Giving a speech for many can feel like being a deer in the headlights

Giving a speech is a hard thing to do. It requires careful planning, rehearsing, exact timing and a thorough knowledge of the audience. All these elements have equal importance, even if the speaker is simply offering a toast (particularly if a few drinks have preceded the moment).

For several years I wrote the speeches for Joe Baum, the legendary former CEO of The Rainbow Room and Windows on the World.  The procedure was always the same. He hated giving speeches and invariably canceled at least five of our first scheduled meetings.

The next step required his secretary to retrieve copies of every speech he had ever given since the beginning of time.

Then I showed up and he began by insisting certain paragraphs from his previous talks be included included in the forthcoming speech (regardless of the occasion or the assigned topic).

After dozens of drafts, false starts, whining on my part, whining on his part, my refusal to speak to him, he glowering at me…we traveled together to the meeting.

Introduction over, he’d look over at me — and wink.

Then he’d shove all my neatly typed triple-spaced pages in his pocket and say whatever came into his head.

It was always a huge success.

It took me years to understand my part in this equation was simply to help him summon the courage to accept the notion that he was loved.

The lesson I so painfully learned is that all writers are not great speakers, and speakers succeed only when they accept the original premise that a speech requires “careful planning, rehearsing, exact timing and a thorough knowledge of the audience.” These rigid rules only apply to some people though…

I love this quote from Walt Disney. He said, “I’d rather entertain and hope that people learn, than teach and hope that people are entertained.”

There is a brilliantly researched article on The Ladies Who Lunched in the February 2012 Vanity Fair magazine. It reminded me so much of the early days at The Four Seasons restaurant in New York City.

While capturing our  imagination, Joe Baum elevated the act of dining into a fine art. Long before it became fashionable to embrace farm to table concepts, this legendary restaurateur extraordinare, changed the way America eats.

• He was the first restaurateur to commission farmers to grow vegetables and fruits specifically for his restaurants
• The first to have salt water and fresh water fish tanks in his restaurant
• The first to introduce fine art in the form of paintings, sculptures, carved wood and blown glass into restaurants
• His table top designs are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art
• He was the first to undertake scholarly research to authenticate the details of his restaurants
• The first to engage professional theatrical designers to produce custom-fitted staff uniforms
• The first to create restaurants as entertainments
• The first to offer a formalized seasonal menu and create a distinctively American menu — written in English
• The first to launch major advertising and public relations campaigns for restaurants

I admire people who take risks. I speak not of those who like to jump out of airplanes high in the sky, or those who challenge us to look, or avert our eyes from their daring cleavage. Rather, I like risk takers, who dare to dream up something they’ve never done before and take the plunge.

Legendary restaurateur Joe Baum (right) with Alan Lewis & Chef Andre Renee

The person’s risk taking may be as simple as highlighting a Five Ingredient Fix, then elegantly presenting it in an original and charming manner. The risk taking could involve a variation, a new interpretation on a very good idea. It is also why I so admired and often speak of my friend and mentor, Joe Baum.

(He has been in my thoughts since my recent sentimental journey of Windows on the World.)

Few have taken risks and demonstrated such powers of original thinking as Joe. We would be astonished to learn that Charlie Trotter had opened a hot dog stand or that Alice Waters was presiding over a steak house. Yet this is just the sort of thing Joe did, over and over again. He produced one extraordinary stretch of the imagination after another.

Among the 167 restaurant concepts he created were Zum  Zum (a hot dog restaurant), Charley Brown’s (a steak house), Charley O’s (an Irish Pub), John Peele’s (with the menu written in olde English and beer served from yard-long hunting horns), The Hawaiian Room, The Forum of the Twelve Caesars, The Four Seasons and the Brasserie, La Fonda del Sol, Aurora, The Tower Suite, Trattoria, Paul Revere’s Tavern and Chop House, The Fountain Café and Tavern on the Green in Central Park, Spats (a twenties-style speakeasy), The Newarker at Newark Airport, The American Restaurant at Crown Center in Kansas City, and The Heartland Market (the forerunner of the now-ubiquitous food court).

Joe was also responsible for the menu at the International House of Pancakes, the restoration of The Rainbow Room, and two incarnations of Windows on the World. Each site had a distinctive regional or historic flavor and covered territory extending from the Pacific Islands to France, Italy, Latin America, Germany, England, Ireland, and Colonial America.  He targeted his places to every taste and all sizes of purses.

One of Joe’s few regrets was that he never created his own version of a genuine Jewish deli.

At first all of these restaurants may seem wildly different, but conceptually they were built from the same DNA. Just as a successful mystery writer writes the same book, with the same characters, over and over again, Joe Baum created one plot and made 166 variations on the theme.

He created his own language for restaurants and wrote it in many different dialects. All good restaurateurs, of course, share the same basic grammar. What differentiated Joe from others was the boldness and clarity of his concepts, the design of his physical spaces, the wording on his menus, his care for his guests and respect for his staff.

Joe was the kind of risk taker we should all aspire to be like–even if we must do so with both hands firmly holstering our money bags.