Less about touring, more about trusting

“I just wish they’d trust me.”

It seemed ironic. We were enjoying a chuck wagon supper on the Lienemann family farm near Princeton, Neb., when Chef David Kocab told me that. Just prior, we’d taken a pasture tour and talked about everything from EPDs and AI to what the cows eat all winter.

The whole Nebraska-based trip was designed to give the 50 or so chefs in attendance confidence in the beef they serve their customers, to show them the commitment and intentionality at every stop from seedstock supplier through harvest.

We’ve hosted Certified Angus Beef ^® (CAB^®) brand Chef Tour for six years and taken somewhere around 350 professional foodies on many journeys from Texas and Colorado to Kansas and Nebraska, all in the name of building trust.

More than anything, David wants the customers coming to Trentina, his high-end 35-seat, Italian restaurant in Cleveland, to place a little more confidence in him, too.

I heard, “I just wish they’d trust me,” and I immediately thought of Anne Burkholder and the feedyard video we recently shared. The chef’s statement was almost a carbon copy to one of her heartfelt ending lines: “I would really like people to trust me, and I know that’s hard to do because you don’t know me.”

Conversation by conversation, that’s changing. There’s no way you could listen to the Lienemanns and not get lit on fire by their enthusiasm for the beef community.

The chefs sensed that, too.

“I have to go home and think of more things to do with Certified Angus Beef, more ways to use it,” David told me.

And this is coming from a guy who renders the trim fat to make a beef candle that burns on the table, until the waiter lets you in on the secret: you can dip your bread in it! They are creative beef users.

“Utilization is big for us,” he says.

“Italian food is based on making something out of nothing,” David says half-joking about flour and water as the base. But the “waste not, want not” culture is alive and well.

Now he knows cattle fit that, too.

“They are the biggest solar converters, taking grass and making it into quality beef products,” he says.

David saw where you come from. He trusts you.

“They have spent all this time raising it to the perfect state,” David says. “Now it’s almost on us as stewards to give customers something with the same flavor profile, but an entirely different delivery.”

“The Cleveland dining scene has come a long way, and our diners are much more open-minded today,” David says of Trentina customers. He sincerely hopes he’s earned their good faith, and yours, too.

“Just trust us. Don’t be afraid of the food,” David says.

If you order a tasting menu, taste everything. And please, pretty please, don’t ask for the sauce on the side.

May your bottom line be filled with black ink,

Miranda

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