“My compliments to the chef!”
I apparently voiced this sentiment at the age of 5, enjoying a piping hot metal dish of cheesy, gooey eggplant parmigiana at Albanese’s, an Eastchester, NY landmark restaurant that closed long before the Internet was invented. In other words, I’ve had food on my mind for a long darned time!
Fast forward to 2009.
“THE HUNGER entertainingly describes one of those wonderfully unlikely bizarro career arcs that can only happen in the restaurant business...A terrific first person tour of the best and worst of the back-of-the-house New York restaurant world with an all-too rare happy ending.” — Anthony Bourdain
This beautiful blurb from the writer/chef who influenced so many of us, appeared on the back jacket cover of the book I co-authored with my dear friend, Chef John DeLucie. Nothing better captures my passion for food: a year spent in the cramped kitchen of The Waverly Inn, an experience that John and I turned into an award-winning memoir, the pages scratched out at Keith McNally’s Morandi over eggs, espressos, and breakfast flatbread pizzas.
John continues to chef at numerous fine establishments, and my journey led me to launch Beyondish, a concept I’d been carrying up and down the back roads of America for nearly all my life. I raised some capital, got our LLC papers, assembled a staff, and then watched the doors of every restaurant in America close due to Covid. We were toast before we began. But we put the start-up money on ice, built our site, and came out of hiding with the rest of the country in August of 2021.
Four years later we’re still here, though plenty of beloved eateries are not. I cover office rent, IT maintenance, and marketing and social media consulting fees. But my greatest joy is paying the up & coming writers who bring all these great, unique, entrepreneurial stories to the pages of Beyondish. We’ve trimmed our overhead to the thinness of a good slice of imported prosciutto, but without the writers, this might all go away.
No one likes asking for dough. Me neither. I know what money means. So I’m making this appeal as the final dog days of August settle in and with all due respect to that looming fifty-dollar lobster roll. Believe me, I’m hankering for one, too.
Please consider taking a chance with us. We’ll keep the reviews and stories coming, and shine a light on the small business owners who keep our favorite places open. Thanks for thinking about it. It’s truly appreciated.
Always hungry,
Ken Carlton, Editor-in-Chief
Being a part of Team Beyondish is and has been such a joy for me, avid writer, cook, cuisine lover! Thank you Ken, et al… lets make this another five years!