Duo dishes up advice to area’s top restaurants

Eileen Mintz and Norma Rosenthal are wish makers.

They are as fluctuating as light.  Charismatic and solemn, they accelerate around the room like a beacon.  They are high energy yet focused.

One generates confidence and experience but always in a contained way.  The other enthuses incorrigible. These two who seamlessly blend both of each other’s personalities make people delighted.

In just four years, these two moms have created an award-winning business that has allowed them to meet food greats, such as Julia Child and Wolfgang Puck.

Their business, Mintz/Rosenthal public relations and consulting, specializes in representing hotels, restaurants, chefs, and wineries. 

What is surprising, Mintz and Rosenthal have never had to solicit for business.  People call them strictly because of their reputation.  Mintz and Rosenthal have the gift of self-promotion and have it in splendid excess.

“We like to call ourselves wish maker,” Mintz says, “We love every aspect of our jobs, and we think and breathe the restaurants we represent 24 hours a day.”

Added Rosenthal, “We are great listeners, and when a restaurant owner tells us they want more customers, after really listening, we find out what they really want is to be in Gourmet magazine.”

“I feel as if we are sleuths, and each client is a chance to solve a puzzle,” said Mintz, who has a collection of over 900 cookbooks.

And they are incredibly passionate about their work, each other, their families, their favorite foods and well we could go on forever.

You can see by the way they light up a room unabashedly joyful.  Everyone, they meet seems to come away from an experience touched in some small way.

Even their mission statement reads just like something a mother would write. “Together, we have made a conscious decision to look for joy and happiness in life.”

They first met as volunteers on the board at their synagogue, but it was not until they found out they had both entered a cooking contest that they discovered their joint passions: food, people and fun.

“I loved Norma’s vivaciousness and creativity,” Mintz recalled.

‘And I loved that meeting Eileen gave me an opportunity to have an exciting career and not just feel like a housewife,” Rosenthal added.

When these two get together, there is no feeling of compromises- kind words and kind hearts- never a look, nod, word, always a harmony.

With their devotion as wives and mothers while balancing a work schedule that would exhaust most, they still volunteer for many social causes.

In a world that holds uninhibited idealism as somewhat suspect and more than a little annoying, Mintz and Rosenthal are refreshingly the real thing, and Seattle’s chefs can be thankful their wishes have come true.

Eileen Mintz’s Matzo Meal Bagels

½ cup of liquid oil

2 cups of water

1 and ½ cups matzo meal

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar or less if you desire

 5 large eggs

Dutch oven size pan for the stove top

Boil oil and water together. Add matzo meal, salt, and sugar.  Mix quickly with a wire whisk until well blended.  Pull off heat and set aside.  Stir until liquid is absorbed.

Cover the pan slightly and let the mixture stand until almost cool.

Using a hand mixer or a stand-up mixer add eggs carefully only one at a time.  Beat until light and fluffy.  Set aside.

Lightly grease two cookie sheets.  Drop from a spoon (about golf ball size or a little larger if you like a bigger bagel) onto the cookie sheet.  Wet fingers and push down to put a hole in the middle and help to form the bagel shape.

If desired to use as sandwich bread, smooth out to a square, press down and forget the hole.  Bake at 400 degrees about 40 to 60 minutes.  Makes 9 to 12 bagels.