I can’t remember how we heard about this place or who recommended it. It’s a small place – about 30 seats – with an unusual name, on a side street near Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The place is casual, like an old fashioned storefront pharmacy or diner, with a sense of humor (a sign behind the counter read, “We’re not happy until you’re not happy”).

The menu consisted of two roughly 5” x 7” sheets of paper clipped to a similarly sized bit of corrugated cardboard. Self-consciously not fancy. Scanning quickly, I thought, “A bit limited,” ‘though punctuated with some “don’t see them every day” offerings.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts combined with tsunami, wasabi-yuzu kewpie, and fish sauce. Okonomiyaki – a pancake with spaghetti squash, pickled ginger, and lomo. Rice “tots” featuring blue crab, battleship curry, and nori. A potato salad appetizer with togarashi-cheddar skins, cucumber, and ginger.

“All of this sounds great…. and what IS all that stuff?” I wondered.

Our family enjoys potatoes… so I asked our server about the potato salad appetizer.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s purple potatoes mixed with soy sauce topped with tiny strips of cucumber, ginger, and scallions, with togarashi-cheddar skins on top.”

Not clear. I nearly moved on to something more familiar. However, feeling curious about the potato salad appetizer, I ordered it.

 It arrived in a vessel about the size of a coffee cup. The menu and the server’s description didn’t do it justice. In the potato mix itself, hints of the soy sauce and other spices. The cheddar skins are half-dollar sized bits of crispy cheddar-touched potato skins coated with togarashi, a ground red pepper spice – they look a little bit like dark brown curled up potato chips dusted with reddish brown powder.

 Mixing different combinations of the cool ginger, cucumber, scallions, and togarashi-cheddar skins guided me down flavor ladders that varied depending on which of the toppings touched my tongue first.

Layers upon layers of flavor…

… highlighting a problem we face every day – how to capture and convey the layers-upon-layers of  flavor in our products beyond the product features before our clients actually experience them.

When we’re sharing ideas or recommending solutions, what word pictures convey the experience of  “what it’s going to be like” such that buyers’ mouths are watering and that they’re not disappointed when they take their first and subsequent “tastes” of our products?

Nick Miller assists banks and credit unions to sell services to business clients through better sales strategies and execution. He is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.