What You Get Can Be Better Than What You See

By Frank Absher

We’re so quick to judge. A recent trip out of the country reminded me of just how big a mistake that is.

We visited a country that could best be described as “underdeveloped.” We’ve been there before, so we were prepared to cope. My mistake was that I wasn’t prepared for the realization that I’ve been missing something good because my mind wasn’t open.

Driving down the narrow roads at night, you see the eating establishments on either side opening directly onto the streets. They look run down. There’s seldom air conditioning. Everything is open-air. The streets are crowded. It’s not something I’d normally sample, but we decided to live dangerously.

Walking inside one of these places is like walking back in time. The ceiling fans spin lazily. There are a couple stools at the bar and a few tables in the back. If you’re lucky, the “back” opens out to the ocean below.

Menus are presented, and in most cases, they also have English translations. You do the mental calculation of how much the prices are in dollars. But then a whole different world opens up.

The food and wine are exquisite. Every ingredient is fresh, and the one or two folks back in the phone booth-size kitchen work magic. In fact, with the exception of the “American-style” restaurants there, every place we went into was superb. It’s just that you’d never know it looking in from outside.

These establishments were also proof that restaurants in the U.S. that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on décor might do better to invest some of those bucks in product and cooking talent.

I’ve worked in all kinds of radio stations. One even had a production studio constructed of cinder blocks with egg cartons on the walls to baffle the sound. I also worked in a station whose owner had a full-time carpenter on staff to create the atmosphere of a fantastic place to work. Feel free to speculate on whether the effort was a success.

So radio, like everything else, is a case of image versus reality. But like those cooks sweating it out back in the all-too-small kitchen, it’s really a case of the workers in the trenches determining the final quality of the product, and those restaurants I recently visited can count on me returning every year to enjoy a product that was outstanding, in spite of my first impression of the restaurant. Owners and managers who concentrate on the quality of the product will reap the benefits of that decision.

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