Published in the LRA magazine, A La Carte, Winter 2014 edition. By Wendy Waren, VP of Communications.
Meet Bruce Attinger, 2014 Louisiana Restaurant Association Chairman, a University of Maryland graduate with a B.S. in Biology,
who changed the course of his life with his first restaurant job in 1971.
 |
Bruce Attinger and his wife of 32 years, Jan
grace the cover of the LRA's A La Carte
magazine, Leadership Edition, Winter 2014. |
More than 40 years ago, Bruce Attinger began his restaurant
career at the Black Steer Restaurant in Washington, D.C. With no previous
experience in the business, he took the job at the urging of one of his
roommates, Bob Basham, and hit the ground running. His stint as a bartender
lasted two short weeks before taking on various positions in the family run
business.
Nick Berbakos and his wife, Dottie, owned the Black Steer
Restaurant located just a block from the White House and were Attinger’s first
mentors in the business.
“I just wanted to learn the business and Mr. Nick gave me a
chance and a parking pass,” said Attinger. “The Black Steer was right around
the corner from the White House and did 350 covers at lunch, with the clientele
made up primarily of the [White House]Press Corps who came to the Black Steer
because they couldn’t afford to eat next door at the pricey Sans Souci.”
Working at a restaurant in the nation’s capital, Attinger
found that he would have to recognize the town’s movers and shakers.
At the time, Attinger admits he was so apathetic when it
came to politics, that Berbakos would instruct him on who was important enough
to sit in the main dining room and who to send to the upstairs dining room.
“There was this one guy who I would always send upstairs
because he was so arrogant,” Attinger said. “After the first day of testimony
in the Watergate trials, the gentleman entered the restaurant and received a
standing ovation from the diners. He was Robert Odle, the first to testify in
the Watergate trials. From that moment on, he was seated in the main dining
room.”
At the early age of 21 and shortly after he started, Berbakos
got sick and told Attinger, “I’m going to have to lean on you.” He began
learning the ordering process, which on some days were three different meat
orders depending on who had the best prices, along with shopping prices from
half a dozen produce and grocery houses. During the year and a half he worked
there, Berbakos was sick most of that time. Attinger admits, he never seriously
considered a future at the Black Steer, because he erroneously assumed Berbakos
would turn the restaurant over to his daughters.
“When Mr. Nick came back to work, he was so indebted to me
that he gave me a sizeable bonus,” said Attinger. “But again, my roommate, Basham,
was egging me to explore other options and ‘go see how corporate restaurants
run’.”
Basham and Attinger went to interview with Steak & Ale.
Having never gone through a formal interview, Attinger found himself sitting
down with a corporate recruiter being asked questions of which he had no
answers. What he did instead was ask the interviewer questions, which made the
recruiter sit up and take notice.
