Bud's Bar - Sedalia, CO

Once again, thanks to hamburger man George Motz for recommending the burger at Bud's Bar just outside Denver. George has never steered me wrong, and this one was no exception. I didn't see a single person come in here and not order a burger.

Research

One of the most fun parts of what we do at Green Olive Media is the research that goes into our projects. A big part of that research involves eating. We need to explore what our clients' competitors are doing, and focus on what makes our people different. A recent highlight was a client's request that we eat at as many burger places as possible in New York to see what the newest trends were (by the way, I'm game for another one of those days if anybody's opening a burger joint).

Our most recent bit of research has revolved around chocolate, thanks to one in-progress project (Olive And Sinclair), and one that we recently completed (The Chocolaterie). A couple of the standouts that we've tried are the Komforte French Toast (real french toast pieces), and the Xocolatl Chicharron (with bits of pork rind).

Paella!

I didn't think to ask Hector Santiago from Pura Vida how many people this could feed...the pan was about 4 feet across:

Nashville Flood Relief Benefit Dinner - July 13, 2010

Join us in Nashville on July 13 for a benefit featuring our pals John Fleer (Lonesome Valley), John Currence (City Grocery), Lee Richardson (Capital Hotel), Linton Hopkins (Restaurant Eugene), Kelly English (Restaurant Iris), Nick Seabergh (Giardina's), and David Guas (DamGoodSweet). Dinner will be at The Cannery - see here for details and tickets.

Fruition - Denver, CO

Just a shout-out to Alex Seidel, one of Food & Wine's 'Best New Chefs' for 2010, Chef at Fruition in Denver, and the guy who served me one of the best seafood dishes I've had in a while - Potato-Wrapped Oysters Rockefeller:

Cherry Cricket - Denver, CO

Here's just a small sample of the amazing signage to be found in Denver - check back soon for an extensive gallery of the vintage motel signs along Colfax Avenue.

Sushi Yasuda - New York, NY

A question that I often get is "what's the best meal you've ever had?" I'm never able to answer it - I've had too many 'best meals ever' to count. Just this year, I've had several that certainly rank in the top 10 - a 24-hour stretch with visits to both Momofuko Ko and Blue Hill Stone Barns was a particular highlight. When pressed, though, I usually tell people that the meal that Elizabeth and I had about 10 years ago at Sushi Yasuda was the best. I'm not sure why we haven't been back since then...most likely because I was afraid that another meal there couldn't live up to the memory that I had of it. We decided to pay a visit again last week, and after sitting at the bar and having chef send out whatever he thought was best, until we told him to stop, I'm happy to report that it's easily the best place I've been all year.

More Awards!

Green Olive Media has received two Gold Awards from the International Academy Of The Visual Arts / Communicator Awards for our design of the Holeman & Finch and Cakes & Ale websites.

Green Olive Media Wins Four American Graphic Design Awards For Web Design

We're proud to announce that four of our recent web design projects won 2010 American Graphic Design Awards - Holeman & Finch, Jackie Mills, Aria and Vern Yip.

Field Peas

Just a tip...the field peas at Carver's Country Kitchen in Atlanta today are just about perfect...

Identity For The Florida Scallop & Music Festival

We've begun designing the identity and handling the communications for the Florida Scallop & Music Festival, to be held in Port St. Joe, FL on August 7 & 8, 2010. See here for a preview of the design.

Food Signs In Memphis

Memphis was a wonderland of classic food and restaurant signage - a few highlights:

Ace Hotel - New York, NY

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the Ace Hotel for having the foresight to equip our hotel room not only with a decent turntable, but also a few great records. Note the Black Keys album they had waiting when we arrived:Second, thanks for having room service from The Breslin - this ham and cheese sandwich is this year's top breakfast so far:
And last, thanks for having a Stumptown branch in the lobby...I don't even drink coffee and enjoyed the better part of a cup (with a side of Mast Brothers chocolate):

Little Chick Restaurant - Metter, GA

I stopped here not knowing anything about the restaurant, but figured any place with such a quality sign couldn't be all bad..turns out the fried chicken is top-notch...

We've Made It

I knew we'd finally made it when I spotted our 55 South logo design on a koozie...

Mobile Post - Gus's Fried Chicken, Memphis, TN

First stop after leaving the airport...

Memphis In May!

Jeff's off to Memphis to cook with the Peg Leg Porker team for the annual Memphis In May festival. We'll surely post plenty of photos here, but you can also follow us on Twitter for real-time updates of ribs, shoulders and whole hogs...

Food Photography Exhibit At The Getty Center

Los Angeles' Getty Center has a great food photography exhibit, "In Focus: Tasteful Pictures," now through August 22. Stop by there before your next meal at Animal...
Memphis, from the portfolio Troubled Waters, William Eggleston, negative, about 1971; print, 1980. © Eggleston Artistic Trust

Congrats to Chef Sean Brock of McCrady's - James Beard "Best Chef Southeast"

As with everyone we work with, we define a campaign, then everything we do from press releases to email blasts to graphic design to events to even websites carry forward that overall campaign theme.

Example: our campaign, internally, for Chef Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene back in 2006 - 2008 was "Linton Loves You More than Your Grandmother" -- (okay, so we don't say that outside the four walls of our office, but when you think back about the stories that came out about Linton, you kind of get the point. It was the beginning of the media focus on canning, preserving and pickling...

Similar story -- A few years ago we received a call from Sean Brock...he had left Nashville's Capitol Grille at The Hermitage Hotel for the then 224-year-old McCrady's in Charleston. We are often asked what our relationship is with folks - I guess you would call it a "case study" of sorts. The deal with Sean is that when he arrived in Charleston he was really young, and really enthusiastic about using science to make food realize its fullest potential. Deal is, a lot of the hype focused on his use of science...not on the whys but on the hows, if you will. Our job was to use public relations and graphic design to tell a different story. The story we told was about "The Dirt Farmer Chef" (I personally had a lot of other names for the campaign but co-worker Kempten made me keep this one squeaky clean).

First up, we wrote the story via the media kit -- this media kit was so fun to write and produce - it included stints hanging out with Sean and his pigs on Wadmalaw Island, eating pickled eggs and beef jerky. Here is the old kit - we wrote it, handled all the photos (Jeff / Garnish Photography), pitched the stories, developed events and designed some pretty compelling visuals to go along with all promotions.

We handled the redevelopment of the restaurant's website which launched in November of 2008. We won the Bronze Medal Horizon Interactive Award in 2009 for the McCrady's site. (The Green Olive Media Design Team won four awards for sites that year from Horizon -- including a gold medal for the Richard Blais site.)

We worked with Sean on telling the campaign story of "The Dirt Farmer Chef" and this is a snapshot of placements:

Filmed the Food Network's "The Next Great Chef" in 2008 and then "Iron Chef America" in 2009.

(This was a time in which Sean was nominated for James Beard "Rising Star Chef" award along with a couple other GOM clients.)

We traveled a lot with Sean (the owners of McCrady's didn't exactly love how much he was out of the kitchen, but I think it paid off). We pitched for placement in events all over the south from the Viking Range Headquarters in Greenwood, MS to the Chelsea Market in NYC so that Sean could tell people about Jimmy Red corn and go on about seed saving. We booked media desk side visits...you know...the general PR stuff.

We worked with Sean to place him in articles which focused less on molecular gastronomy and more on the farm-to-table work of which he was most proud:
Placement of a story in the Wall Street Journal on his creamed kimchee (with lovely supporting photos from Jeff). This highlighted Sean's love of mixing southern ingredients (mustard greens, collards) with Korean flavors and technique (the result of too much time spent boozing with Chef David Chang).

I remember when Sean called to tell me that it was D-Day for his first pigs -- he was like a little kid. Here is the blog post with pics of his babies. Of course we spread the heck out of this sentiment via social media.

We worked with our great friend, writer John Kessler and Beverly Stephen for several months to tell the story of the first farm Sean ran, which, thanks to Beverly, was featured in Food Arts (also shot by Jeff) in June 2009.

We pitched the heck out of the State of South Carolina g-men to help get the message out about this chef who cared so much about the history of the food to eventually yield the "Discover South Carolina" campaign.

We planned crazy fun events pairing Sean with our other clients at the time -- pairing great chefs together sometimes really strengthens the message....we hooked him up with Richard Blais on the heels of his 'Top Chef' run...with John B. Shields and Karen Urie of Town House in Virginia, Anne Quatrano in Atlanta, etc...

We drove our pals at Southern Living, Martha Stewart, and JJ Goode crazy until we could get them to give nods....

Of course we always tried to keep the stories on brand - and on the campaign we were focused on - i.e., "Southern Comfort." Details Magazine...great to spread the message beyond the foodie mags.

The "Dirt Farmer Chef" campaign ended in 2009 - we no longer handle PR for McCrady's...the owners wanted to go with someone living in Charleston.

We are still close friends with Sean (and still occasionally fall victim to his ever-present pocket stash of whiskey).

We are very proud of Sean. The campaign message has changed with the new guard, but to us, he is still the chain wallet-wearing, southwest Virginia country redneck who we love with all of our hearts (only now he has the money to buy Billy Reid.

Nashville Flood

Just checked in with our Franklin and Nashville clients -- my husband / partner / best friend Jeff's parents were in Atlanta this weekend for our son's birthday so we don't have the birds' eye view this morning -- relying on guys in Nashville via text and tweet...

Follow this man on Twitter -- he is amazing at keeping us informed through pictures: http://twitter.com/jimcantore

Nashville -- Monday Morning -- 2nd Avenue
(photos via Jim Cantore)




Déjà vu from last year when Canoe Restaurant flooded in Atlanta.
Canoe flooded on September 21, 2009 and reopened November 23, 2009. The owners spent nearly $800k on the clean up which included the gardens, payroll, restaurant, bar, wine inventory - you name it... Carvel, Vince, Laurie, Matt, Jennifer, and publicist Kempten, Ron worked ridiculously hard to bring the iconic Atlanta restaurant back to life -- I saw the magic of our industry before my eyes - from my good friend writer John Kessler's (Atlanta Journal - Constitution) support in the papers to the purveyors who generously helped stock the pantries.