Gary Danko

San Francisco, California

We’ve had three or four promotions a year where we’ve developed special menus—around caviar, cheese, or truffles, for example—in order to increase our business. Each would be kicked off with a press luncheon about three weeks before the menu debuted. For example, we’d serve truffle hors d’oeuvres, bring in an expert on truffles from France to provide a slide or video show and talk about truffles, and then bring the journalists into the kitchen where they could watch the preparation of the special menu and ask questions.