Tuesday, March 23, 2010

A Real Man's Lunch. Yesterday and Today.


Here is an amusing article from the New York Post today in which they compare the businessman's lunch of the 1960's, as seen on TV's Mad Men, compared to today:



















When the new power players do lunch, they eat like girls

http://www.nypost.com/p/lifestyle/food/the_new_macho_meals_v2HONFj63vw7MhpBfaPxgJ/1

By CARRIE SEIM

...Jerry Della Femina, who opened his first Manhattan ad agency in 1967...fondly recalls boozy business lunches of the 1960s and ’70s... “As soon as the bartender saw you, he would start shaking a martini for everybody.” 

“We’d start to look at the menu, and another martini would arrive. And while we were ordering, a third martini would arrive.

“Then we would have a bottle of wine with the food,” he continues, describing platefuls of steak, lamb chops, roast beef and pasta. “And someone would invariably say, ‘Instead of dessert, I’m going to have a glass of scotch.’ ”

[Today] Michael McCarty, owner of Michael’s, created a “power breakfast,".... Arranged delicately with egg whites, citrus salad and spinach, it sells “like gangbusters,” he says. “I can’t tell you how much granola we sell.”

The restaurant goes through 12 pints of berries each morning. (“Men love them,” says McCarty.) And the general manager says he can always tell the New York businessmen from out-of-town clients by their orders.

“A regular guy will have the berries,” he says. “The four guys from Oklahoma will have the Southern breakfast — the cardiologist’s delight.”

“Men like to eat well — meaning they’re watching their figures,” says the restaurant’s gregarious co-owner,  “They’re proud to order something healthy








5 comments:

Denise D'Agostino said...

I LOVE NY!!!!!!!! esp men in ny lol

Tony V. said...

I love Mad Men - I think it is the best show on TV and I think it (pretty accurately) describes how different the work place was in the 60's and early 70's from today. In those days, if you were part of the right "club" (i.e., the right race, religion and sex and from the right school) you were "in" and had very little competition for your job, at least compared to today. As a result, you could get completely drunk at work during lunch and it would not affect your performance relative to your peers all too much.

Today, the members of the old club face competition from women, minorities, non-Protestants and the like for their jobs (not to mention competition from overseas competitors) so it is simply not possible to take long three and four martini lunches and remain competitive in the workplace. I think this breeds some resentment, especially from the old-guard who wish we could have a return to the "good old days" but I think it is important to remember that back in the good old days, if you were not part of the "club", the good old days simply were not that good.

Terrence said...

So, Tony, where you "in" or "out?"

Tony V. said...

Tough to say. I probably would have been in, unless someone in the club learned my mother's maiden name, then I probably would have been out (or at least on the fringe).

Terrence said...

Then, of course there is your support of the soda tax which would raise some eyebrows! Just keep a copy of 'Atlas Shrugged' on your desk, and you'll be fine.