Peter Romeo
Peter Romeo is director of digital content for FoodServiceDirector.com and the other foodservice media of Winsight Media, including Restaurant Business magazine and restaurantbusinessonline.com. He has covered the foodservice business since 1984 for a variety of industry publications and websites, including nrn.com. Romeo has twice won the Jesse H. Neal Award, business publishing’s equivalent of the Pulitzers, for his columns. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, he resides in Port Washington, NY, with five greyhounds and four cats, as of last count. And a wife.
What is the best part about your job?
I get to work with smart people.
What is the worst part of your job?
Smart people like to have meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Sometimes to plan more meetings.
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Managing to make a living by writing.
If you had a time machine what historical event or era would you visit?
I’d like to visit the time when members of my parents’ generation were children. I’d hope to learn what gave that generation the fortitude to survive the Great Depression and win the Second World War. There’s nothing in the experiences of we Baby Boomers that comes close to those achievements.
Which talent would you most like to have?
I’d trade important organs to be able to draw.
What is your greatest fear?
Snakes and skydiving are in a virtual tie. Fortunately there are no skydiving snakes. Unless you’ve heard differently. If so, don’t tell me.
What is your favorite meal?
Homemade spaghetti in a marinara sauce.
If you could eat dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?
Hands down, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He saved the nation. Twice.
What do you consider to be the most overrated foodservice trend?
Molecular gastronomy. There’s something unnatural about gathering around a dinner table to eat a chemistry kit.
Read the book or see the movie?
They make movies out of books? Could you give me an example? Wait—“The Godfather” is my favorite movie, but was a forgettable book.
