TV Chefs Blog is where we cover the celebrity chefs and cooking personalities: the news they make, the new products they sell, the restaurants they're opening. We also review the television cooking and food shows. We report on the more famous food authors and their new cookbooks too. If it has to do with eating it, making it and the star cooks who do it, it's here.
This is a pretty sweet find I stumbled on. Just nine days ago the prestigious James Beard Awards were given out in New York City. And now, from that event, here is almost a half hour of video, broken into three parts, where cookbook author and television personality David Rosengarten interviewed celebrity chefs on the Beard red carpet, compliments of devour.tv and Bravo network.
Here, David talks with event hostess Kim Cattrall and event host Bobby Flay, along with José Andrés, Drew Nieperont, Terrence Brennan, Cesare Casella, Ted Allen, Tom Collechio and Todd English.
Part 2 of the video for some bizarro reason starts out with a total repeat of the Kim Cattrall interview. Don’t let that fool you though, for this is plenty of new material here. In fact the entire rest of the clips is with interviews featuring Masaharu Morimoto, Pichet Ong, Katie Lee Joel, Michael Psilakis, Donatella Arpaia, Thomas Keller and Douglas Rodriguez.
We go a slightly different place in part three with interviews as well as some background on the Beard Awards, and then interviews with chefs Wylie Dufresne, Marcel Vignenon (from Top Chef, season 2), Tony May, Dan Barber, Cindy Wolf, Michel Richard and Danny Meyer.
And yes David, we too find it both ironic and very scary a food award show has no food!
So the first-ever Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival finally happened and ended last night. It was definitely a rousing success.
Let me quickly mention my irritation at what ever San Francisco Chronicle copy room hack came up with the misleading headline of: For $4,750, foodies eat up the chance to see famous chefs in person Compare the headline to the very last sentence in the article: “Per-person cost for the four-day Pebble Beach Food & Wine extravaganza ranges from $100 for a single class or seminar to $4,750 for lodging and admission to all events.” In short, some intern didn’t read the article and made up a headline that sounds like everybody shelled out five grand to walk through the front gate. Enough of that. From the bad headline to the good coverage:
More than 3,000 people descended on Pebble Beach the past four days, and it wasn’t for the golf. It wasn’t for a sighting of Clint Eastwood, either.
No, they plunked down wads of cash, as much as $4,750 per person, to eat - and to meet 133 of the world’s top chefs and sommeliers, to watch Thomas Keller glaze vegetables, see Jacques Pepin slather caviar on a blini, and get up close and personal with the Mondavi family.
Other interesting observatins, Jacques Pepin’s on why some folks spend so much money:
For Pepin, the French chef, cookbook author and star of several PBS cooking shows, this devotion to fine food could be relief from troubled times.
“The price of gas and the war in Iraq are taking a toll on people,” said Pepin as people lined up to greet him at the Thursday night kickoff reception, where he served his new domestic caviar. “So people want to get together and be hedonistic.”
Among those there two Top Chef folks, Tre Wilcox who didn’t win last season but who was extremely popular contestant on season four. And head judge Tom Colicchio who put on a demonstation.
“I’m only taping 20 days out of the year,” he said. “The rest of the time I’m running my restaurants.” So Saturday he put on his chef’s coat.
“It’s important for me to get out there and do a cooking demonstration,” said the co-owner of several restaurants around the country, including San Francisco’s ‘wichcraft. “People see my show and wonder, ‘Can this guy even cook?’”
Masaharu Morimoto, from Iron Chef and Iron Chef America, didn’t seem to give a hoot how people knew him. He was perfectly content to prepare a couple of hundred dishes for Friday’s lunch - Kobe beef and congee (Chinese rice porridge).
You recall my first mention here of the Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival roughly a dozen days ago. Well, with six more days left before it starts, there’s even more “big names” showing up for what has become (in just it’s first time ever) one of the biggest events ever.
Along with the previously mentioned names of Jacques Pepin, Mark Miller, Thomas Keller, Gary Danko, Charlie Trotter, Tom Colicchio, Ted Allen, Michel Richard, Susan Spicer, Josiah Citrin, Walter Manzke, Todd English, Hubert Keller, and Michael Mina coming to the event …
… Now also add: Cat Cora, Mark Miller, Ming Tsai, Masaharu Morimoto, Alain Passard, Claudine Pepin, and still several dozen more top chefs. Show starts this Thursday, March 27th through Sunday, March 30th. More details at the site.
The first ever annual Pebble Beach Food and Wine Festival boasts over 50 award-winning chefs, over 200 major wineries and many other gradiose claims, thing is, grandiose but apparently true. In short, this has become one super-sized event.
The weekend is chock-full of wine tasting sessions, cooking demos (Jacques Pepin, Mark Miller, Thomas Keller, Gary Danko, Charlie Trotter, Tom Colicchio, Ted Allen, Michel Richard), lunches with the chefs (Susan Spicer, Josiah Citrin, Walter Manzke, Todd English, Hubert Keller, Michael Mina and many more), a walk-around tasting event each afternoon, plus some serious dinners and rare wine auctions. At least one must-do is the opening night reception on Thursday, March 27; if we golfed, we’d try to get there for the Celebrity Chef Golf Tourny that morning because we want to see Colicchio putt. And one thing has changed: Some proceeds will go to charity.
The whole shebang runs March 27-30, most events are priced individually ($100-$500; $165 for the walk-around event), some are only available with packages, and some are already sold out.
In exactly 30 days it will be exactly 30 years since the start of The Inn at Little Washington began, which means on April 9th there will be a gala 30th Anniversary Party for the restaurant and it’s unique proprieter Patrick O’Connell.
O’Connell describes the restaurant, located in Washington, Virginia, rougly 65 miles out from Washington DC as a concept that simple was “just a hideaway in the country owned by two people who like to entertain a lot”. He also started ths little restaurant in this little hamlet (at the time of populaton 300) with a simple little idea: “We try to convey a sense of place at The Inn by making use of the abundance of wonderful products from our region, which the French call a “cuisine de terroir.” We try to elevate these fine, earthy ingredients and use them in unique and interesting new ways while still preserving the soulful flavors and memories we associate with them. Most of my favorite dishes are the simplest and depend on a few ingredients of the finest quality.”
So as he quietly pursued his own thing, it was way ahead of the artisan and organic movement. Among the restaurant’s many awards (honestly this go on for ages, so here’s but one) The Inn was the first establishment in the Mobil Travel Guide’s history ever to receive 5 stars for its restaurant and 5 stars for its accommodation. And it’s now had that 14 years in a row.
About the party, the Anniversary celebration will take place on April 9th with a gala dinner for 500 guests at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington D.C. It will be a gala and a charity event with proceeds going to Five and Alive, a program dedicated to improving the health of children five and under in more than 30 countries. Tickets begin at $575 for the cheapie plan and a corporate sponsorship for a table is $25 grand. An original film will premiere highlighting the unique and remarkable history of America’s culinary rebirth via culinary pioneers.
Among those who will be attending are Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Robert Mondavi, Jacques Pepin, Paul Prudhomme, Wolfgang Puck, Martha Stewart, Charlie Trotter, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Tim and Nina Zagat. Yes … this may be one of those rare events where a list of who is not attending would be shorter!
