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If Michael Bacon were to open a restaurant, it would be called Pan-American. It would resemble the interior of an airplane. The food would be served in plastic trays, and all of the servers would be women dressed as stewardesses.
The musical artist acknowledged that his vision of only female flight attendants was out of touch with the times.
“I know it’s wrong, but it’s my dream,” he told attendees of the CREATE conference in Nashville.
His brother, actor Kevin Bacon, put Michael Bacon’s vision in context: “My brother adores airline food.”
The Bacon Brothers are a musical act, in town for the CREATE conference and also to perform at the Grand Ole Opry the following day.
The brothers grew up in a family of six children — Kevin was the youngest — with parents that fostered creativity.
“Creativity was put on a pedestal, way above anything else,” Kevin Bacon said. “If you could put on a play, if you could write a song … that was so much more important to them … than making money. I’m really grateful to them for that.”
Their parents didn’t really buy toys for them, and instead encouraged them to make their own.
Possibly because he was the youngest kid, Kevin said he always wanted to be noticed.
“That was really, really innate to me,” he said.
The aspiring actor moved to New York City at age 17, and as so many people in similar situations do, he started working as a busboy.
“Obviously it taught me to be there, and be on time, and to have skill,” he said.
He worked at one restaurant for around four years.
“It was the closest thing I had to college,” he said, particularly since he was the youngest employee and could learn from everyone else.
“They were my friends, my lovers, my father figures, my confidants. The feeling not only of the staff but also of the regulars in that place, was very, very important and influential on me,” he said.
He learned to show up for his team members and customers regardless of his mood, tuning into the needs of others rather than his own.
“I don’t think you can work as a waiter and then be unkind to people who have had that gig,” he said. “It was a great experience.”
Nation’s Restaurant News editor-in-chief Sam Oches, himself a percussionist, interviewed the brothers and asked them about their creative process.
Michael, who has worked as a film composer, said that in that line of work, “You can’t have writer’s block.”
“My main motor is having a family and having to provide for them. I’m really, really lucky that I fell into something I love… other than music, I can’t do anything else.”
Not having a backup skill is what made him stick to music even during tough times.
The elder Bacon is also a college professor, teaching music technology and film scoring, and he tells his students that the key to success in life is to find out what makes you different from anybody else, and once you figure that out, “then you can become really, really good about it.”
He wondered aloud if that’s also true for restaurants, saying they don’t necessarily need to be avant-garde “or go off the handle, as long as you find out what your differences are.”
Before breaking into song for the crowd, the brothers shared what their favorite restaurant chains are — Bahama Breeze for Michael and Cava for Kevin — and Kevin’s favorite restaurant overall is Gennaro, an Italian restaurant near his home on New York City’s Upper West Side.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
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