Hey Luuuuuccccyyy, where’s my dinner…

Photo Courtesy: Awatukee Foothills News

In the Foothills of south Phoenix, nestled against the Awatukee side of South Mountain, lies a little bit of Cuba. Well, more than a little bit of Cuba, a whole family, in fact.

Babaloo’s Cuban Café is owned by mother and son team, Robert and Mayra Gonzalez. Yes, Phoenix has a few Cuban restaurants, but this one is actually owned by a Cuban family who really do the cooking and turn out masterful creations.

Inspired by Mayra’s heirloom family recipes, tasty dishes are turned out in a modern expression by Chef Robert. The Babaloo’s experience is a tradition more than a half century in the making, starting in a little town in the middle of Cuba called Esperanza, Las Villas to the narrow escape of the Castro regime to our little part of the globe.

Looking back on her childhood in Esperanza, a small farming town of North Central Cuba, Mayra remembers even outside of holidays, every family get together as a special event, especially growing up as a farmer’s daughter.

Gonzalez family in Cuba

The family turned the task of corn harvesting into a big party. While the men were out in the field, three generations of women were inside the kitchen preparing a huge meal. The sounds of laughter and cooking filled the house, along with the heady cooking smells of onions, garlic and cilantro. Thinking back to all the good times surrounded by family puts a smile on Mayra’s face.

Today, the Gonzalez family continues this tradition but combines a modern twist to some rustic family recipes. Mom calls Babaloo’s antiguo y moderno, Spanish for ‘antique and modern,’ but roughly translated today as old and new. Chef Robert takes the recipes handed down from his great-grandmother and adds his signature modern style and expression to traditional Caribbean flavors. The end result has guests coming from all over the Valley again and again.

“I’m constantly trying to stay current with culinary trends and what is going on in the culinary world,” said Robert. “We don’t want to be labeled an ethnic Cuban restaurant,” he adds. Instead, he wants his heritage and his family recipes to be the inspiration for his own culinary artistic expression. An expression cultivated at the Art Institute of Phoenix.

Which is fine by Mom, but nothing gets past her. She is often referred to lovingly as the Cuban Quality Control Officer. “For the Cuban dishes, I always taste them,” she said. “Sometimes they’ll put in some other ingredient and I’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t taste right. What did you put in there!’”

Expect to find modern twists on favorites like Ropo Vieja (which literally means ‘old clothes,’ in Spanish) which is a braised flank steak, slow cooked with bell peppers, garlic and onions until it begins to fall apart and resemble old clothes.

And diners can routinely be seen falling out of their chairs when they try Mayra’s tres leches cake which is made with a blend of three sweet creams. “I was going to have a bite, but now I plan to lick the plate when no one is looking,” exclaimed one diner. TF

I Bitz and Got the Bait and Switch

Come on in, the water's misleading

So I’ve been seeing these commercials for Orbitz with their offer “if you buy a ticket from us we will charge you no booking fees and guarantee your price so that if someone else books a ticket cheaper than yours we will refund you the difference.”  Fine. Sounds like a deal. Yeah right. It’s a deal all right.  Should’ve known there is a catch. See, what they don’t tell you is that when you supposedly choose seats, Orbitz does not send that information over to the airlines. It’s a ruse.

Yesterday, being a thorough and organized travel (or so I thought), I checked to see if the tickets I purchased last month were selling for less. No. Ok. So then I checked our seating assignments on the Northwest airlines site and found that I could not choose our seats even though we had secured seat assignments over a month ago.  So I called Northwest Airlines site directly.  I found that I did not have a seat assignment on the flight but my traveling companion did.  I tried to choose a site but the only seat that I could get was at the back of the plane in the center.

I discovered that when you choose a seat on Orbitz that they do not even send that information over to Northwest.  Orbitz purchases tickets in bulk and only pretends to offer you the opportunity to choose your seat.  What they don’t tell you is that you may not even be confirmed on the flight.  Unless they tell you in the small print somewhere, I don’t remember seeing anything about that. And Northwest? Refuses to do anything to help. Period. Airline policy. Whatever.

So, I called Orbitz and spoke to a lovely woman in India whose command of the English language was, well lets say interesting.  Nothing she could do. Then after much gnashing of teeth on my end she claimed that she was able to seat us together in 9A and 9B.  So, I went to the Northwest site, and again, only one seat confirmed the other with no assignment at all. Did she lie to me?

We called again and got a gentleman with better English and much compassion but no seat assignment.  We were told that the airline might be able to assign our seats together at the gate.  If we are one of the 30 or so passengers to arrive at the gate first.

Our lesson.  I find it crazy that with airlines and air travel in the tank that 1) Orbitz would mislead customers and 2) that Northwest would offer such crappy service.  Even though I was told by the NWA agent Northwest controls 70% of the seating arrangements online or over the phone I would still have to go to the airport no more than 24 hours before the flight in order to confirm a seat assignment.  So much for hanging on to customers and encouraging Americans to travel again.  So, the bottom line: 1) no seat assignment or confirmed seat as of today, 2) $35 in handling fees for 2 checked bags and 3) If I’m lucky, one of us gets to sit at the back of the plane between two strangers.  Am I being unreasonably picky? Our tickets are just under a thousand dollars round trip.  I don’t think so. Is it unreasonable to want to sit together when the chief part of the travel experience is to enjoy the exploration together?

What do you think?

I have the best clients…

Four Lewis and Roca attorneys were recognized by the American Bar Association for their work with the Holocaust Survivors Justice Network (HSJN).  The Pro Bono Publico Award, is the profession’s highest recognition for pro bono legal work.  The firm’s volunteer attorneys are Gabe Beckmann, Sivan Korn, Emily Gubler Clark and Caryn Tijsseling. The attorneys have devoted numerous hours of time free of charge to work with survivors on the compensation claim-filing process. The Holocaust Survivors Justice Network is an international initiative established to assist Holocaust survivors in obtaining reparation payments under a program established by the German government.

Nice to have good news, given the recent tragedy at the Holocaust Musuem in D.C. and today’s announcement that Prosecutors in Germany have formally charged alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder in World War II.

Pssst…I’m talking about you.

I read a blog post by Linda Vandeverde today at Valley PR Blog about the changing world of old school PR and this new social media covered by the New York Times in regards to PR in Silicon Valley.  So, it got me thinking this would make a good post on my own blog.  See, we’re not talking just Silicon Valley here. This new kind of PR is everywhere, the point Linda makes.

Yesterday I *twittered* that, as I was writing the marketing and PR plan for a new client, I realized that the days where social media had its own section in the plan are gone.

Instead, we are motivated to reach specific audiences in support of various strategies by incorporating both the real and virtual worlds. Why? Because people are having conversations instantly and shaping the way we think about other people and brands every single moment.  But haven’t we always done this? Of course.  But now, technology gives us the opportunity to share these conversations with others, around the world, instantly.  Not just with a few friends over long stretches of time.  Instantly.  Now that’s a helluva word. Instantly.

Social media–this hybrid between print and verbal communication– is fascinating.  Just this weekend, out with friends, many of them were taking pictures and posting them to Facebook, real time, and talking about where we were and what we were doing. All the while, they were mentioning the name of the restaurant and commenting on the experience we were having. This was all to the benefit of the restaurant whose owners had no idea we were talking about them.  Basically, free PR and advertising. And who doesn’t want that?  Hold that thought.

So this got me thinking: how will this new social media affect not just PR but customer service and experience marketing?  Is anyone thinking about that?  They should.  Because, the stakes are higher. Here is where every second you interact with your customer is more important than ever.  You can’t afford to give lousy customer service.  You have to back up your product and service and make the whole experience fun. Memorable.  Something to talk about.  Are you doing that? Are you sure?  Every second?  Every employee buys into that idea? Why?

Because that diner over there in the corner, the one siting by himself, is talking about you right now…with thousands.