|
ADAM SMITH'S MONEY GAME Missed the show? Get a phone call half way through? Fail to catch the name of a stock in "Personal Best"? In case you did, we are happy to provide you with a transcript. If you would like a transcript from a previous season, please visit 800-All-News at www.800-all-news.com or call them at (800) All-News. ANNOUNCER: [voice over] This program is made possible by a grant from MetLife, helping people become financially secure for 130 years. Funding has also been provided by the Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation. ADAM SMITH: [voice over] In the Money Game this week, can cooking make you a fortune? Daniel Boulud is one of the world's great chefs. What are his secrets of superstar success? Why is Ireland such a hit at the movies and books and popular music? Plus, how can you buy into the Irish boom? Some personal best investing tips. Next.
Face to Face Back to Top ADAM SMITH: Hello, I'm Adam Smith and welcome to The Money Game. The rewards for success in the competitive restaurant world can be enormous. Franchises, publishing deals, TV shows and the like. But what does it take to create a truly great restaurant and keep it at the top? Is great food enough? How important are the critics? What about the intangibles -- the look and the feel of the place? What happens if the economy turns sour and the expense account trade goes away? For some answers, I went to see one of America's most celebrated chefs. Meet Daniel Boulud, face to face. DANIEL BOULUD: Let me explain to you what I'm going to prepare you today. It's a very spring dish in a way. It's made of crayfish, asparagus, morel, cocks cone and a puff pastry and a little chive flower. I think that opening a restaurant and becoming rich, I don't think is really the whole verdict. I think becoming famous, if you work very hard, I think it's the quality you have to your restaurant, to your food, to the service, to the wine, to everything will certainly make the restaurant a success. But I don't think we do it all for the money. We buy the best and only the best food available, at any cost. We buy the best wine available, the best vintage. So all this accumulates to sometimes an expensive dinner. [graphic: Restaurant Daniel Dinner for Two Total $309.17 (a la carte)] ADAM SMITH: [voice over] Daniel's restaurant is among New York's top half dozen. Its clientele is very well-heeled, ready and willing to pay hundreds of dollars for food and wine and a memorable dining experience. For a table, you have to book a month in advance. [on camera] How much of your prosperity is from the bubble economy of New York, where people can spend money without thinking about it? DANIEL BOULUD: Prosperity in New York right now it's for everybody, I would say. If times get harder, I think there will still be maybe not prosperity, but certainly in the longevity of a business, there will be also good times for the good ones. The strongest restaurants will remain, I think, through crisis, up and down. So first I put the asparagus. And right now there are purple asparagus. They are wonderful. You see, the head is a light blue-purple in a way once they are cooked. It's not totally green, green, green. So we put this, fresh morel, which has been roasted gently. ADAM SMITH: How long do you roast the morel? DANIEL BOULUD: Until they're very tender -- about five minutes. ADAM SMITH: If you think of the dishes you would most like to be remembered for, what would they be? DANIEL BOULUD: For me, one who has been very attached to my repertoire has been papillote of black sea bass, blackened potatoes -- crispy potatoes -- on a bed of leeks with a morel sauce and a sea scallop black tie, which is a sea scallop and black truffle wrapped in puff pastry and baked as a little mini scallop pie. And that's a wonderful dish. ADAM SMITH: Do you go eating in other restaurants to scout out ideas? DANIEL BOULUD: No, I never go eating with the idea that I am looking to scout out for ideas. I think the strongest inspirations come in my kitchen dealing with the ingredients we have of the particular season. I think that's where it all comes from. And with the chefs, communicating with a chef, expressing what you would like to try to do. And some dish work in the first time; some dish the second try, maybe, or the third will work better. ADAM SMITH: Do they ever fail? DANIEL BOULUD: No, because we work with very good product and I think the quality of the product is already saving the dish right there. ADAM SMITH: Even if the idea maybe wasn't such a great idea? DANIEL BOULUD: Then we just do it once. There's many, many dishes I've cooked where they never made it to the history. I mean, as good as they were, that spontaneous moment, the dish disappears fast. [cooking] Then the crayfish is made into a little ragu of diced morel and diced asparagus with a little bit of morel cream, which is morel cooked with a little bit of shallots and a little bit of cream. So we make a little like ragu of that and it goes right into-- also the cocks cone has been boiled and diced into it as well. ADAM SMITH: Any butcher shop would have a cocks cone? DANIEL BOULUD: Sometimes you can get it, yeah, if you request that a little bit ahead. ADAM SMITH: Tell me about building a restaurant. How do you get the word known that your food is really good? DANIEL BOULUD: The people who can discern the difference, who can make the difference between good food and very good food or average and very good will right away know who is a very good chef. Absolutely. I think it's the training also. I think it's training to be a diner, to be a guest. I think to be a foodee or to be a gastronome, it's a training. It's a question of training. As much as I can cook, someone has to train and learn how food is made about. ADAM SMITH: So this is a tough varsity to win a letter in. DANIEL BOULUD: But you know I have many guests who have never been here and what I want to make sure is that something clicks in their mind and they want to come back because they had a wonderful moment. And maybe they weren't aware of everything that was in the food, but they enjoyed the balance of it and the harmony with the wine we advise and all that. And I think that's the secret. I think people wish to be gourmet, except we have to help them a little bit getting there. ADAM SMITH: How do you help them? DANIEL BOULUD: By giving them good advice. By pampering them, I guess. By making them feel very happy. ADAM SMITH: [voice over] But the recipe for restaurant super stardom calls for more than a loyal clientele, fabulous food and an enticing atmosphere. To really make it to the top, you have to win raves from the critics. In New York City and possibly the nation, there's no writer more powerful than Ruth Reichl, an author and restaurant critic of The New York Times. RUTH REICHL, ``New York Times'': I find the power aspect of my job the most onerous. There are people who really love it. I'm not one of them. When I first started, I was working for a small magazine in San Francisco and it was a lot more fun because I didn't have that ability to really bring a lot of customers or really keep a lot of customers away. Given that I do have that, however, I mean, the institution that I work for is enormously powerful and it would be irresponsible not to consider that. I really try very hard not to think of the restaurants. I try very hard to think that the people who pay my salary are the readers of the newspaper. And they are the people I am ultimately most responsible to. And when I am writing a review that's not very favorable, I try very hard to think about somebody who has saved a lot of money to go to a restaurant and is going out for a big night and is going to be disappointed. ADAM SMITH: [voice over] For our chat, Ruth Reichl came dressed for work. To maintain her anonymity, she wears wigs and other disguises to the restaurants she reviews. [interviewing] Do you recognize Ruth Reichl if she walks in? DANIEL BOULUD: We could, we could not. I don't know. I don't know because I would never know if she's disguised or not. So I think it's-- but I don't want to live in fear of that. I think the only problem with a restaurateur who worries about the critic is then they have to worry about themselves to begin with I think. We all worry about the critics, but I think we try very hard every day to maintain our standards. ADAM SMITH: [voice over] In Ruth Reichl's opinion, Daniel does more than maintain a standard, he sets it. RUTH REICHL: This is, I think, the first restaurant that I gave four stars to when I came to New York. And it was enormously pleasurable for me. I went to-- my predecessor had given it two stars. And there was sort of a to-do about that because everybody expected that this great chef from Le Cirque was going to open his own place and have a great restaurant. And I went not expecting a whole lot. And the first meal I had there was so delicious, it was actually very simple. The first thing I ate of his was bistro food. I just happened-- he had tripe on the menu, which I happen to love. And I ordered it thinking, oh, this is just going to be a plate of tripe. It was the best tripe I had ever eaten. And the whole meal was like that. And then desserts came and he has a brilliant pastry chef. And I was completely astonished by the quality of the food. And they didn't know me, so it wasn't that they were dancing around being particularly nice to me. I was just another customer. DANIEL BOULUD: Somebody orders spring herbs with eggs and I put some on the morel and the asparagus, also, a little bit and a touch here and there. Then here I have a coulet of asparagus, white asparagus, which I put in between the asparagus to give a little bit more longer flavor of asparagus. ADAM SMITH: And what's in the sauce? DANIEL BOULUD: It's a coulet of asparagus, which is made of a puree of asparagus with a little bit of cream. And then this is a morel. ADAM SMITH: Do you make that in a blender? DANIEL BOULUD: Yes. And this is a morel also, cream. And that goes a little bit everywhere also. ADAM SMITH: Once you've established yourself as a top chef, how do you fend off the competition? DANIEL BOULUD: No, you don't try to fend off. I mean, for example, I don't know if you're aware, but ``Daniel,'' the restaurant, is moving at the end of the year. And I moving to the old Le Cirque space where I was the chef there for six years. And so, in a way, after five years of hard labor here at ``Daniel'' to try to make it up to one of the best restaurants in the city, I'm just closing and starting all over again. I'm just reassessing everything all over again. But I think it's even to get something better again for the consumer and for my customer. ADAM SMITH: Is this a good business? Do you make a lot of money? DANIEL BOULUD: For the hours and the energy we spend and the stress we live through, it happens to be a secure business for me. But the margin of security is still very thin. And it takes a lot of energy and hard work in order to keep that margin of security. ADAM SMITH: It's a lot of work being a good diner. DANIEL BOULUD: I think it's more work to be a good actor. [graphic: Ruth Reichl's ****Restaurants
In Focus Back to Top ADAM SMITH: Catch a leprechaun and his pot of gold can make you rich. Or so goes the Irish legend. But it's no myth that the gold right now is an Irish culture. Publishers can't get enough Irish tales; Celtic music finds its way to the soundtrack of Titanic. Irish dancers like those in Riverdance are in vogue. And Irish musicians are right up there on the charts. Why Ireland now? Our correspondent John DeNatale talks to an Irish author who was an obscure schoolteacher until he produced his major bestseller. The Irish phenomenon, In Focus. JOHN DE NATALE, Correspondent: [voice over] It may look like Woodstock, but it's an Irish music festival or fleadh. Clip from June 1997 Guinness Fleadh New York is the first stop in a national tour. Fifty thousand people paid $45 a head to celebrate the Irish influence in music. And this for-profit event is sponsored by Guinness Beer -- proof that there's a pot of gold nowadays in the business of being Irish. Joe Killian is the promoter of the festival. He says Guinness anticipates 2,000 barrels of good Irish beer will be consumed here. Killian took a small town idea and turned it into a money-making event. JOE KILLIAN, Producer, Guinness FLEADH: Fleadhs are, in Ireland, are very traditional events, and generally held in the summer, and they're music festivals. I took that idea and last year was our first year in New York. And this year we take it to Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. JOHN DeNATALE: So are you saying the wearing of the green has become synonymous with the making of the green? JOE KILLIAN: It becomes very big business. And an enjoyable business at that. JOHN DeNATALE: Why are so many Irish eyes smiling these days? To find out about the business of being Irish, I came to the American Irish Historical Society to meet with my old high school English teacher, Frank McCourt. His book, Angela's Ashes, is one of the publishing success stories of the '90s. FRANK McCOURT, Author: The Irish are the flavor of the month. We've always been on the scene, except in the arts. And now the Irish in Ireland and the Irish in America are beginning to express themselves. This is the movement that's catching so much attention. We've gone from the people that were despised to the extent that they used to put up signs saying ``No Irish Need Apply,'' all over New England. Now we're the darlings. And it makes me feel uncomfortable. JOHN DeNATALE: Why do you feel uncomfortable being the darling? FRANK McCOURT: I don't like to be the darling boy. I'd rather be out there. I'd rather be on the fringes of everything. I've always been on the fringes of everything. JOHN DeNATALE: [voice over] But after 30 years of teaching students to love books, Frank McCourt's memoir put him in the center of the Irish renaissance and on the bestseller list for 80 weeks straight. The story of McCourt's poverty-stricken childhood sold nearly three million copies. [on camera] Nobody expected this to happen. Why did it catch on the way it did? FRANK McCOURT: This is one thing that I can throw at my editors and publishers and I say, ``O ye of little faith that you published only 27,000 copies.'' JOHN DeNATALE: [voice over] McCourt says the appetite for Irish culture and music coincides with a new Irish voice that's a variation on an old tradition. [on camera] When I was your student in high school you taught us that Irish literature was unique; that this was a literature and music that could stare in the face of tragedy and find some humor. FRANK McCOURT: The Irish nature -- maybe we have an attention deficit disorder where we can't be tragic that long or comic that long, so we mingle the two. In Ireland, where the rain is plenty out of the heavens and then the sun is shining at the same time. So we-- I think we see the absurdity in everything. We could never produce a great drama-- tragic dramatist like Sophocles. I don't think we could sustain it. We'd start laughing. JOHN DeNATALE: You used to say when I was a student, Americans expected everything on a silver platter. Now you have everything on a silver platter. How does it feel? FRANK McCOURT: It feels like I have to go and write another book, that's what it feels like. And you can put a million this side of me and a million that side of me, but it won't help me to write the book. JOHN DeNATALE: [voice over] Money didn't do what years of teaching in New York City's Stuyvesant High School did for McCourt, which was to help him find his voice as a writer. FRANK McCOURT: In the beginning, I acted like an Irish schoolmaster -- domineering, authoritative, authoritarian. It didn't work. In the long run, I had to be myself. And as James Cagney said when somebody asked him about acting, he said, ``You go on to the set, you find your mark, you look at your man and you tell the truth.'' You were all sitting there. You all knew when the teacher was putting on an act. You all knew when a teacher wasn't being honest. So in the long run, as a teacher and as a writer, you learn the value of honesty. And the Irish, not only are they allowed to tell the truth, they insist on telling the truth. JOHN DeNATALE: [voice over] Telling the Irish truth on film has become big business. The Butcher Boy is the latest box office success in a long line of Irish movies that include The Crying Game, The Commitments and In the Name of the Father. The Emerald Isle is an amazing winner on the silver screen. FRANK McCOURT: The Butcher Boy is a breakthrough film because it deals with insanity. And it deals with a -- I hate to use the word, dysfunction -- a dysfunctional family; the stereotypical Irish alcoholic father and the suffering mother. But I think Neil Jordan gets into very dark places, which he did in The Crying Game. JOHN DeNATALE: [voice over] And McCourt says movies aren't Ireland's only export. Successful Irish businesses are on parade on both sides of the Atlantic. FRANK McCOURT: The land of saints and scholars is becoming a land of technology. There's a corridor that goes from Limerick City to the next city, and it's this kind of Silicon Valley with a drizzle.
Personal Best Back to Top ADAM SMITH: The Irish economy is one of the world's great success stories. Is there a way you can profit? Joining me now is Maggie Mahar of Bloomberg Personal magazine to help make your international investing strategy a personal best. Maggie, Ireland is a country that if you go to see The Beauty Queen of Leanane or any of the Irish dramas or you know the history of Irish literature, you'd think of as poor. It's suddenly getting not poor. MAGGIE MAHAR, Bloomberg Personal: That's right. Now we think of Ireland, we think of stone cottages and rolling green hills. We don't think of microchip factories and great wealth and high finance. But that's because our perception of Ireland is out of date. ADAM SMITH: When did all this happen? MAGGIE MAHAR: You've seen a real spurt of growth in the '90s, particularly in the last five years. The economy has been growing 8 percent a year on average in the last five years. Last year it grew 9 percent. ADAM SMITH: So it's a hot investment market? MAGGIE MAHAR: It's a very hot stock market. You have to be a little wary because that market shot up 35 percent in the first two months of this year, but then it came down. Now it's up 25 percent, which means that there are opportunities for investors to buy some stocks, real blue chips, at reasonable prices. ADAM SMITH: A handful of companies make up the bulk of the index of Irish stocks. MAGGIE MAHAR: That's right. ADAM SMITH: What are those companies? MAGGIE MAHAR: They are the Allied Irish Bank; the Bank of Ireland; Jefferson Smurfit, which is a paper company; CRH, a cement company; and Elan, a pharmaceutical company. The real ways to play the boom in the Irish economy is to buy in the financial sector, which in Europe means banks. There's no glass deagle there, so a bank also owns brokerages, insurance companies, et cetera. ADAM SMITH: How do you go about buying an Irish stock? You pick up the phone and call your broker and you say buy me an Irish stock? MAGGIE MAHAR: You buy the Irish stock in what's called American Depository Receipts, or ADRs. And you can buy ADRs through a discount broker like Schwab or your regular broker. It's really the best way and the easiest way for an individual investor in the U.S. to buy foreign stocks and many, many Irish companies trade as ADRs. ADAM SMITH: Are there Irish funds? MAGGIE MAHAR: There's one Irish fund. Irish Investment, is the name of a fund, and that fund trades on the New York Stock Exchange. And so anyone in the U.S. can buy it there. That's right, it's a closed-end fund. It trades about 14 percent discount to net asset value. Most country funds trade at a discount to net asset value. ADAM SMITH: That's about average, I would think. MAGGIE MAHAR: Yeah. It's actually a little lower than average. ADAM SMITH: And Europe seems absolutely boiling this spring. MAGGIE MAHAR: That's right. ADAM SMITH: Do you like Europe as a place to go? MAGGIE MAHAR: I think that much of Europe is too high, including the developing economies of Europe, so to speak -- Portugal, Spain, Italy. They've gone up a lot. This is true of Ireland, as well. And in all of these countries, inflation is going to be a real risk, and a real estate bubble, a stock market bubble. What Ireland has going for it is it's coming from a very low base. And Ireland is at a unique point in its history. For any country that moves from being an undeveloped to a developed economy, there's one crucial turning point, like an industrial revolution. And Ireland is going through that kind of a transition. ADAM SMITH: Going from stone cottages to chip factories in one generation. MAGGIE MAHAR: That's right. Exactly. ADAM SMITH: So what does the future look like in Ireland? Will this growth continue? Are there some risks involved? MAGGIE MAHAR: Growth will continue, but there are real concerns. Ireland will be part of the European monetary union and that means that by the end of the year, the Bank of Ireland is going to have to cut interest rates in Ireland by about 2 percent in order to be in line with German interest rates. And Germany is really the anchor for the EMU. ADAM SMITH: That's good for stocks here, right? MAGGIE MAHAR: Yes, but it may mean that they go up too fast. It may mean that real estate goes up too fast. The kind of asset bubble we've seen in the U.S., in Hong Kong, in Japan, could happen in Europe. ADAM SMITH: And then if you prick that bubble, the whole place goes down. MAGGIE MAHAR: The problem about things going up fast is they come down fast. That's right. On the other hand, you do have great prospects for growth in Ireland. It's coming off a low base, so it's not as over-developed as, say, the economy that was already developed. And that makes a big difference. You also have an excellent educated labor force in Ireland. The Irish population is getting younger, not older. In that way, it's different from the rest of Europe. Ireland had a baby boom in the '70s and it's a well-educated population. Half of all of the people go to university. [Graphic: How to Buy Irish Stocks]
ADAM SMITH: What question would you like answered to help you do your personal best in the money game? Get in touch at our e-mail address, letters@adamsmith.net. Or write to us the old-fashioned way at Adam Smith's Money Game, 885 Third Avenue, Suite 2800, New York, New York 10022. We look forward to hearing from you. And if we answer your letter on the air, I'll be sending you a personally-signed copy of my book, The Money Game. It is tempting to view restaurants like Daniel as a bull market phenomenon; an expensive pleasure; an institution doing well by serving people who are doing phenomenally well. In other ages of affluence, the well-off educated themselves in art and the artists became celebrities. Now we have the chef as celebrity. And as our chef himself says, it takes some attention and some work to be a good diner. I'm Adam Smith. See you next week as the Money Game continues. ANNOUNCER: For more of the Money Game, visit us in cyberspace at www.adamsmith.net. ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible by a grant from MetLife with over $330 billion in assets under management. Funding has also been provided by the Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation. Back to Top CREDITS Produced by ADAM SMITH EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTION Thanks to: Special thanks to: 3-D Models Provided in Part by 3-D CAFE For a VHS cassette send $19.95 or $5.00 for a printed transcript to: Copyright _ 1998 Adam Smith Educational Productions Ltd.
|
|
OTHER ITEMS About Adam Smith Global Television Transcripts
|
