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.

Photo: Royalty-Free/Corbis

Becoming a restaurant critic is another super job you can consider if you love food and love restaurants. Just look at the explosion of online sites devoted to restaurant criticism today. Four million “experts” (and counting) seem to Yelping online while Zagat guides still flourish in print.

The restaurant criticism biz is changing rapidly. As Regina Schrambling wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Restaurant criticism can be divided into two eras: BG and AG. Before Google, reviewers could pretty much move freely about their business. Some might have felt compelled to slap on a wig, and those with integrity would definitely reserve and pay under an assumed name. By all standards of old-media journalism, restaurateurs were not supposed to know when a reviewer with the clout to make or break his investment was anywhere near the kitchen. After Google, the rules are being rewritten by the hour.”

There are many columnists who write restaurant reviews, but I personally think it is essential to have a solid culinary background in order to establish your credentials. Having at least an A.O.S. (Associate in Occupational Studies) degree from a professional cooking school  is a major credential. It puts you are in a much better position to have an educated opinion when you understand the  fundamental techniques of cooking and know how restaurants are operated. This doesn’t mean you have to make allowances when things go wrong, but  it can save you from making  embarrassing mistakes.

Some people have romantic ideas about looking for a job as a restaurant critic. They think it means free dining in fine restaurants and tossing off an opinion after taking a nap.  Sadly this is fantasy, not reality. Most of the top critics acknowledge they spend a minimum of 30 hours a week eating. The rest of the time is spent writing.

If you are starting out, it’s important to abide by the rules. This means remaining anonymous and unless you have an assignment from a publication or an online entity, you will have to pay for your own meals. Established publications reimburse you for your expenses, but many small publications do not, and they pay (usually a pittance) for the article.

Restaurant critics learn to live in an atmosphere where their presence – if detected – is met with groveling and cringing servitude, anxiety embedded with hostile loathing. But being liked is not part of the job. Honesty is.

Ruth Reichl, former restaurant critic of The New York Times and now editor-in-chief of Gourmet notes: “The critic’s responsibility is to the public. I don’t care about restaurants,” she said. “I care about readers.”

When critics do go out on a limb, though, the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to express an opinion, and there is not much an aggrieved restaurant owner can do about it.

William “Biff” Grimes, former restaurant critic of The New York Times, revealed that by the time he left his position, after serving five years on the job, he calculated he had written 438 reviews and devoured 1,200 meals.

After dining at a monstrously expensive restaurant, Biff was relieved that: “the tab wasn’t coming out of my pocket. Taking pen in hand, I affixed my signature to a bill that totaled nearly $1,500 for four diners dinners, tip not included. In one Olympic motion, I had broken all previous records by several hundred dollars. I felt the kind of mad exhilaration that criminals must feel when they’ve done something terribly, irrevocably wrong.”

He added: “Learning to eat is a kind of education. It rewards the adventurous. It pays double dividends to thrill seekers, who dare to taste a sea urchin; who do not flinch in the face of an andouillette; who, instead of sniffing and picking and probing when something odd turns up on the plate, dive right in, sending off sparks with their forks. We have a name for such people. We call them adults. And when they go out to a restaurant, they are not looking for solace; they’re looking for a good meal.”

One can only hope that there was no connection when critic Grimes moved from the Times dining section to the book review section to a new appointment as one of the paper’s obituary reporters. In essence, he moved from writing about meals to die for to the ‘dead‘ beat!

Bill Rice, esteemed Chicago Tribune food and wine columnist and former chairman of the Restaurant Awards committee for the James Beard Foundation, rightly points out: “A restaurant critic is a consumer advocate. His role is to provide the reader with a second-hand experience before going for a first-hand one,” says Bill. “What the reader wants to know is if he can anticipate receiving a good meal at an appropriate cost. The more the meal costs, the higher will be the expectations of both the critic and the guest.”

He adds: “An essential fact is that critics should like — or, better still, love — the restaurant business and be knowledgeable about every aspect of it. Restaurant reputations are too important to be left to the impressions of the uninformed.”

How are well-thought-out restaurant reviews written? Take it from a master like Alan Richman. In Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater, Alan chronicles his brilliant career as a wonderfully witty restaurant critic for GQ magazine, and lists five essential qualities a restaurant critic should have. “A good critic has to have taste,” says Alan, “That’s number one.” “Number two, experience, because it’s vital that you’ve tasted alot of food. With experience comes confidence. Something that is often missing in food critics today is passion. That’s three. Fourth, critics should have a sense of humor, because so much of dining out today is about entertainment. I hope nobody thinks it’s about sustenance, because when dining out, food is no longer about survival. Finally, we get into writing. Critics have to know how to write.”

These are very good tips!

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way,” said Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

In short, the period Dickens described in 1859 is much like today.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 38 million people in our nation — 13.9 million of them children — live in households that suffer from hunger or live on the edge of hunger. This hunger and “food insecurity” are far too widespread in our wealthy society. Hunger in the United States is a problem that can be solved.

Another report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveals we waste 96 billion pounds of food in America each year. A recent study from the University of Arizona at Tucson discloses that almost half the food in the country goes to waste — a statistic that should alarm an industry that is struggling to achieve greater efficiency in order to salvage profits.

Message to Mission Control: “We have a problem here.” It’s time to bring in the heavy hitters. As a start, we can assemble a table for four of the weightiest. Together they can find the answer to our problem.

Chair #1: The Queen of England knows all about losses. The British throne lost the 13 colonies: now, the United States of America. It lost India, (The Jewel in the Crown), Hong Kong and many other colonies, protectorates and dominions. Her Majesty also lost the Royal Yacht. She’s down to two castles and one palace. Even so, her annual operating costs for running the Royal Household soared to $80 million last year. Her photograph is printed on the British currency but she still has to pay hefty taxes. Some days the Queen dines in sumptuous elegance and luxury. Other days her solitary supper is served on a folding table in front of the television. She sees both sides now. She has noticed, “We are wasting far too much food and must pay attention to leftovers.” Hold that thought.

Chair #2: Seated at the table next to the Queen is a chair reserved for Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha. His $58 billion fortune made him the richest man on the planet, but he’s recently lost a staggering amount of his fortune in the global melt down. There’s one bright spot for him though. The home in which he still lives may be one of the few in North America that hasn’t declined in value since he bought it in 1958 for $31,500.

He bought Wrigley’s gum — the company — in 2008 for a cool $23 billion. Since then, he’s been chewing things over. (He also owns stock in Coca-Cola, beer, (Anheuser-Busch), and Pringles potato chips.) Warren Buffett is a man of simple tastes. He eats at fast food restaurants. He knows all about remaining profitable or semi-profitable or not losing. While people are hungry for many different things, Warren Buffett says, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Hold that thought.

Chair #3: Dr. Tim Ryan is the president of The Culinary Institute of America. He occupies the third seat at the table. He is a chef. Big Time! He started his professional life as a dishwasher so he is qualified to address the current despondency in the restaurant business from the ground up. He also is a Master Chef and one of only five Americans ever to receive the Presidential Medal from the World Association of Cooks Societies. He knows everything about kitchens and cooks and all things culinary. He says, “It’s exciting to see that people are going ‘green’ in every facet of their lives. Dining habits are no exception. I believe smaller carbon footprint foods will become more popular and further gain prominence.” Hold that thought.

Chair #4: Danny Meyer completes the table. He is a prince among men, adored by his staff, his guests, his purveyors and everyone who has ever met him, near, far or through his writings. He doesn’t own a palace: his restaurants are his castles. His restaurants and chefs have earned an astonishing, unprecedented 17 James Beard Awards for Excellence.

He doesn’t chew gum. He is not a chef. He is a restaurateur. He isn’t a sage but he is one of the three wise men. This means he knows a whole lot about restaurants and the people who dine in restaurants. He says, “I think people learn to trust that you get more when you first give more.  They learn that the best way to get a hug, is first to give one.”

As we gather together all these thoughts we realize that it takes only a small group of influential people to solve a problem. Every problem.

Our current pressing problem is we are not adequately matching the quantity of food we are throwing away —wasting—with its intrinsic value to the millions of people who need good food to eat.

We’ve all heard about the difficulties and the ‘what if’s’ of distributing foodservice leftovers. Yet, now is the time to change our thinking. The hospitality industry could and should become more hospitable. A restaurant, a catering service, indeed every company that serves food runs risks. Surely we could at the very least offer our leftovers to those who would be grateful to receive the untouched remainders from a banquet, a wedding feast or when the restaurant closes. We can also look to organizations like Share Our Strength for guidance on how to get started.

“Today’s slowing economy is having an impact on the restaurant industry; it is experiencing its steepest traffic losses,” announced the NPD Group. Maybe restaurants could receive a tax break if they distribute their surplus food with those who live nearby and are willing to accept it. We would not have to waste a lot of time and fuel or impose a heavy footed carbon imprint to reach them. The inconvenience is a small price to pay for something so valuable.

As Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” Together we can offer a gift of hope. And give and receive a warm hug.