Mocha

MICHAEL TURBACK is a graduate of Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and a veteran restaurateur of 30 years. He currently works in the gourmet and specialty food products industry and is a founding partner of The New York First Company, an online department store. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

THE AUTHOR SCOOP

Who would you cast as yourself in a movie of your life?
When I ran my restaurant in Ithaca, NY, we would often guess who would play each of the staff if they ever filmed the story of running a restaurant. The consensus was that Clint Eastwood would have been tapped to play me: "Go ahead, make my day."

Have you ever met a famous person?
Guest speakers and performers who visited Cornell would often be taken out to dinner at my restaurant, so over the years I met people like George McGovern, Geraldine Ferraro, William F. Buckley, John Houseman, Douglas Edwards, Carl Sagan, John F. Kennedy Jr., Betty Freidan, Andre Tschelicheff, Al Unser, Jr., Kim Alexis, Cousin Bruce Morrow, Peter Yarrow, and Neil Sedaka, to name a few.

Favorite cocktail?
Smoked-Tomato Bloody Mary (Stonecat Café, Hector, NY)

Favorite dessert?
Tin Roof Sundae (Tom's Ice Cream Bowl, Zanesville, OH)

Tell me something that people might not know about you.
As a long distance runner, I've completed 109 races of marathon distance or longer (includes five 50-mile trail races).