As the founder of CNN and a major player in Time Warner (and AOL-Time Warner), Ted Turner has had a media presence in the nation's capital for years. But since last January he's had a physical presence, as well. Called Ted's Montana Grill (no girly-man "e" at the end of the word for Turner), it's a steak house, but steak means bison.

Some years ago, needing a break from all his acquisitiveness—he owned Turner Classic Movies (TCM), Turner Classic Cartoons (TCC), Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), Turner Network Television (TNT) and more property than anyone else in the USA—the longtime environmentalist decided to join the effort to save the bison. So he bought a ranch in Montana to raise them.

"I started out with three," he says. "If they get along, pretty soon you have a lot more." They got along very well, and a few years later, thanks to the efforts of Turner and other like-minded ranchers, the bison is no longer on the endangered species list. Soon the question for Turner became what to do with them all.

Enter George McKerrow, founder of the Longhorn Steakhouse chain, whose Atlanta restaurant was a Turner favorite. They decided to open a string of Western-themed restaurants whose décor and prices would fall in a niche between the expensive steakhouses and their low-end cousins—"fine-casual dining for an average price of $15 a person"—where they could serve bison meat, which is leaner, has more protein and, say its fans, tastes better than beef. They opened their first in January 2002, and 33 more since then, with 11 slated to open this year. They're planning 15 a year over the next few years.

The Alexandria location was the first to open locally last January, but that was not the original plan. "We tried hard to open in downtown Washington," says McKerrow, "but this facility became available first. We're about to open in Crystal City, [we're] under construction at Ballston and plan to be in Bethesda, in Columbia, all around the area."

For Ted Turner, the bison business is no fortuitous slip into doing well by doing good. He's been a committed philanthropist for decades. Shortly after he sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner in 1996, its stock price tripled and his holdings became worth almost $9 billion. So he picked up the pace of his giving in a typically Turneresque fashion by pledging $1 billion to the United Nations, payable in full in 10 years. (The only other individual to give away such a large amount of money is Bill Gates.) Then, in 2000, the stock market imploded, and within three years AOL Time Warner stock dropped 78.8 percent, thereby reducing Turner's overall worth to $2.3 billion. Five years later, Turner is still clearly annoyed by this unfortunate turn of events, but he is hardly giving up, and has already paid $600 million of his pledge. "Now, with this," he says, "gesturing about from a booth in the Alexandria Ted's Montana Grill, "I hope to build another great fortune." Maybe so, maybe not, given the public's lack of familiarity with bison meat, but then again, they laughed at Turner in 1980 when he put news on television 24 hours a day.

At 66, Turner looks good. Though he claims to have numerous maladies, the only noticeable one is a slight hearing loss, which isn't such a bad thing for the man once dubbed "The Mouth of the South." After all, his controversial comments are legion, but if his critics are vocal, he's turned a deaf ear.

He's equally restrained about promoting his restaurants. Asked if he's bothered by all the publicity that Donald Trump gets, Turner just laughs. "Not at all. I was married to Jane Fonda for eight years, and got all the publicity anyone could have wanted. I'm more than happy to share the limelight with others."

Turner says that he has made "a hundred movies, counting made-for-TV movies," and says he enjoyed doing so, even if he did lose $70 million on Gods and Generals, a film about Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. "I thought this movie needed to be made, and at the time I was worth about seven billion dollars, and obviously I didn't anticipate—how many people did?—that AOL Time Warner was going to go down 80 percent…But I'm proud of it, and a hundred years from now, because it's historically accurate, people will still be watching it—at least history classes will."

Turner even passed up a chance to comment on George Bush and the war in Iraq, except to say, "I don't like war...you don't teach anybody anything by killing them; you teach them by educating them. You want to change the world, don't start a war, start a college."

Turner says that at one point in his life he thought about running for public office, even for president. "When I had the strength and energy to take it on I was awfully active in television and business and didn't really have time—and Jane, having already been married to one politician, Tom Hayden, didn't think much of the idea. But I love politics and I think running for office would have been fun."

Now, says Turner, "I spend my spare time out in the forest. I fish and I hunt birds a little bit. I try and relax as much as I can because I've worked so hard in my life that I suffer a little bit from stress and anxiety, so I try to handle it by spending some quiet time outdoors."

But Ted Turner isn't exactly ready to sit on the porch with his feet up. "Today, Ted's Montana Grill has 2,000 employees, and this year we'll add another thousand. Three years ago we had two—George and me. And we're not outsourcing. These are jobs right here in America. We're insourcing."

Unlike The Donald and a host of other high-profile business types, Ted Turner has never written an autobiography. Given the richness of his life since coming on the scene as a 23-year-old CEO when his father died, winning the America's Cup, owning Atlanta's MLB Braves, NBA Hawks and NHL Thrashers, marrying four times, and changing the face of television news and entertainment, is a book, like Ted's Montana Grill, a work in progress?

"Nah," says Turner emphatically. "I'm not a writer—and besides, I've forgotten a lot."