twitter: @FoodWriterDiary

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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