Picking Out a "Good" Restaurant is a Skill

Just because the food is good, doesn’t mean it’s the right restaurant.

I remember one time sending one of my executives to a dinner with one of our main investors. I chose a Thai restaurant that I had been to that had 4.8 stars on Yelp. The food was delicious here (at least to me), but it was a small mom and pop restaurant where the ambience was casual and bustling (aka loud), and you’re very close to the tables near you.

He gave me feedback about how next time, for a dinner with our main investor, maybe we could take it up a notch and book something a little better and bigger. Not necessarily more expensive, but maybe not mom and pop-py, and definitely not too loud.

I was recently reminded of this when I was chatting with an executive friend of mine who was searching for an EA. He told me that one of the criteria for his EA would have to be someone who was well-traveled, more experienced, and knew how to pick out “good” restaurants.

If you had told me in my early years as an EA that picking out good restaurants was a skill, I would have laughed. But I loved that he pointed that out. It told me that he knew exactly the kind of EA he needed.

The reason picking out a good restaurant is a skill is because it takes more than simply making a reservation on OpenTable. You have to understand who the dinner is for, who the host is, what everyone’s dietary restrictions are, what the conversation will be about, what star or dollar sign level is appropriate, what ambience is required, what decibel level is best, what the goal of the dinner is, what layout you want/need, etc.

Once you understand all the details, only then can you start the search. Just because the food is good, doesn’t mean it’s the right restaurant.

Picking out a good restaurant also requires life experience and resourcefulness. If your executive is traveling to Turkey or Japan for a business trip, how do you go about finding an appropriate restaurant? What do you do when there is a language barrier? What about when there’s a cultural barrier? What if your exec is vegetarian, but business folks in Seoul, Korea always treat their guests to a meat-heavy restaurant because that is a sign of respect? How do you find out what type of restaurant it is and what’s on the menu that’s written in another language? How do you tactfully ask their assistant to change the restaurant if it doesn’t suit your executive’s dietary restrictions?

This applies not just to picking restaurants. It applies to how we pick offsite venues, corporate retreats, hotels and car services for our execs, sales incentive trips, team building activities, etc.

You’re not going to do this well at the start of your EA career, and that’s ok. You’re not meant to. You haven’t been exposed to what’s out there - all the variety, all the options. It will take practice and lots of trial and error and making mistakes before you can do this with your eyes closed.

But like with anything in life, with practice you’ll get better at it.