Lessons in Excellence from Charlie Trotter

September 15, 1999
Creating a world-class restaurant requires command of more talents than cooking alone. A wise chef must master all the arts: painting, music, architecture, and even dance, all of which combine in any consummate dining experience. A chef must also acquire business skills: accounting, human resources, management, finance, media relations--an error in any one of those compromising dining perfection. Chicago's Charlie Trotter has conquered all those areas, and Clarke has focused on Trotter's noncooking aptitudes to find insights into the success of Trotter's restaurant and, by extension, any other thriving enterprise. Based on Tom Peters' standards of excellence, Clarke's analysis reveals how Trotter himself works and how he engenders similar excellence in his restaurant staff. It may offend conventional wisdom to enthrone a chef as a paragon of outstanding business leadership, but given the choice in leadership role models, what makes the world a better place: Attila the Hun's heads on pikes or a creative chef's savory pike on fiddleheads? ((Reviewed September 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)