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Kitchen Consequential
Chefs to watch in 2006 as they help chart the changing landscape of foodservice.
By The Editors of R&I
CHARLIE AYERS
Chef-founder, Calafia, Redwood City, Calif.
 Several hundred people have applied to fill the job he left in May—executive chef for Google Inc. in Mountain View, Calif.—but Charlie Ayers isn’t looking back. Instead he is busy planning next year’s opening (in Palo Alto, Calif.) of the first of at least three Calafia fast-casual restaurants in the Bay Area.
Having spent six years at Google after working as personal chef for clients that included legendary rock group the Grateful Dead, Ayers says he’s looking forward to having complete control over concept and menu. “Everywhere else in the world, you can eat quickly and have it be relatively healthful. We don’t do that here and I want to change that,” he says.
Though he dislikes the term “fusion,” he allows that it describes what he hopes to do. “There are so many cultures and cuisines that share the same root ingredients; you can cross-utilize ingredients and do Asian-Latin or pan-Pacific and still do fast, easy prep,” Ayers says.
Foods will be organically grown and purchased from sustainable-agriculture supporters whenever possible. He expects checks to average no more than $10 for lunch, $20 for dinner. And, in a nod to the digital world of his previous employer, guests will be able to order online ahead of their arrival. “When guests log on again, it will remember what they ordered the last time and be able to make recommendations. Like ordering a book at Amazon,” he says.
Former Google colleagues provided enough startup capital to fund three Calafia locations before he’d even finished his business plan, he says. He’s also working on additional deals that could result in creation of a high-end Japanese restaurant, a deli and possibly a stand-alone version of Charlie’s Place, the corporate-dining facility he created at Google.
MARIO BATALI
Chef/restaurateur/ multimedia celebrity, New York City
 Worth watching because he always has something new cooking, the 2005 Ivy Award winner (for Babbo), just opened his eighth New York City restaurant, 18,000-square-foot Del Posto. His next stop is the other coast and the much-discussed opening of his Los Angeles joint venture with baker-extraordinaire Nancy Silverton. The operation will combine three concepts in one: Trattoria del’Latte (main room with mozzarella bar), Enoteca del’Latte (wine and antipasti bar) and Pizzeria del’Latte (wood-oven pizza).
And how to top that? By feeding the need for speed. Batali, who waved the starting flag for this year’s Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway, reportedly is negotiating to create an official NASCAR cookbook for 2006.
PAUL BARTOLOTTA
Chef-owner, Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare, Las Vegas
 Cynics may describe Las Vegas as Disneyland for diners, a formula-driven fantasyland where games of culinary one-upmanship are played with foie gras, truffles and caviar. Each restaurant opening seems designed to outshine all others, with a parade of chefs lured to the glitter with promises of excess.
Steve Wynn was ready to hand all that and more to Paul Bartolotta as he courted the chef for his Wynn Las Vegas Resort. The assignment: Italian, no holds barred. Bartolotta, devoted to fine-dining Italian, countered. “I told Steve that in my heart of hearts, I wanted a way to elevate Italian food in this country. The challenge was to do something Italian but different enough that it still hit the American consumer,” Bartolotta says. “It was scary. He was giving me this great stage—the Wynn Las Vegas is not just any hotel—but I didn’t want it to feel too Vegasy.”
Looking at the drawings—specifically a strong water element that defines the restaurant’s interior and exterior—a dream that resided within Bartolotta’s psyche stirred to waking. “In Italy, I worked in seafood restaurants that were super-Mediterranean. They strongly influenced me.”
Drawn to the possibilities, he swayed a “semi-reluctant” Wynn to consider a concept celebrating Italy’s coastal cuisines, and Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare was born.
Though the proposed concept ostensibly was simple, Bartolotta didn’t say no to all the riches Wynn’s deep pockets allowed. Italian-inspired would not be enough. It had to be Italian—as in fish found only in waters around Italy. Up to five times a week, crates of seafood that less than two days prior were pulled from Italian-water habitats arrive at the Las Vegas airport and are whisked to the Wynn.
“It’s only with technology that it’s possible. Fishermen on boats text message me what fish they’ve got. Knowing what’s coming in, my consolidator can prepare to ship it immediately. No one else does that.”
Once the treasures reach the kitchen, Bartolotta is most inclined to do little more than gut them, remove the gills and sometimes—though not always—the scales before roasting them whole. “With my classical training, I should be embarrassed at how simple these preparations are,” he says. “But they’re Italian. I can imagine I’m in Amalfi or Positano.”
Wynn acknowledges that through the chef’s discipline and the clarity of pure restraint, di Mare delivers the punch he wanted to achieve. Says Bartolotta, “A series of elements create the success: the right property, the right person to believe in me and the right time for this type of authenticity.”
CARRON HARRIS
Vice president of food and beverage, Buca di Beppo, Minneapolis
Carron Harris has been preparing the Buca di Beppo menu since 1995 at its first location in Minneapolis. Now she gets to create the menu herself.
Harris, named Buca’s executive chef in March 2005, is directing a strategic expansion of the concept. “We’ve gone from one menu change a year to changing twice a year,” she says. “We’re looking at what we need to do when we have another release of new items in the spring, and we’re already looking at next fall as well.”
She plans to keep on creating more healthful items for the Italian chain. Buca recently added several lighter options to its menu, including Tuscan chicken and salmon with roasted garlic.
“We want to keep the traditional Italian items and stay close to our roots, yet bring in items that are going to be healthful and easy to eat on a regular basis,” says Harris. “A lot of Italian cooking is perceived by the public as not healthful. It’s important to bring that balance to our menu.”
Harris also is broadening the menu’s scope to include more Northern Italian dishes, such as fettucine Alfredo, and seasonal items that take advantage of fresh fruits and vegetables. And she’s expanded the restaurant’s drink menu to include Italian versions of classic cocktails.
MARIO DeLUCA
Senior director of dining and culinary services, Senior Services Division, Sodexho USA, Gaithersburg, Md.
The first baby boomers turn 60 on Jan. 1, 2006, meaning 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are edging closer to assisted-living needs. Sodexho USA is ready, having this year opened the first two locations of Piccolo Bistro, a retail restaurant/coffee-shop concept designed for independent-living clients.
“Today’s resident population has much different taste profiles, wants and needs [than those of previous generations],” says Mario DeLuca, a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and many restaurant and hotel kitchens, who oversees development of the bistro menu. “They’re well-traveled, more health-conscious and have higher service expectations.”
Much like college students, seniors also want multiple casual-dining sites rather than one main dining room, and freedom to eat what they want when they want it. Piccolo Bistro meets those needs with foods that span breakfast and midday coffee times to late-night snacking, with emphasis on healthful choices such as salads, yogurt and fresh fruit—for dine-in eating or to go—along with panini, soups and more. “The flavors are bold but not over the top,” DeLuca says.
Designed to accommodate seniors’ needs, aisles are wide, doorway areas are barrier-free and prepared foods are stocked at eye level.
GARY LANE
Executive chef, DCH Regional Medical Center, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
 Gary Lane can easily recite the magic words that convinced him to leave the world of private clubs and hotels five years ago for healthcare foodservice: “Monday through Friday; weekends off; no nights.” But his goal is to improve the quality not just of his life but also of the 4,000 patient, employee and visitor meals he and the 120-person foodservice staff prepare each day.
“I wanted to take a smaller budget and get the most out of it, see what we could do. I think we’ve made great strides,” he says. He added grills and griddles to a kitchen where baked, fried or steamed were the only options, even for burgers, and Southern dishes such as deep-fried catfish were favorites. He introduced healthful options such as grilled fish and fresh, batch-cooked vegetables.
“You have to be aware of nutritional needs, but if food doesn’t have eye appeal and flavor, no one will try it. My job is to make the clientele want to eat healthier food,” he says. “People have to think differently before they eat differently.”
Foodservice employees also needed to take on more of a retail mindset, he says, understanding that foods needn’t be cooked in advance or in large quantities.
Lane’s creativity was recognized earlier this year when he took second-place honors in the National Society for Healthcare Foodservice Management’s first culinary competition. His recipe: pistachio-crusted beef tender with blackberry-chipotle essence, hoppin’ John, chiffonade of sweet peppered greens and roasted root vegetables.
Next year’s renovation and expansion of the 350-bed hospital’s cafeteria will allow for upgrades in service and preparation styles and expand catering capabilities. Menus, too, will grow and improve “in more ways than customers can imagine.”
IAN CHALERMKITTICHAI
Chef-owner, Kittichai, New York City
 For nearly as long as chefs have donned white jackets, prevailing wisdom had it that classical French training was the cost of entry into high-end restaurant kitchens, in the end the only background that mattered. Regardless of cuisine, it all was to be built on a foundation of long-simmering stocks and Carme’s five mother sauces.
Like a soufflé too long out of the oven, that stance has quickly lost steam as the world’s cuisines move closer to the center. At Kittichai in New York City—wildly popular with diners and reviewers alike—Ian Chalermkittichai’s cooking very capably demonstrates that as much sophistication, refinement and elegance can be found in tom kha soup and claypot-steamed mussels with kaffir lime, Thai basil and lemongrass as in coquilles St. Jacques.
Chalermkittichai, the first Thai national to be named executive chef at a five-star hotel in Bangkok (the Four Seasons), stirs up Thailand’s culinary traditions with a contemporary hand, along the way making them vibrant, fun, fresh and approachable without abandoning their roots.
Chalermkittichai was 21 years old before he decided to become a professional chef, although his mother prepared curries to sell as street fare. “At 14, I used to go around my neihborhood with a pushcart and say ‘hot curry for sale,’” he recalls. He learned quickly, traveling to London and Sydney to enhance his repertoire of skills and experience.
Kittichai, settled into sleek space designed by David Rockwell, has a frisson of creative energy that New Yorkers love.
ANDRE HALSTON
Corporate executive chef, Wild Oats Markets, Boulder, Colo.
Developing foodservice programs for a 110-store chain of natural-foods markets required some adjustments after creating menus for the Champps Restaurant & Bar and La Madeleine chains, but not all were difficult. “If we run out of lettuce, there’s no panic. You just walk over to the produce section,” says Andre Halston, who joined the company 18 months ago and has worked “quickly and cautiously” to make it a serious foodservice contender.
“When I arrived, foodservice was considered a loss leader. But I said, ‘Look, you’ve got retail-center locations where you’re the flagship store and there’s also a pizzeria or a fast-casual sandwich chain,’” he explains. “We can provide pizzas, sandwiches and more with fresh, natural ingredients that are higher in quality and competitive on price. But we’ve got to be better and faster.”
All-natural-ingredient salad bars and prepared salads were added, and a line of brick-oven-baked pizzas followed. This fall, Halston developed an ambitious 19-item sandwich line (priced $5.49 to $6.99), with choices ranging from grilled turkey meatloaf to London broil with Cheddar and chipotle-pesto sauce. Sushi bars are in four stores and Halston hopes to create more.
All this has meant developing detailed manuals to train deli-counter workers in food prep and food-safety essentials. It also requires some elbowing for room in walk-in coolers and additional floor space for cafe seating. But he says sales have been impressive enough to change skeptical corporate mindsets: Halston expects $10 million in sales from salad bars next year; possibly more from sushi.
KENT RATHBUN
Chef-owner, Abacus, Dallas; and Jasper’s in Plano and The Woodlands, Texas
KEVIN RATHBUN
Chef-owner, Rathbun’s and Krog Bar, Atlanta
 Kent (top, r.) and Kevin Rathbun share a father who was a Kansas City jazz musician and a mean barbecue cook. They also share a love of food that is evident in their restaurants.
“I’ve always believed that variety is the spice of life and that dining is about sharing with friends and not about feeding,” says Kevin, who opened Rathbun’s in 2004 after five years as corporate executive chef for multiconcept operator Buckhead Life Restaurant Group. The menu ranges from inexpensive small-plate dishes such as Georgia shrimp with okra, tomatoes and garlic to big plates and “second-mortgage plates” (such as a $34.95 14-ounce veal chop with a fondue of sweet corn and Gouda) to appeal to a broad range of appetites and pocketbooks. Krog Bar, opened next door earlier this year, is a kitchenless wine bar that serves Italian antipasti, inspired by a visit to Mario Batali’s Bar Jamon in New York City, and Spanish tapas.
Kent—a veteran of Mr. B’s Bistro in New Orleans, The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas and other top restaurants—opened global-cuisine Abacus in 1997 and Jasper’s in 2001. A second Jasper’s opened last month. Abacus’ menu focuses on Asian-influenced small plates while Jasper’s “gourmet backyard cuisine” is heavy on wood-roasted and grilled meats, but the concepts aren’t really dissimilar, he says. The barbecued pork tenderloin with bourbon-creamed corn and twice-baked potato that is Jasper’s top seller traveled over from Abacus. Both concepts are about “serving food that people can identify with and still see the skill in preparing it,” Kent says.
“Kevin and I love to talk about food, but there isn’t a competitive bone in our bodies. We just want everyone to be well fed,” Kent says.
Fabio Trabocchi
Executive chef, Maestro, The Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner, McLean, Va.
 A finalist for The James Beard Foundation’s Rising Chef of the Year award in 2003 and 2004, Fabio Trabocchi and Maestro demonstrate that high-end Italian cuisine can be both Old and New World, classical and inventive.
Guests can choose from items on two distinct menus. La Tradizione is “conservative, traditional, with items customers can recognize or that are more immediate to everyone’s knowledge of Italian food,” says Trabocchi. The L’Evoluzione menu is “more intricate, more personal, more modern Italian cuisine. We try to take something classical and regional and reinterpret it with modern ingredients, cooking skills and presentations.” A recent example is gnocchi filled with Venetian whipped salted cod and baccala-milk sauce with oregano and skate. An I Colori Dell ‘Orto (colors of the garden) vegetarian menu is available nightly, as are three-, five- and seven-course tasting menus.
All menus use organic produce and locally sourced ingredients when possible. “We have a list of about 100 suppliers for Maestro, each of them for one product in particular,” Trabocchi says. Finding and working with the right vendors “is research and it is consuming, but it pays off.”
While “Maestro is a special-occasion restaurant, we never want it to be stiff,” says Trabocchi. “Every day we ask if we could have done a little more.”
Michelle Bernstein
Chef-owner, Michy’s, Miami; chef-consultant, Social Miami and Los Angeles; executive chef, MB, Cancún, Mexico
 The term “multiskilled” barely describes Michelle Bernstein’s jam-packed career. At age 35, her résumé reads like an industry wish list: cooking on national television, launching an international eatery, teaming with a top-tier restaurateur and developing a dream concept close to her Miami home.
“When I look back on my career, I just want to be able to say I’m proud of the dishes I made and that I put my heart into all of them,” says the energetic chef, who’s been on a fast-rising trajectory since leaving her name-making gig at Azul at the Mandarin Oriental Miami earlier this year.
Bernstein’s latest projects—two Social restaurant-lounges with entrepreneur Jeffrey Chodorow and his China Grill Management, and Michy’s, her namesake Miami restaurant—represent the chef’s greatest milestones to date: the “chance of a lifetime” to learn from one of the industry’s best business minds, and the freedom to answer only to herself.
Casual, 60-seat Michy’s, slated to open this month, focuses on simple flavors and indigenous ingredients shaped by her classical training and global travels. Latin-American, Caribbean and Indian influences accent offerings. For Social, she’s creating Moroccan and traditional American recipes for the Los Angeles location and global small plates in Miami.
The significance of being the first female chef-partner with China Grill—joining the likes of Claude Troisgros and Alain Ducasse—is not lost on Bernstein. “I never thought of myself as a woman chef; I always wanted to be a great chef, period. But it does feel like I’m opening doors for women in our culinary future,” she says.
Daniel Long
Executive chef, Bon Appétit Management Co. at M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco
Considering organic farmers, ranchers, cheese-makers and other artisans members of San Francisco’s arts community, Chef Daniel Long and Bon Appétit Management Co. focus on locally sourced products for the cafe inside the stylish, new $200 million de Young museum (replacing the original building that opened in 1895).
“These people are artists,” Long says of local suppliers. “We want the menu to be a reflection of the city and the local bounty.” Working with small-volume vendors presents challenges—availability of sufficient quantities never is assured. “But you learn to be flexible,” Long says, and changing the menu daily aids in adaptability. Staple items include the $10 de Young Cobb Salad (free-range turkey, bacon, avocado, egg, local blue cheese, greens and white balsamic vinaigrette); a $9 roast beef sandwich and $8 cheeseburger using locally raised grass-fed organic beef (both served with house-made pickles); and a half free-range chicken with herbs and Meyer lemon, served with cauliflower ($10). Long’s macaroni-and-cheese side with Cheddar, provolone, Asiago and mozzarella is a strong seller. Soups, sauces and dressings are house-made.
Located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the cafe draws locals and tourists who may not be visiting the museum and has averaged 2,000 meals daily.
Jemal Edwards
Executive pastry chef, Brlée: The Dessert Experience, Atlantic City, N.J.
 Believing one can succeed where others have failed is necessary in a business where hot spots can become has-beens in the time it takes to revise a menu. Dessert-themed concepts come and quickly go, but Jemal Edwards believes his lush, theatrical presentations at Brlée will earn enduring success amid the renewed glitz of Atlantic City, N.J.
Ten-month-old Brlée, brainchild of Philadelphia restaurateurs Barry Gutin and Larry Cohen, enjoys a prime location at The Quarter, a multimillion-dollar dining, retail and entertainment complex in the Tropicana Casino and Hotel. From its dramatically designed, jewel-toned dining room set off by white-clad tables and caramel banquettes, the plush concept makes a splash by elevating dessert service to performance art.
“We are all about the theater of the experience,” says Edwards, a veteran of New York City’s Nobu and Tavern on the Green who trained under some of France’s premier pastry chefs.
Servers deliver all menu selections in formal three-course style, with palate-teasing amuse bouche to start and petits fours as sweet finales. Three choices—whimsically dubbed Razzzburger, Cherries Brlée and Banana-nana—are finished tableside with eye-catching flambés, while the rest are assembled at a display pastry bar decked out with backlit bottle racks and flat-screen plasma monitors that broadcast Edwards’ pastry demonstrations. Beverage recommendations from a list featuring champagnes, cordials and dessert wines accompany each offering.
“The fundamentals of my desserts are great flavor combinations, texture and contrast: hot versus cold, acidic versus sweet,” says the chef of signatures such as warm vanilla donuts with almond gelato and butterscotch sauce, or vanilla panna cotta with passion fruit gelée and blueberry-almond liqueur compote.
Ken Toong
Director of dining services, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Serving 12,500 people a day can be many things: stressful, time-consuming, challenging. In the eyes of Ken Toong, it also should be exciting.
“Food is a dynamic thing,” says Toong, who has been in charge of UMass-Amherst’s dining services, one of the largest self-operated programs in the country, since 1998. “We went from a controlled, institutional setting to one with more of a customer focus.”
Toong’s philosophy accounts for the success of his program in both participation and revenue: Dining services counts half of the school’s student body as guests and has annual revenue of $45 million.
“We have to be more demanding than a Chili’s or an Applebee’s,” he says, because students “see us three or four times a day and we always need more variety. We have to be entertaining.”
Since Toong took over operations— after a brief stint with Compass Group and a long career with Marriott International—the UMass-Amherst campus has seen everything from fortune tellers to Sunday dim sum brunches to orchestras become commonplace in the dining commons. “We don’t do specials once a month,” Toong says. “We do them twice a week.”
An expansive grab-and-go program with daily sales of $3,000 remains a focus for Toong, but students’ interest in organics and local produce is driving future steps. A new multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art dining facility slated to open next fall will feature special events such as meals created by area chefs, a massive salad bar with local produce and, most ambitiously, no more batch cooking.
“Everything will be made fresh for each person,” Toong says. “Nothing will be mass produced.”
Todd Stratton
Corporate chef and director of research and development, Shoney’s Restaurants, Nashville, Tenn.
 Shoney’s Restaurants hired Todd Stratton in September 2005 with an explicit mandate: Bring the buffet chain back to its Southern home-cooking roots.
Previously a product-development chef for Darden Restaurants’ Red Lobster, Stratton is using his experience in creating the seafood chain’s signature limited-time offers to craft new recipes for Shoney’s menu and buffet line.
“It’s about reintroducing the heart of Southern food, and putting Southern flavor into the food as well,” Stratton says. He says he intends to add several new items to the Shoney’s lineup, such as grits. “A lot of people don’t like grits because they think there’s nothing to them, like plain oatmeal. But there’s lots of things we can do with grits simply by adding flavors,” he says. In addition, the chain soon will introduce a made-to-order waffle bar to its breakfast buffet.
Shoney’s has gone through several branding changes since its inception in the 1940s. The restaurant chain, once known for Southern cooking and later for burgers, added a salad bar in 1979 and breakfast buffet in 1980. But now that Shoney’s has reduced its number of outlets to 300 from 1,200, the company is intent on returning to its Southern home-cooking style and getting diners to order off Shoney’s menu.
Eric Ziebold
Excutive chef, CityZen, Mandarin Oriental, Washington, D.C.
Inspiration is serendipitous by nature but don’t tell that to Eric Ziebold. For this Culinary Institute of America grad, menu ideas for year-old CityZen can come from virtually anywhere. “I was in an antique shop when I saw a leather cigar box that seemed perfect for the warm bread service I wanted to do,” he says. “We’d been trying to come up with an idea and it was as though a light went off as soon as I saw that box.”
Fast forward several weeks, and similar cigar boxes are holding Parker House rolls created by Jewel Zimmer, CityZen pastry chef.
“We worked together to create a specific product and she came up with these amazing rolls,” he explains. “Everyone has a connection to what we’re doing here.”
Highlighting what he calls a “Modern American tasting menu,” his three- to seven-course meals concentrate on providing memorable guest experiences. “Each individual dish makes up the components of that experience,” says Ziebold, who began his career as a dishwasher in the kitchen of Aunt Maude’s in Ames, Iowa. “We concentrate on how everything works together and creates a balance through many varied components. We want to offer different flavors and different aromas and different tastes but they don’t have to all be on one plate.”
Ziebold, who has been lauded by Food & Wine and Bon Appetit magazines, says he has no favorites when it comes to his creations and, like any parent when describing his affection for his children, highlights each one’s strength.
“Some I have a more emotional attachment to than others,” he says. “Others I like for their technical aspect. Some I like because they use a good product.”
Ziebold says his dishes are variations on classics but that technique is not necessarily why guests return. “What we do is stylized to a degree but at the same time there are many aspects to the experience that people grasp onto and get excited about,” he says. “Customers love some of our dishes just because they taste good.”
Camp Howard
Executive chef and associate director of dining, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
 Vanderbilt’s 600-seat Freshman Commons dining center won’t be complete until 2008, giving Camp Howard a little time to assess what a state-of-the-art campus dining facility will need to be. But in the meantime, he and the dining staff need to feed 11,000 demanding undergraduate and graduate students plus faculty and staff.
With the mandatory meal plan doubled for this year’s freshmen to include 14 meals each week, pressure is on to provide an enticing variety of food and service options, says Howard.
“We’ve seen a lot of food trends come, but not a lot go,” he says of customer interest in ethnic cuisines, natural and organic foods and more. “We try to keep foods simple, with high-quality ingredients, but also a little bit chic,” he says. “You want to add that one ingredient that spurs a little curiosity.”
The counterpoint to the simplicity of foods is the imagination Howard has put into development of menu and service concepts. Ro*Tiki, an island-themed quick-service operation with touch-screen ordering, serves wraps, panini, salads and more to 400 customers daily. Carmichael Tower residence hall houses C.T. West, a Western-barbecue restaurant featuring Texas-style brisket and pulled pork, and Mud, a coffee and desserts spot. Specialty concepts will continue to spread across campus.
“Our focus in the past was on attracting students to dining centers. Now we know we also need to give them what they want, where they are,” he says.
Stan Frankenthaler
Executive chef-director of culinary development, Dunkin’ Brands, Canton, Mass.
 Stan Frankenthaler helms Dunkin’ Brands efforts to create new menu items for Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins and Togo’s.
The former chef-owner of Salamander restaurant in Boston, Frankenthaler honed his menu-creating skills as culinary development coordinator at Whole Foods Markets. There he worked on the team that integrated hot foods into the grocery’s salad bars and helped create the new seafood restaurants that Whole Foods has opened in some stores.
One of Frankenthaler’s projects is helping evaluate a test of panini sandwiches at 250 Dunkin’ Donuts units in Rhode Island. “The panini are getting very good reaction,” he says. “We have a great opportunity there because traditionally we have done a terrific job being a morning bakery and a breakfast sandwich stop with a great cup of coffee. Now we have the opportunity to offer lunch.”
In addition, Frankenthaler is helping Togo’s launch a line of new salads. The chain also will soon offer catering and box lunches. And under his guidance, Baskin-Robbins will introduce new sundae and shake flavors.
Frankenthaler joins a Dunkin’ Brands culinary team led by Vice President of Global Research and Development Michael O’Donovan, a master chef who earlier worked in menu development for Panera Bread. Executive Pastry Chef Christopher Boos and Sous-chef Philip Kafka both are veterans of Au Bon Pain.
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