Ideoblog

The Partnership at Little Washington

I have written about the great American chef, Patrick O'Connell, and his Inn at Little Washington. I have a particular interest in the place not only as a customer, but because we have a house a few miles from the Inn, and love the town of Washington, Virginia that the Inn has been such a crucial part of. Normally none of this would get much play on this blog, which focuses on my ideas rather than my life.

But now the two have gotten linked because O'Connell's partnership with his long-time business associate Reinhardt Lynch is in court, and the fate of the Inn may be linked to the fate of the partnership. This story points up what I have long been preaching: the undervalued importance partnership law. 

Says the Rappahannock News:

O'Connell filed papers on May 22 in the Rappahannock County Circuit Court asking that the O'Connell-Lynch partnership (which was formed in 1977) be dissolved. According to court documents, O'Connell is asking that he be "appointed custodian to operate the business of the partnership in the ordinary course until a full hearing on dissolution can be held, that he be appointed receiver at such hearing, and that the court set a date for a bulk sale by the receiver of the assets of the partnership (as a going concern) at public auction." In a separate suit, O'Connell is requesting that he be given the "authority to terminate the employment of an employee, even though that employee is a director and 50 percent shareholder of the corporation." * * *

The article notes that "[b]oth O'Connell and Lynch reside in the Town of Washington where both of them have not only been key players at the Inn but have taken on roles in the town's government. O'Connell is chairman of the Architectural Review Board while Lynch serves as the town's vice-mayor."

So the adjudication of a partnership agreement is ultimately going to matter to the life of a town and of one of the world's great restaurants. I would say that's way more important than anything that's happening over at HP.

Killing, but no securities fraud, in Rappahannock

Well, I’m sitting here in my Virginia house, comforted by the hum of a police helicopter circling close above me. It’s looking for an alleged killer who is loose in my rural neighborhood, and who was spotted nearby this morning (I’m not making this up). The police say he’s armed and dangerous, but I’m not worried. I have determined that he is definitely not wanted for securities fraud. If he were after my diversified investment dollars, that would be a problem.

Update (7/10):  The alleged killer was captured last night, so we can go back to normal country living.  Note that I've revised the title to substitute "killing" for "murder," and changed the above post to read "alleged killer," consistent with the presumption we normally accord criminal defendants. I'm so used to talking about securities fraud defendants that I forgot that the usual rights and presumptions apply in the case of mere killings (it seems pretty certain here that there was a killing). The alleged killer, by the way, was out on bail in connection with another criminal proceeding, just like Jeff Skilling. 

Live from the Rappahannock Public Library

Devoted readers of this space may have noticed my postings are slightly more sporadic than usual. Well, I'm out in Rappahannock County Virginia, where devoted readers may recall I have no high-speed Internet.  This means that at home I must blog on something called a "phone line."  Ask an oldtimer to explain it to you.

This has been quite excrutiating.  But now I've found an answer:  the public library (ask an oldtimer to explain that concept to you).  This library has high speed internet and wireless network.  It's about a ten minute drive, which some days I'm too lazy to do. 

But today, I sit amid the mysteries, with a mountain view to my left side.

Gas

WaPo says people are ignoring shortages and high prices and driving as usual, citing a few anecdotes.  Well, I have one anecdote that leads me not to believe this.  One of the few Shenandoah Park trailheads accessible from outside the park with fairly good parking is about a mile from our house.  On any of the past umpteen Sundays before Labor Day that we've been here, particularly with weather as spectacular as today, the lot would have been filled, with overflow down the road, meaning about 30 cars or so, most SUVs and trucks.  Today there were three compact cars at peak hiking time, and we were alone on the trail.

The Hollywood recycling machine

Readers of this blog have followed my reports on Hollywood’s negative attitude toward business.  I’ve argued that this might be attributed in part to Hollywood’s ineptitude concerning the one business it should know – the film business.

Today’s W$J discusses one aspect of this ineptitude.  In their zeal to make riskless junk based on tired old tv series, the geniuses in lala land don’t always bother to get the rights.  This happens so often that the lawyer profiled in the story, Marc Toberoff, has a booming practice suing the offending studios on behalf of the original rights holders.  Most recently he was able to squeeze the remakers of the Dukes of Hazzard for $17.5 million – a third of what it cost to make the movie.

(This movie has some special interest for me.  I never watched the stupid 70’s series, but the guy who played Cooter, Ben Jones, who had in the meantime served a brief term in Congress in what became Newt Gingrich's seat, moved out to Rappahannock County near our country place and opened a place called “Cooter's.” The place was an outrageous success, besieged by mobs of people on weekends, with versions of the General Lee rodding up and down the road.  I knew years ago that a remake couldn’t be far away.  Ben Jones ran for Congress again, this time from Rappahannock, and lost.)

To further indicate what the movie industry is coming to, Toberoff himself is going into the remake business, buying up rights to old series with a view to producing the movies. So this will make him a potential seller to the studios he’s suing.  At least he'll own the rights, presumably. He says he "keeps a defined firewall between producing and legal matters,” so I guess we shouldn’t worry about any conflicts here.

The Patrick O'Connell show

Spent yesterday in DC.  First stop was the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, this year featuring Oman and cooking.  Oman seems like it’s worth a visit.  But  the highlight of the show was a much more local phenomenon – Patrick O’Connell of the Inn at Little Washington. 

I’m not a foodie, but we thought we drop into his talk because he and his inn are neighbors of ours out in Rappahannock county, and we had dropped a few hundred bucks there last month. 

I’ve always thought of O'Connell as probably a pretty good chef and a much better self-promoter.  But I had my eyes opened yesterday to the full dimensions of the man as he held forth delightfully, intelligently and articulately for 45 minutes (until they practically had to drag him off the stage), preparing watermelon soup and crab cakes, and sharing his opinions on many things. 

O'Connell brilliantly used the typical pedestrian questions from the large and reverential audience (most of whom, by a show of hands, had actually eaten at his restaurant) as triggers for impromptu discourses.  Asked what he thought about recent TV cooking shows, he launched into a tirade about these shameful farces.  What’s his favorite restaurant?  We got a treatise on what it means to be a good restaurant, and what kind of torture it is for somebody like him to dine in somebody else’s restaurant (he goes to Vietnamese restaurants with kids or innocents who know nothing about cooking). 

Most interestingly, O'Connell presented a theory of haute (or as he says “refined”) American cuisine, as well as a general theory of cooking and serving fine food.  He explained exactly  how he makes it worth it to drop hundreds of dollars on a meal – not in terms of his costs, but consumer value.

While O'Connell was talking, I reflected on the fact that for more than 30 years people have been hauling out to his place in the country and dropping ever escalating big bucks on his meals.  Every day he passes the sort of market test that few other firms have to pass. The vast majority of his customers don’t just drop in (as we did) to dinner.  They have to leave no later than early on the day of the dinner to avoid the crushing DC traffic, and probably stay overnight at his Inn or at some other expensive inn in the neighborhood to avoid the drunken ride 75 miles home.  The experience will run at least a grand for two people, and twice as much on weekends with a table in the kitchen. 

And O'Connell has to attract a workforce as well for a mammoth kitchen that runs 24 hours a day.  In a town with a total population of around 150, the Inn has at any one time around 30 people working in the kitchen.  This is the tip of the iceberg of the total workforce, which fills what looks like the largest parking lot in the county. 

I once talked to a pastry’s assistant at the Inn who was renting the house across the road from us.  He had come from a distant state, had worked in France, of course, and regarded this seeming rural backwater as a huge step up the ladder, and one that he felt extraordinarily lucky to make. (O’Connell, in condemning the “clowns” who do TV cooking shows, pointed out that his helpers could be doctors or lawyers, or anything else, but chose to try to be chefs.)

O’Connell spoke of his desire to have the right kind of cooking show – a serious show, where he would interview the great chefs of the world about what they do.  Don’t we need, at last, somebody to fill Julia Child’s shoes?  (In fact, don't we need all kinds of shows that actually explain what goes on inside business?) With cable, there’s no excuse for not giving the man the show he wants.

Dining out in Rappahannock

Last night we ate at the local Inn.  Though it’s only a few miles from our Virginia house, we haven’t been there since 1996, when we had a less than stellar experience – food good but not fabulous, noisy crowd. 

I’m happy to report that the Inn is better than ever.  The prices are astronomical, but by the time you’re finished you’re not worried about putting a price tag on perfection.

But we still like to eat here (and did last week)  – about a quarter the price, but a perfection of a different, more comfortable sort.

Memorial Day in Rappahannock

We're in Rappahannock County Virginia for most of the summer.  I am not going to show you any pictures of the lush green hillsides or try to picture for you the gentle breezes, etc.  I will let you imagine that the skies are threatening and gray.  If you are in a city nearby (e.g., DC) and thinking of a pleasant ride in the country over Memorial Day, DO NOT come out here.  Better you should stay in town and leave us out here to our suffering. Do the patriotic thing and visit the monuments and memorials of our nation's capital.

A Rappahannock winter

We spend most of our time in Champaign, where it is quite nice.  But we also spend time in Rappahannock County, Virginia.  We were there over winter break, where December was unusually nice.  So if you'll pardon the indulgence, I'll share a couple of pictures of my neighborhood. 

Route 622, near Washington, VA.

Our next door neighbor (the ones with the llamas).

The Bolen Cemetery in Shenandoah Park we never get tired of walking to.

And the view of Red Oak Mountain from our deck.

Llamas for sale!

We're in Rappahannock for the next three weeks, and here's a free plug for our next door neighbor (I told them I reach a vast audience of llama-collecting corporate law professors).