You might know that I used to work in labs, then for big companies before Clover. Well Rolando worked with amazing chefs and made great food and trained the next generation. One of the things Rolando would work really hard on at JWU was mentoring students. One of his former students, Josh, is the expeditor (one of the lead kitchen roles) at Alinea. He got us a reservation on really short notice. It was really sweet, we heard after dinner that he’d told everybody at their pre-dinner meeting that Rolando was the reason he got the job at Alinea and was where he is today.

I don’t talk about it too much here, but some of you may have guessed I’m not the largest fine dinning person. I’ve been to a bunch of fancy restaurants, and it’s just not my thing. So I was thinking this would be fun in more of a fun-for-Rolando sort of way. I was totally wrong.

I’ve never experienced anything like that dinner. It was awesome. Playful, delicious, challenging. So cool. I could go on and on. I feel really lucky.

I’m including here a little clip of a dessert course. Grab me and I’ll show you a bunch more on my phone.

Oh, so what does this have to do with Clover? Well I think it’s important we’re up to date with the cutting edge in food. And you never know where inspiration will come from. This isn’t the first time Rolando and I have invested in this type of experience. And I think it informs a lot of what we do every day at Clover.