The Big Show

I’m leaving town tomorrow to help Nation’s Restaurant News cover the gigantic National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, also sometimes called the NRA Show, the Restaurant Show, or The Show. 

While I’m there, I’ll be collaborating with my colleagues on our NRN@NRA blog, which you can link to by clicking on the logo above, or simply by clicking here.

So this blog will be dormant until I return on Tuesday night, and probably longer as I’ll be behind in my work. 

In the meantime, follow me and my dear colleagues on the NRN@NRA blog, and I’ll try to check back in with you here next week.

But before I go, here's a link to some breaking news about a new partnership between Nation’s Restaurant News and the National Restaurant Association. 

Fashion 26 and Hotel Griffou

May 18

I should just take a pastry brush and a bowl of vegetable oil, lay out all of my dress shirts and paint a light coat on each of them. It would save me the trouble of worrying about grease stains. I should just be proactive, make them all nothing but stain and be done with it.

I should probably soak them all in red wine first.

Instead, I stood in the middle of Rare Bar & Grill in the Fashion 26 hotel with streaks of grease down the front of my gray cotton shirt with French cuffs.

I don’t know how they got there. I was trying to be careful. It was, after all, the fanciest launch party I’d been to in awhile, and the fashionistas were there in droves, posing in front for photographers and then standing around looking statuesque and fabulous. Not a stain on them.

If this had been 1999, say, or even 2004, it would have been easier to avoid having grease drip down my body. But it’s 2010, and that means that at fancy, high-brow openings, they must serve sliders at the very least. For this opening they also served buffalo wings and cones of French fries with mini-cones of ketchup in them and fried pickles (the first I’d had in New York — batter-fried little disks).

I was snacking on the fries and looked down because I thought I’d sensed a drip from the ketchup, and there I was, covered in grease.

It was probably the slider, but I’ll never know.

I hadn’t seen a coat check so I still had my bag with me. I adjusted it so the strap covered most of the stain and went to get a cocktail.

What can I say? I don’t let a stain get in the way of a good time, and the DJ was phenomenal.

My cocktail was something with citrus, strawberry purée and a brand of tequila that was far too good to be used in a cocktail. But with positive GDP growth in the first quarter and anecdotes of robust restaurant traffic here in New York, I guess the days of the over-fancy cocktail are back.

The food is still supposed to be down-to-earth, though.

Business was certainly robust last week when I stopped into the Hotel Griffou at the request of its publicist.

“It's a good thing you guys have a publicist,” I said, raising my voice over the din at the packed bar. “This place is dead. I’m surprised I don’t see tumbleweeds rolling through here.”

They expressed polite amusement at my sarcasm and showed me and my guest to our table.

The Hotel Griffou actually isn’t a hotel at all. It’s one of those cute restaurants tucked away in the West Village (in this case West Ninth Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues) that everyone likes so much. Its original owner was a certain Madame Griffou, and she did run a hotel there.

We wound our way through the crowded bar area and ended up in one of several more sedate dining rooms — homey, eclectic, it reminded me of a more casual version of the second floor of Bobo.

My guest for the evening was the always awesome Blain Howard, my pop-culture and sci-fi guru (who, by the way, encouraged me to see Kick Ass, one of the funnest movies I’ve seen in a really, really long time).

Looking at the cocktail menu, Blain, a warrior at heart (rugby player and former mixed martial artist, as you may recall), was intrigued by the Beowulf Bramble (Aquavit, blackberries, lemon juice and crème de mure), but instead went for the Avocado & Vanilla Daiquiri.

Yes, trendy food is often staid, but the drinks can be as crazy as you like.

I had a Negroni.

What we had for dinner was also very, very 2010. And here’s what it was:

Poutine with duck confit and thyme
foie gras seared with plums, parsnip purée and kiwi berry

grass-fed steak frites with poivre sauce
Hanger steak grilled with potatoes, asparagus and maitake mushrooms

Very, very 2010.

I did get out of there stain-free, though. I think.

This blog’s readers are not animal rights activists

Actually, I’m surprised.

I thought mentioning foie gras would trigger the Google Alerts of some rabid, misinformed (though possibly well-meaning) people and draw them out to defend pampered, well-fed ducks.

But no. Not a one.

I guess they just don’t care anymore.

A couple of the participants in my latest poll — which asked, simply, "Foie Gras, yes or no?” said they don’t like foie gras, and a few said they hadn’t really thought about the treatment of ducks raised for their unctuous livers (thanks for participating, all the same).

But most participants (52 percent), said they think foie gras ducks are treated just fine (and they are, by all accounts from informed people that I've heard), and just about a third said they don’t care how the ducks are treated.

See for yourself.

Question
FOIE GRAS, YES OR NO?

I refuse to eat foie gras because I think it's cruel to animals: 0 (0%)
I think foie gras ducks are treated fine: 20 (52%)
I don't care how foie gras ducks are treated, I like how it tastes so I'm eating it: 12 (31%)
I don't like foie gras: 2 (5%)
I hadn't really thought about it: 4 (10%)

Bill Yosses, not such a classicist

May 13

I enjoyed this story in yesterday’s New York Times that profiled Bill Yosses, the breathtakingly affable pastry chef at the White House (he really is, I had a great chat with him and some of his friends back in 2007 at the opening of Sweetgreen in Georgetown).

But I was surprised by the passage about him being a relative culinary traditionalist:


“He might play with a little agar-agar (to set finely chopped rhubarb into a soft gel) or crystallized vitamin C (to preserve the green of an herb purée), but he has generally kept to a strong French backbone of flavor profiles. In his work, chocolate remains paired with hazelnut; pineapple with lime.

“ ‘He does not approve of a dessert like tomato sorbet with rosemary syrup,’ said Jonathan Hayes, a forensic pathologist and former food writer who has been a friend and fan since the 1980s.”


French backbone, really? I mean, certainly his pastry roots are French, but I’ve always thought his style was a bit more cosmopolitan than what the article describes, and he has spent a significant amount of time in Southeast Asia, which is reflected in his style.

I guess it’s true that he doesn’t get completely crazy with weird flavor combinations, but back in 2006, when he was a partner in a Vietnamese restaurant called Boi, he made a dessert of coconut tapioca garnished with diced mango, toasted coconut and pomegranate molasses. Also in that dish were basil seeds that were hydrated in warm water steeped with vanilla bean, star anise, cinnamon and lemon grass.

Sounds tasty, but not so French.

When he was at Citarella in New York, in 2002, he made a gelatin out of the super-tart juice of the Philippine citrus fruit calamansi. He froze that in a madeleine mold with an orange segment in it, and served that over warm coconut tapioca to give it an acidic spike. That dish was rounded out with coconut sorbet and a pistachio madeleine.

And even when he’s sticking to the French palette of ingredients, he gets whimsical. At Citarella he used a classic French combination — Pears and Fourme d'Ambert cheese (a cow milk bleu from the Loire Valley) — but made up the name Pear Dauphinois for it. The name was a play on pommes dauphinois, which is mashed potatoes mixed with cream puff pastry dough, rolled into balls and deep-fried.

Pear Dauphinois, on the other hand, was made by plunging paper-thin slices of pear into a 50-50 mixture of water and pear juice, spiked with vitamin C (to keep the pears from discoloring) and pear brandy (because why not?), and then layering them with the cheese to make a sort of dessert casserole, which he served with quince paste and almond biscotti.

I never tried the Pear Daupinois, but Bill said it was a very satisfying end to a meal, and I believe him.

Foie Gras, yes or no?

May 10

I have a new poll for you this week. I think it speaks for itself. It's on the right. Click away!

Beard Awards 2010 — not a jedi to be seen

May 4

The James Beard Foundation Chef and Restaurant Awards ceremony and the awards press room were practically unrelated this year.

There are really two press rooms — one for sanctioned, formal photography of each of the winners, where people like Kent Miller take pictures like this of people like Timothy Hollingsworth (pictured here in a photo taken by Kent Miller), who was named Rising Star Chef of the Year at the awards last night.

Click here for a complete list of winners.

Then there’s the press room for the rest of us, where we drink Champagne and cocktails (there was even a gin sponsor this year), and eat cheese and drink espresso. This year there was caviar, too, all domestic and sustainable, yet tasty.

And there were little flat screen TVs where, if you wanted to, you could watch the beard awards.

You couldn’t hear them, though. The speakers weren’t working right, so to hear anything above the din of the socializing journalists you had to walk to the very front of the press room — a foyer, really — where you couldn’t see the TVs but you could hear pretty well.

If you didn’t pay attention, you missed the winners, and God help you if you wanted to hear any of their speeches, or the tribute to Michael and Ariane Batterberry, who were given lifetime achievement awards.

I did pop my head into the photographer’s press room long enough to notice that whenever an award winner was named, they played music from Star Wars.

I tried to figure that out. The theme for the awards was “The Legacy Continues,” which sounded bizarre, but it was supposed to be about mentoring and fostering talent and so on, which is nice.

Today I asked my sci-fi and pop-culture guru Blain Howard if "The Legacy Continues" could be associated with Star Wars in any way.

“30th Anniv of Empire is this year...so MAYBE? that?” he suggested.

I commended him for his efforts, and remain confused by the Star Wars music and by the fact that nobody who might possibly write about the awards could simultaneously see and hear them.

But it was still fun. I hung out with old friends, met some fans from the blogosphere, drank multiple cocktails and ate caviar, periodically peering up to see who had won what awards.

Last night I thought I’d predicted eight out of the 19 categories that I care about (I don’t guess the design and graphics awards), but I had missed the fact that Jason Wilson of Crush in Seattle won. I’d predicted that, too, meaning I got nine right. That’s practically half (47 percent), which isn’t bad if I do say so myself.

I didn’t eat much after the awards. I don’t like to stand in line for food, I was full on caviar canapés and the slice of pizza (pepperoni) I’d had before the awards, and there were pictures to take, people to catch up with etc., so I drank a Leffe Blonde and ate some Mangalica ham from D'Artagnan, and a "French Kiss" from them, too. That’s a foie gras-stuffed Armagnac-soaked prune, I believe. It was good.

And I took some pictures

I decided to pick one after party and stick to that one this year, and I picked Eleven Madison Park, whose chef, Daniel Humm, was named, as I predicted, best chef in New York City. It made sense. Daniel Boulud (whose restaurant Daniel won the Outstanding Restaurant award). Stood on some furniture with Humm and danced, eventually spraying the crowd with Champagne.

He did that in 2006 at an after party at Thor (he’d won Outstanding Restaurateur that year), so it was kind of old hat, but people loved it.

The picture above, taken by Kent Miller, is of Daniel Boulud earlier in the evening.

I have some pictures of my own to share, but they’ll have to wait as I’m late for dinner (at Aquavit, sampling the food of its new chef, Marcus Jernmark), so I’ll post one now, and more later.

(Starting on the left) This is French Culinary Institute dean emeritus Alain Sailhac with his wife Arlene, and awesome chef extraordinaire David Bouley and his wife Nicole Bartelme Bouley.

The Bouley’s were wed in a legendary, awesome five-day feast that was in fact covered for the New York Times by my good friend Thomas Crampton.

Oh, and below are the results of my most recent poll, in which I asked you to vote for the Rising Star Chef of the Year. I find the results interesting.

Timothy Hollingsworth, French Laundry, Yountville, Calif. 9 (31%)

Johnny Monis, Komi, Washington, D.C. 3 (10%)

Grégory Pugin, Veritas, New York City 3 (10%)

Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon, Portland, Ore. 7 (24%)

Sue Zemanick, Gautreau’s, New Orleans 7 (24%)

May 7 update: I have dug myself out of the work hole I have been in all week and have time to upload some more pictures from the Beard Awards, starting with a shot of Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson, chef-partner of Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder, Colo., and Bobby Stuckey, that restaurant’s master sommelier and partner.

Lachlan might be the quietest chef I know, or maybe we just haven’t had a chance to bond.

Next we have Gary Danko, who you won’t be surprised to learn is the chef-owner of restaurant Gary Danko in San Francisco. To his left (your right) is George Atterbury, general manager of Craft restaurant in New York City.

I’m not sure what they’re doing together, and frankly it’s none of my business.

It’s none of yours, either.

Moving right along, we have Nancy Olson and Chris Bradley.

Nancy, of course, is the famous pastry chef of Gramercy Tavern in New York City, Chris is that restaurant’s sous chef.

He’s not famous yet, but you never know. It’s good to be a sous chef at Gramercy Tavern.

Next up, we have Rita Jammet, former co-owner of La Caravelle, with her twin sons Nic, on the left (her right) and Patrick.

Nic is a partner in a successful little fast-casual salad-and-frozen-yogurt chain in the Washington, D.C., area called Sweetgreen. Very big on local, organic, sustainable stuff, including using recycled materials to build their stores. Their yogurt truck is a supergreen hybrid. They hired someone special just to source the best products, and called her their sourceress. Cute, right?

Patrick works for one of those high end beverage companies that sells tea drinks. I’m afraid I have forgotten which one.

From the Chicago contingent, pictured here are best chef in the Great Lakes region nominee Bruce Sherman from North Pond (sporting the beard), and Paul Kahan, who has already won that award.

In fact, this year that award went to one of his underlings, Koren Grieveson. This is what Paul (@PaulKahan) tweeted about that: ”First time ever that someone wearing a jb medal said I was their mentor. Feels pretty great.“

Staying with the Chicago contingent, we have two other previous Beard Award Winners.

On the left is Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, etc., and on the right is Tony Mantuano, chef-owner of Spiaggia.

I’m embarrassed to say that I have never eaten Rick Bayless’s food, except for a bit of salsa served at a cooking demonstration at the St. Helena campus of The Culinary Institute of America.

I’ve eaten at Spiaggia, though it was years ago. It was the first, and possibly the last, place I ever had Ohio wine — not that it was bad, you just don’t see a lot of Ohio wine out there. It was a flinty Pinot Grigio.

Heading down south, we have this year’s best chef in the Southeast winner, Sean Brock, executive chef of McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C, who was just beside himself that he’d won. Shocked, really, and I’m not sure why.

Next to him is New Orleans chef Susan Spicer. I don’t know if she and Sean actually know each other. I pulled them together in the press room for this picture.

Here’s Michel Nischan and his son Chris.

I met Michel, oh, probably in 1999, when I was a new puppy at NRN and he was the chef at Heartbeat at the W Hotel in Midtown East. It was the first of the five Ws that are now in New York City, and Heartbeat was ahead of its time in offering food that was good for you without tasting like you were missing something.

He’s currently the chef-owner of The Dressing Room in Westport, Conn.

Chris and I had never met before.

Finally, from DC, we have pastry chef David Guas, who was with the DC Coast restaurants for years but now has his own company, damgoodsweet. Next to him is Ann McCarthy, whom I met years ago when she worked at Saveur. But now she’s José Andrés’ communications director.

Chef’s Night Out

May 3

Chefs’ Night Out, the annual party thrown by Bon Appétit magazine and the James Beard Foundation on the night before the chef and restaurant awards, was held last night at SD 26, the newer, younger, more downtown, hipper incarnation of the former San Domenico.

Odette Fada reportedly is leaving her job as executive chef there, but she hasn’t left yet, and she was downstairs in the kitchen, moving around and supervising things in the way you’d expect a chef to do when hundreds of people from the food world are milling around in your restaurant expecting you to feed them.

The picture at the beginning of this blog entry is SD 26’s Porchetta, which was being served in the downstairs kitchen. That picture was taken by my friend Yishane Lee, who has two small children at home and so doesn’t get out much.

She was my guest last night, because we both agree that, although she doesn’t get out much, she should get out once in awhile, and why not go out to a fabulous see-and-be-seen chef party?

Yishane took that picture right after publicist Sam Firer tore off the pig’s second ear to eat.

On the right you can see a wider shot, giving you the whole tableau.

Sam’s an immigrant from Brezhnev-era Russia, his excuse for his ability to eat anything.

I don’t see why he would need such an excuse. What's wrong with eating a pig’s ear?

I’m old and jaded. Tonight will be the twelfth time I’ve covered the James Beard Awards, and last night was my eighth or ninth Chefs’ Night Out. In some ways that’s nice. It means I don’t really have to go out of my way to shmooze and can mostly stand around with Yishane, drink red wine, eat pork, pizza and pasta and comment on other people’s clothing choices. It’s an agreeable way to spend an evening.

I did catch up with a lot of old friends and acquaintances, got a good basic Margarita recipe from Zarela Martinez (one part lime, one part triple sec, one and a half parts silver Tequila; quoth Zarela: “It’ll knock you on your ass”), and met a couple new people.

I briefly met Naomi Pomeroy of Beast in Portland, Ore., who's up for a Beard Award for best chef in the Northwest. And I had a really fun conversation with the disarmingly charming David Sax, who has just won a Beard Award for his book Save the Deli.

Those awards were handed out last night, and, as is the custom, many of the attendees then came to Chefs’ Night Out.

David was wearing the big gold-colored medallion that is a James Beard Award. The only places, ever, where it’s appropriate to wear such bling is Chefs’ Night Out and the Beard Award after parties that will happen later this evening.

Normally, David says he wears a big diamond-crusted Mercedes medallion, but I think he was joking.

Who would you pick as rising star chef?

April 29

The James Beard Awards are on Monday. It's been a long year. I hope my tux still fits.

At any rate, I wanted to give you the chance to cast your vote for James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year.

Most of the Beard Awards go to a rotating crew of nominees that don’t change that much from one year to the next, but you have to be age 30 or younger to win the Rising Star award, and it can be a real career maker.

Nate Appleman won last year, and boy has he been busy since then.

Anyway, the poll on the right is open until 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Monday. Please cast your vote.

Three opening parties

April 16

I went to three restaurant openings this week, all on Wednesday, and all in the course of about two hours.

I started on the really touristy part of Bleecker Street, between Thompson and LaGuardia, at the "green carpet" opening of a place called Otarian.

The ‘O’ in the name is meant to represent Earth. Because it’s round.

"Tarian" comes from words like "vegetarian." So the whole name is meant to indicate that people who eat there care about the planet.

The food is "low carbon cuisine."

Pretty much everything we eat is actually very high in carbon, except for the inorganic compounds salt and water (sodium chloride and dihydrogen oxide), which don't contain any carbon.

Fats, proteins and carbohydrates, the three main components of everything we eat, are all made from carbon-based molecules.

Carbohydrate, if you remember your chemistry class, means carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Fats, or, more precisely, fatty acids, are carbon chains with hydrogen atoms hanging off of them. Proteins are chains of amino acids, which are in turn complex groupings of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Unless you're just sitting around drinking salt water, you’re not consuming low-carbon cuisine.

But I know what they mean. It’s low-carbon-footprint cuisine, and Otarian claims to be the first global chain with carbon footprint menu analysis.

Except, according to its web site, it’s not a chain at all. The Bleecker Street unit was the first of four restaurants listed on the site, but the only one that has opened yet.

Where I come from that’s not a chain. That’s a restaurant.

Another restaurant is supposed to open in New York next week and two London restaurants are “coming soon.”

Where I come from that's not global.

But they did get a good turnout for the opening party. They offered to send a hybrid car to my office to bring me there, but I told them I’d use a greener conveyance, the subway, which I did.

I walked past the paparazzi who were busy photographing Vanessa Williams (I don’t know why she was there, but the publicists did promise that the event would be star-studded) and got a green tea Mojito from the bar.

Then I spotted nutritionist extraordinaire and occasional party-goer Marion Nestle from New York University.

She had just arrived from out of town and said she would have accepted the party host’s offer to pick her up at the airport, but she got the e-mail too late.

We both wondered why they wanted us at the party so badly and chatted about the big food news of the week, KFC’s introduction of the Double Down — two breaded chicken breasts sandwiching two slices of cheese and two pieces of bacon.

There’s a picture of it at the beginning of this blog entry.

The anti-fast food crowd has declared the item a travesty. Sam Sifton called it "disgusting,” which isn’t very nice, but at least he tried it. If he found it disgusting, then that’s the way it goes.

Other people, especially those commenting on Marion’s blog, figuratively threw up their hands in disgust without going near the thing. That’s not just rude, it’s stupid. (Read their comments; with a few exceptions I’d call them retarded, but retarded people generally don’t continuously carp about things about which they’re ignorant).

Marion said she didn’t know what the big deal was. It’s comparatively low in calories for fast food, and as Marion argues all the time, the biggest problem with the American diet is that we eat too much. It all comes down to calories, she says. It doesn’t matter whether the calories come from fat or carbohydrates or protein, what matters is that we’re in the grip of an obesity epidemic, and people gain weight because they consume more calories than they burn, regardless of where those calories come from.

The people from Otarian were sure that Marion would love the place, which is not just low-carbon-footprint but vegetarian, and they were thrilled to have her there.

Marion told me that whether it was nutritious or not all depended on what they did with those vegetables.

Otarian’s a fast-casual place, so it has a menu board. But we couldn’t get close enough to read it because Vanessa Williams and a throng of people who wanted to be near her were in the way.

I did sample a mini-burger that tasted like it was made from falafel. It didn't seem particularly healthful, but it tasted good.

Marion was asked for an interview by someone from CBS Radio, so I took my leave and walked the few blocks to SoHo, to the opening of Lizarran, a new tapas place owned by a man from the southern Spanish city of Seville, who insists that all of the 200 some-odd tapas at the restaurant are Spanish.

"No fusion,” he said. Indeed, it is part of an actual Spanish chain, with 200 units, according to its web site.

I grabbed a glass of wine and a slice of Serrano ham, air-kissed food writer Kathleen Squires and said hello to food writer Margaret Shakespeare.

Lizarran is a long, narrow restaurant that opens up in the back. It’s dark with red walls and it seemed to me that it might be a nice place to spend an evening with friends eating tapas, but after sampling a tasty little garlicky chicken open-faced sandwich I decided to let others enjoy the rather packed space and went around the corner to opening party number three, Beba.

Beba’s intended to be more of a nightclub than a restaurant, really, but publicist Steven Hall said the chef, Tom Papoutsis, was a great talent who had yet to work at a venue where his cuisine could really shine.

Maybe so, but, it being a Hall Company party, the crowd was beautiful and fun, the booze was plentiful, and the food was not so available.

Steven knows I’ve said this about him before and he got me some meatballs and a bruschetta or two.

But you can’t judge a restaurant by the food served at an opening party, and I think Steven knows that. You go to get a feel for the place and to just kind of know that it’s open.

So Beba’s open. It has a front lounge and a middle bar area and a restaurant space in the back and then a bigger lounge downstairs.

I was out of there some time before 9 p.m. I walked to Chinatown for a bowl of noodles and went home.

I guess I really should have gone to KFC to try a Double Down.

Chris Cheung update

April 14

I just got an e-mail about my old friend Chris Cheung.

It seems he’s teaming up with Wally Chin, the co-owner of Chin-Chin, to open a restaurant called Walle in Midtown East (in the former Il Nido space at 249 E. 53rd St., between second and third avenues). It’s scheduled to open in mid-May.

It sounds like it will be Chris Cheung food, which is to say American with Chinese influences, although the sample items listed in the e-mail from Chin’s publicist are really pretty American: a Burger served on a Shanghai pancake bun, using Pat Lafreida beef, with a side of shoestring potatoes; Macaroni and Bleu Cheese; Bacon Crusted Black Cod with Stewed Tomato.

I’m waiting for the full menu, but I imagine that Chris, with his history of foie gras dumplings and short rib spring rolls, will Chinese the food up a bit.

It will be a moderately priced restaurant, with appetizers ranging from $8 to $14 and main courses selling for $18 to $26.

Chris most recently was chef at Fushimi, which has locations in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge as well as Staten Island and Vue Restaurant and Lounge at Hotel Le Bleu, on the western edge of Park Slope in Brooklyn. But he tells me he’s phasing himself out of those operations to focus on Walle.

So there you have it.

Best New Chefs?

April 6

I thought I was going to have a slightly insane morning. The Food + Wine Best New Chefs party is tonight. It's a good party, and until a few years ago it was very newsworthy in the food world because that magazine's career-making selection of 10 great up-and-coming chefs was announced at the party.

Then the magazine started releasing that list on the morning before the party, to fit into the news cycle better.

It was still a fun party, but, naturally, with fewer surprises.

So I was expecting an e-mail to land in my box this morning with an announcement of the new chefs, which I would feel obligated to write about as quickly as possible, both for nrn.com and for this blog. And, frankly, I have other things to do today, including meeting with two great up-and-coming chefs who are in town for some reason.

I set my alarm early in anticipation of getting an e-mail from Food + Wine, but it seems the magazine has gone back to their old, secretive ways.

Are my visitors today, Chad Robertson of Tartine in San Francisco and Rick Gresh of David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago, on the Food + Wine list.

I guess I'll have to wait until tonight to find out.

6:10 p.m update: Nope. Here’s the list, parsed out a couple hours early by Ben Leventhal over at Feast:
Roy Choi Kogi of BBQ truck in Los Angeles;
Matt Lightner of Castagna in Portland, Ore.; 
Clayton Miller of Trummer's on Main in Clifton, Va.; 
Missy Robbins of A Voce in New York City;
Jonathon Sawyer of The Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio; Alex Seidel of Fruition in Denver;
Mike Sheerin of Blackbird in Chicago;
John Shields of Town House in Chilhowie, Va.; Jason Stratton of Spinasse in Seattle, and
James Syhabout of Commis in Oakland, Calif.

Eating Frank Bonanno

April 5

Frank Bonanno was born in Bergen County, N.J. (father's side of the family is Sicilian, from Palermo, mother's side is Tuscan, from Lucca), but he has adjusted well to life in Denver. When he greeted me at his fine-dining Italian restaurant, Luca D'Italia, a little chaw of tobacco was bulging from his lower lip, reminding me of the LaCrosse players at East High when I was there.

Bonanno and I are about the same age, and we graduated from college in the same year — 1990. He got a finance degree from Denver University, which was of about as much use then as my degree in history was.

Compared to the current recession, the one in 1990 was cute, but it was obnoxious enough at the time, and Bonanno, who had worked in restaurants during college, went to the Culinary Institute of America and then came back to Denver to cook some more — mostly at Mel's Bar and Grill (that’s better than it sounds) — with stages on both coasts in all the right places (Gramercy Tavern, The French Laundry ...).

He opened Mizuna, a fine-dining French-influenced restaurant, in Denver in 2001 and hasn’t looked back. Since then he has opened Luca d'Italia; a casual place in Larimer Square called Osteria Marco; and, most recently, a fast-fine noodle restaurant called Bones, which is also Frank’s nickname.

He says his next place will likely be a casual French-style charcuterie, serving pâtés and whatnot.

His casual places, Marco and Bones, are the real moneymakers in his business, he says. They’re certainly on-trend, especially Bones, where I ate last year. There high-end ingredients (Frank has an exclusive deal with his distributor for the Japanese noodles he uses) are served in a casual setting that allow customers to get in and out quickly.

New York has a number of noodle bars like that. Other examples of fast-fine in that city are ’wichcraft and the Upper East Side taqueria Cascabel, where chef-partner Todd Mitgang has super-premium añejo tequilas on offer for $22 a shot.

Mitgang has no background in Mexican food, and Bonanno doesn’t have any experience with Asian cuisines, but you wouldn’t know that from their restaurants.

Bonanno says he has gotten some negative feedback from the richness of the broth he serves his noodles in, but he thinks that’s because most of the Asian noodles in Denver are pho, which is supposed to have a thin broth. That’s not true of all Asian noodles, though.

Since I’d been to Bones, during this trip to Denver I took my mother to Osteria Marco, and my 14-year-old niece, Tahirah Thorn, to Luca D’Italia, where she had her first taste of octopus, scallops and truffle oil.

She also was quite enamored of the virgin cocktail beverage director Adam Hodak made for her, out of house-made tonic water, muddled orange and cherry, limonata, sparkling water and grenadine.

What else we ate and drank:

At Osteria Marco:

Salumi and cheese platter of Prosciutto di San Daniele and house made coppa, bresaola and other goodies, plus assorted cheeses including Bonanno’s version of burrata, filled with ricotta instead of cream and shredded mozzarella
Whole grilled lemon-roasted artichoke with aïoli
House salad with pine nuts and house-made cheese
Odell’s Mountain Standard Reserve deep mahogany ale

Seared scallops with caramelized fennel, potato purée and grapefruit agrodolce
Slow-roasted suckling pig
The house red wine, which that evening was a Barbera d’Alba for $6 per glass

Butterscotch pancetta mousse with chocolate gelato and candied bacon
Double espresso

At Luca d’Italia (where general manager and sommelier Mark Sandusky went a little bit crazy, in a good way, when I asked him to pick some wine):
Grilled octopus with squid ink (called nero di seppia on the menu), crispy beans and arugula
Yellow fin tuna carpaccio with red pepper relish and Calabrian chile aïoli
2007 Bruno Verdi Riesling (Lombardy)
2008 Casal di Serra Verdicchio (Le Marche)

Lasagnette with lobster, shrimp, lump crab and white wine tomato sauce
Fusilli with wild mushrooms, shaved Grana Padano cheese and creamy white truffle sauce
2007 Moroder Rosso Conero (Le Marche)
2007 Paitin Barbera D’Alba (Piedmont)

Seared diver scallops with lump crab risotto, spring onions and peas
Colorado lamb chops with fava beans, porcini fonduta and braised shoulder
2005 Reversanti Barolo (Piedmont)
2008 Inama Soave Classico (Veneto)

Chocolate marble brownie with vanilla gelato, amaretti cookie and caramel sauce.
2001 Piazzano vin santo (Tuscany)
Pousse-Luca cocktail — a three-layered drink with equal parts Dom Benedictine liqueur, Grand Marnier and Luxardo Bitter Cherry in the middle, Sambuca on the bottom and Fernet Branca on top

How to make a tandoor

March 25

Last night I had dinner with my friend Blain Howard at Tamba, a new Indian restaurant on that stretch of Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill known as Curry Hill. We were joined for much of the meal by the restaurant’s owner, Sikender Malik, a former civil servant from Delhi who for a number of years ran Malika Palace in Queens and Malika in Midtown Manhattan.

His wife Daljeet is the executive chef.

Since they’re from Delhi, the food at Tamba is mostly northern Indian, but, Sikender explained, the restaurant that previously occupied that space was a southern Indian restaurant, so they kept some southern dishes on the menu — dosai, iddly etc. — to try to retain some of the previous restaurant's customers.

Makes sense.

The name Tamba means copper, which Sikender said was good for you — that if you let water sit in a copper vessel overnight and then drank it, it had wonderful curative properties.

Might be an Ayurvedic thing.

There is a copper statue of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, wife of Lord Vishnu, on the bar. She looked well.

The place has just been open around nine weeks, but the Maliks managed to snag some good press.

And by good, I mean positive. This piece of — well, I don’t like to criticize other journalists’ work, but they said Tamba’s been open for three months, not nine weeks — not that big a difference, but still wrong — they spelled Daljeet’s name wrong and, at the end of the segment, Tony Tantillo, in praising the food, said to Daljeet, "that’s why you’ve been in business for so long.”

Even if they had been open for three months, that’s not a long time, even for New York. So it’s nice press, but it’s not good.

It does present a nice view of a tandoor, however, the traditional top-loading northern Indian oven.

Daljeet’s chef made her tandoor. That’s the custom: If you’re a tandoori chef, you know how to make a tandoor.

That was explained to me back in 1996, when I interviewed Jagat Ram, who at the time was chef of Rang Mahal, a high-end Indian restaurant in Bangkok’s Rembrandt Hotel.

He said a tandoor is made of clay mixed with some straw, jute and finely powdered glass. It’s shaped into a round oven, open at the top. A wood fire is built inside the oven and it burns for a couple of days, acting as a sort of reverse kiln.

Another layer of clay mixture is applied and then it’s fired again.

Next the oven is seasoned, literally, with a mixture of yogurt, salt, mustard oil and a coarse brown sugar called jaggeri. That’s used to coat the inside of the oven and it’s baked again, but more slowly this time, because if the fire’s too hot you run the risk of cracking the entire oven, and you’d have to start over.

That seasoning process is repeated five to seven times. It not only helps to insulate the oven (burnt, liquefied sugar is pretty serious stuff), but it also keeps the clay from flaking off onto the food. That’s particularly important because naan and other flat breads are placed directly onto the walls of the oven when they’re baked.

Anyway, that’s a tandoor.

What we ate:

pappadum — spiced crackers
lasani gobhi— fried cauliflower in garlic-tomato sauce
chicken dosa — a sort of south Indian lentil crêpe stuffed with chicken and served with a spicy sauce called sambar
“chicken delight” — little chicken pinwheels clearly intended for Western customers
goan lamb vindaloo — spicy lamb curry
palak paneer — spinach with cheese cubes
assorted naan
coconut, tomato, mint and tamarind chutneys
pistachio kulfi
masala tea
The seasoning mixture, along with the jute and clay, help to insulate the oven (burnt, crystalized sugar is pretty serious stuff.

Beard Handicapping 2010

March 22

The long list of contenders for this year’s James Beard Foundation Awards was whittled down today, when the actual nominees were announced.

Of the 91 names on the list for the chefs and restaurant awards — not counting those in the Best New Restaurant category — 53 were on the list last year, too, which is kind of par for the course.

It’s probably fewer returnees than last year, actually. Most categories usually have three or four of five nominees returning from the previous year — obviously not all five can return because someone has to win and then is ineligible for a number of years.

But this year there was a big shakeup that I don't understand in the Outstanding Wine Service category, in which only Blackberry Farm returned.

The Outstanding Service Award and the regional awards for the Mid-Atlantic, Southwest and Pacific have just two returning nominees.

For the Beard Awards, that’s almost revolutionary.

Still, I shall endeavor to predict the winners.

Mind you, these are not my choices for who I’d like to win. They are who I think will win based on how popular they seem to be with media.

Because although anyone can participate online in the process of picking semifinalists, the judges in the two rounds of voting required to pick the actual nominees and the winners are former winners and the food writers who made them popular in the first place. It’s kind of an insular world, and people tend to feed off of one-another’s opinions.

That being said, my predictions don’t have a great record. This will be my fourth year of Beard Handicapping. The first two years I guessed 7 out of 19. Last year I got 8 out of 19. So, that’s less than half, but quite a bit better than a monkey picking at random (and if you think about it like baseball, I batted .421 last year).

Now let’s get on with the predictions, shall we?

Outstanding Chef:
We have Andrés, Colicchio and Goin returning from last year. Both of the newcomers are from San Francisco and I think they’ll split that city's vote. The question is, are the judges tired of Tom Colicchio or worried that José Andrés is too creative for these serious times? If so, they’ll express love for the homey food of Sunday dinner at Lucques and vote for Suzanne Goin.
But I think star power will prevail and Tom Colicchio will win.

José Andrés
Tom Colicchio
Gary Danko
Suzanne Goin
Charles Phan

Outstanding Restaurant:
Babbo, Boulevard and Highlands Bar & Grill are back from last year, but the newcomers, Daniel and Spiaggia, are hardly new.
It’s never wise to predict against a victory for Mario Batali or Daniel Boulud. We’re in the mood for classics this year, which means Spiaggia has a good chance. But I think I’ll predict Daniel.

Babbo
Boulevard
Daniel
Highlands Bar & Grill
Spiaggia

Outstanding Restaurateur:
These are all the same guys as last year except for Pat Kuleto, who’s replacing last year’s winner, Drew Nieporent. Will judges feel bad about not picking Boulevard as outstanding restaurant and vote for its owner, Kuleto, for restaurateur? I’m thinking they won’t. Keith McNally is not particularly press-friendly, which could hurt him or help him depending on whether food writers like restaurateurs who play hard to get. I think mostly they don’t like that.
I’ll predict Richard Melman.

Tom Douglas
Pat Kuleto
Keith McNally
Richard Melman
Stephen Starr

Outstanding Service:
Oh who knows? La Grenouille and Vetri are back from last year. The rest are new. Robuchon’s Las Vegas restaurant is up for three awards this year (service, the regional award for the Southwest and pastry chef). But I think Grant Achatz’s star power will outshine it. I think Alinea will win.

Alinea
Joël Robuchon at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino
La Grenouille
Michael Mina
Vetri

Best New Restaurant:
This category actually kind of matters, because you only have one chance to win it. I suppose it’s possible that Marea and Locanda Verde will split the New York vote, except Flour + Water, Frances and RN74 are all in San Francisco. Does that mean Biboou in Philadelphia will slip through like a beta salmon while the big fish duke it out?
Maybe, but I think Marea will win.

Bibou
Flour + Water
Frances
Locanda Verde
Marea
RN74

Outstanding Pastry Chef:
Kamel Guechida, Nicole Plue and Mindy Segal are all back. I predicted that Mindy Segal would win last year, and I’m going to predict it again.

Amanda Cook
Michelle Gayer
Kamel Guechida
Nicole Plue
Mindy Segal

Rising Star:
This award, given to a chef aged 30 or younger, is important because it can really help launch a career. Johnny Monis, Gabriel Rucker and Sue Zemanick are all back from last year. Tim Hollingsworth doesn’t really need to have his career launched as he’s already chef de cuisine at The French Laundry, but we love the House of Keller (Hollingsworth's predecessor, Corey Lee, won this award), and I predict he will win.

Timothy Hollingsworth
Johnny Monis
Grégory Pugin
Gabriel Rucker
Sue Zemanick

Wine & Spirits Professional:
Paul Grieco of Hearth in New York is the only newcomer here. He could win, but I think we’re going to go with booze this year, so I predict Julian P. Van Winkle, III of Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery in Louisville, Ky., will win.

Merry Edwards
Paul Grieco
Garrett Oliver
John and Doug Shafer
Julian P. Van Winkle, III

Outstanding Wine Service
Blackberry Farm’s the only returning nominee, and maybe it’s back for a reason, but I don’t think the media love affair with Frasca is over yet. I predict that restaurant will win.

A16
Blackberry Farm
Frasca Food and Wine
Jean Georges
Restaurant Gary Danko

Regional awards:

Great Lakes:
Michael Carlson of Schwa is the only newcomer, replacing Michael Symon who won last year. People like Schwa’s homey style, but I hear so much buzz about Paul Kahan’s restaurants that I think Koren Grieveson, his chef at Avec, will win.

Michael Carlson
Koren Grieveson
Arun Sampanthavivat
Bruce Sherman
Alex Young

Midwest:
Lenny Russo of Heartland in St. Paul is the only newcomer in this group, replacing Tim McKee who won last year. I have to say I have no idea about this one, but a prediction must be made, and so I shall make it for Colby Garrelts.

Isaac Becker
Gerard Craft
Colby Garrelts
Alexander Roberts
Lenny Russo

Northeast:
Peter Kelly’s the only newcomer on this list. I know the Frasier-Gaier team at Arrows has to win one of these years, but this year I’m guessing, once again, that it will be Marc Orfaly.

Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier
Peter X. Kelly
Michael Leviton
Tony Maws
Marc Orfaly

New York City:
Daniel Humm and Michael White are both new in this category, and they’re both super-white hot. Michael White gets to win best new restaurant for Marea, and Daniel Humm was anointed by Frank Bruni as the city's newest New York Times four-star chef. Woe unto he (or she) who dares to tilt at that mighty windmill.

Michael Anthony
Wylie Dufresne
Gabrielle Hamilton
Daniel Humm
Michael White

Mid-Atlantic:
Cathal Armstrong of Eve in Alexandria, Va., and Peter Pastan of Obelisk in DC are the returning contenders. I’m going to bet on the power of Top Chef

Cathal Armstrong
Jeff Michaud
Peter Pastan
Michael Solomonov
Bryan Voltaggio

Southeast:
Interestingly, two of the nominees here, newcomer (to this list) Andrea Reusing of Lantern, and Bill Smith of Crook’s Corner, are from Chapel Hill, N.C. Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene is the sole representative from Atlanta. Hugh Acheson is from Five and Ten in Athens, Ga., and Sean Brock, the other newcomer, is from McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C.
Sean actually isn’t a newcomer as he was nominated to be rising star last year, but you can only be on that list for so long. I think he’ll win the regional award this year.

Hugh Acheson
Sean Brock
Linton Hopkins
Andrea Reusing
Bill Smith

South:
Scott Boswell of Stella! in New Orleans and Christopher Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala., are new to the list, although really it’s more that Chris Hastings was just given the year off in 2009. He was nominated in 2007 and 2008.
Is the third time a charm? Mmm, I think it’s a toss-up between him and Zach Bell, who’s Daniel Boulud’s chef in Palm Beach.
As I said, it’s always dangerous to bet against mighty Daniel, but one must occasionally live dangerously.
Zach Bell
Scott Boswell
John Harris
Christopher Hastings
Michael Schwartz

Southwest:
Ryan Hardy of Montagna at The Little Nell in Aspen and Claude Le Tohic from Robuchon’s restaurant in Vegas are back from last year. You’d think Robuchon would win something, but I’ve been hearing a lot from Rick Moonen’s people lately, and not just because he’s on top Chef Masters, after years of relative quiet. I think it’s his year.

Bryan Caswell
Saipin Chutima
Ryan Hardy
Claude Le Tohic
Rick Moonen

Pacific
I would love for Jeremy Fox to win since he’s since left his job at Ubuntu, for which he was nominated last year as well as this year. It would be a tad awkward. David Kinch of Manresa is also back. Quince, Michael Tusk’s restaurant, I think has the admiration of the Bay Area crowd, but Matt Molina of Mozza has celebrity chefs at his back.

Michael Cimarusti
Jeremy Fox
David Kinch
Matt Molina
Michael Tusk

Northwest
Naomi Pomeroy of Beast in Portland and Andy Ricker of Pok Pok, also in Portland, are the newcomers in this category. Together with Cathy Whims of Nostrana in Portland, that means they have three nominees, and Seattle has just two. How embarrassing.
One of them might win, but I think the award will go to Jason Wilson of Crush in Seattle.

Naomi Pomeroy
Andy Ricker
Ethan Stowell
Cathy Whims
Jason Wilson

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, these are not necessarily who I’d like to win, they’re who I think will win. All of the nominees whose restaurants I’ve visited or whose food I have eaten are absolutely deserving of this award yada yada yada.

Congratulations to all the nominees.

Orthodox un-orthodox bagels

March 17

Who knew Moriah middle school in New Jersey’s Bergen county was a crucible for restaurant entrepreneurship?

Apparently it is. Mile End, a deli in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill, was opened a few months ago by a Moriah alumna, and today comes word from her former classmate Danielle Sarna (you might know her as publicist for the Max Brenner chocolate-themed restaurant) that another former attendee of that Orthodox Jewish day school is opening Vic’s Bagel Bar in Manhattan (Murray Hill — on Third Avenue between 36th and 37th streets).

Borrowing a shtick from Cold Stone Creamery (which got it from Steve’s), Vic’s has you pick a bagel (chocolate chip is among the options, showing that they are not orthodox in their bagel offerings), pick a spread (cream cheese, peanut butter, hummus, white fish, what have you — baked salmon salad I hope) and then a mix-in (bananas, capers, scallions, goodness knows what else), and it’s all assembled for you in have-it-your-way (or Burger King) style.

It sounds like a very on-trend concept. Fast, customizable, slightly non-traditional but not in a weird or freaky way. If they offer something local, seasonal or sustainable they’ll have all their bases covered.

The web site’s not up yet, but I’m told the restaurant’s open now.

Atlanta rallies behind Miller Union

March 12

In this blog’s latest poll, which ended last Sunday, readers voted on their choice for best new restaurant of 2009 from the list of semi-finalists released by the James Beard Foundation.

It’s a pretty long list — 31 names — but only 11 of them got votes from Food Writer's Diary readers, and almost all of the 74 votes cast were for Miller Union in Atlanta.

The final tally's below. The full list of Beard Foundation semifinalists can be found here.

In other blog-related news, my experiment to see if my blog would attract more readers if I mentioned Sarah Palin showed that no, in fact, my readers don’t care about Sarah Palin and mentioning her in my blog didn’t attract any new readers. That’s good to know.

Sorry I’ve been such a lazy blogger of late, but I have some fascinating entries in store that I hope you’ll enjoy. You’ll see them soon.

Until then, those poll results I promised you:

WHICH OF THESE BEARD FOUNDATION NOMINEES FOR BEST NEW RESTAURANT WOULD YOU PICK?

Miller Union, Atlanta: 61 (82%)
Marea, New York City: 3 (4%)
Ping, Portland, Ore.: 2 (2%)
A Mano, New Orleans: 1 (1%)
Bibou, Philadelphia: 1 (1%)
Bluebird Tavern, Burlington, Vt.: 1 (1%)
Eos at Viceroy, Miami: 1 (1%)
Koo Zee Doo, Philadelphia: 1 (1%)
Locanda Verde, New York City 1 (1%)
Sage at Aria Resort & Casino, Las Vegas: 1 (1%)
Trummer’s on Main, Clifton, Va.: 1 (1%)

Kai’s closing

March 8

If you love Kai restaurant, on 69th and Madison, or have meant to check it out, you have one month left to eat there.

Ito En, the tea company that owns Kai, announced that it’s closing the restaurant and tea store on April 9.

“... with our lease up on the building, it was a time for us to re-evaluate our business strategy and focus on our core business of ready-to-drink beverages, tea leaves and teabags,” said Yosuke Honjo, chief executive and president of Ito En North America, in an e-mail.

But Donguri (309 E. 83rd St., between First and Second avenues), is staying open, and Hitoshi Kagawa, former executive chef of Kai, is running the kitchen there.

Ornella

March 4

Giuseppe Viterale thought a pay-by-the-pound churras-caria would do well in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria. So he opened a Samba Grill on 23rd Avenue, near the Astoria-Ditmars stop of the N and W trains.

It turned out that location didn’t have enough foot traffic to support it, so last November he transformed it into Ornella, an Italian trattoria named after his wife, who is also the mother of their four children and the restaurant’s executive chef.

I ate there last night.

The restaurant’s publicist told me that many of the recipes come from Ornella’s family (except for the takeout items like, you know, veal Parmigiana and spaghetti carbonara), but Giuseppe has some influence, too. His father owned mills in an Italian village near Salerno, so he learned a lot about different kinds of flour. So he serves a pasta made with 75 percent chestnut flour (with cherry tomato and arugula in a garlic-oil sauce), and another one — pizzocheri della valtellina — with buckwheat flour, served with cabbage, potato and fontina cheese (it's a Lombardian dish).

The chestnut pasta dish is the one in the picture.

I also had some Nduja — pronounce it and you'll see that it’s a cousin of andouille — a spicy sausage of pork and veal from Calabria that Ornella serves as a pâté on bread — and, because I was in an Italian restaurant in New York City, after all, bruschetta with tomatoes and olive oil.

Then I had tilapia in cartoccio (prepared in an aluminum foil balloon along with clams and mussels etc.; to be broken open at the table so the diner can inhale the garlic-shellfish aroma), followed by a dessert sampler of an Italian sort of flan, cheesecake and chocolate cake.

But then Giuseppe was testing out the chestnut pasta with tuna bottarga and wanted me to check it out, too. So I did. The idea was to have that sharp fishiness of the bottarga contrast with the mild sweetness of the chestnuts.

I think it worked, but I can't say for sure because I’d just had chocolate cake.

What can I say? It’s part of my job.

Google Search: "Sarah Palin" restaurant

March 3


We in the trade media can be pretty self-satisfied sometimes, because we don't cover the same stories everyone else covers. Tiger Woods gets decked by his wife for messing around? We don’t care.

A kid goes up in a runaway balloon but not really? We don’t care.

Kim Kardashian — well, I don’t even know enough about Kim Kardashian to finish this sentence.

So we sit in our offices on Park Avenue and wonder a bit smugly why those people — those consumer journalists — insist on all reporting on the same things, and on things that, quite frankly, are not germane to the interests of their audience.

Of course we know why — we might be smug but we’re not stupid. It builds their audiences. It’s what the public responds to.

We wondered if we could experiment with this. Was there some way we could connect Sarah Palin, say, with restaurants in a newsy way and report on it? Would that increase our readership?

I did a quick Google search for “ “Sarah Palin" restaurant” and was rewarded with the video I have embedded here for your amusement.

It’s not newsy. It's from the 2008 election campaign and was posted to YouTube.com on September 28 of that year. It's a visit by Mrs. Palin to Tony Luke’s, which from what I understand is generally the third place for food tourists in Philadelphia to visit for cheese steaks. The first two are, of course, Pat’s and Geno’s.

I think the Geno’s crowd is probably a better fit for the former vice-presidential candidate.

Anyway, this blog entry is just a test to see if writing about Sarah Palin will increase readership.

It’s not a perfect test, but what test is? Even the landmark study indicating that oatmeal lowered cholesterol was flawed.

Seriously so, in fact: Test subjects were either given oatmeal for breakfast or bacon and eggs. Did the study show that oatmeal lowered cholesterol or that not eating bacon and eggs every single day for breakfast lowered cholesterol?

See? Even though I’m acting like consumer media and writing blog entries to try to drive traffic, I’m still able to educate my readers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Jonathon Sawyer eats everybody else’s lunch

March 1

Thanks to a groundswell of Jonathon Sawyer fans, the executive chef of The Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland dominated in last week’s poll, in which I asked you to cast your own vote among semifinalists in the James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef awards.

Indeed, the young chap, who I must say made a breathtakingly delicious clam chowder at an IFEC event I attended awhile back, took 43 percent of all of the votes.

He was followed by Kevin Gillespie of Woodfire Grill in Atlanta, with 14 percent of the votes, and Sonja Finn of Dinette in Pittsburgh, with 10 percent.

Rounding out the list of five who would make it onto the short list of finalists if the Beard Award judges vote the way Food Writer’s Diary readers did are Sue Zemanick of Gautreau’s in New Orleans, who got 5 percent of the votes, and Timothy Hollingsworth of The French Laundry, who got 4 percent.

Now, was this a plot on the part of Greenhouse Tavern patrons, or possibly workers, to stuff the ballot e-box for Jonathon? Almost certainly — my readership from Ohio jumped significantly last week.

But other restaurants could have done the same thing. They did not.

A total of 85 people participated in the poll. Full results can be found below.

Now on to what I think is the other important James Beard Foundation chefs and restaurant award — best new restaurant.

The other awards are nice to win, but they tend to include a revolving door of favorites, replaced after a time by the protégés of the favorites. But best new restaurant you can only win once. Voting has begun. Click on a button on the long column on the upper right hand part of this page.

Poll results:
Who would you pick from the James Beard Foundation's list of semi-finalists as rising star chef?

Jonathon Sawyer, The Greenhouse Tavern, Cleveland: 37 (43%)

Kevin Gillespie, Woodfire Grill, Atlanta: 12 (14%)

Sonja Finn, Dinette, Pittsburgh: 9 (10%)

Sue Zemanick, Gautreau's, New Orleans: 5 (5%)

Timothy Hollingsworth, The French Laundry, Yountville, Calif.: 4 (4%)

Will Gilson, Garden at the Cellar, Cambridge, Mass.: 3 (3%)

Johnny Monis, Komi, Washington, D.C. 3: (3%)

Sam Gorenstein, BLT Steak at the Betsy Hotel, Miami Beach, Fla.: 2 (2%)

Charles “Chip” Roman, Blackfish, Conshohocken, Pa.: 2 (2%)

Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon, Portland, Ore.: 2 (2%)

James Rugile, Venue Bistro, Denver 2: (2%)

Josh Adams, June, Peoria Heights, Ill.: 1 (1%)

Justin Basye, Stella Sola, Houston: 1 (1%)

Casey Lane, The Tasting Kitchen, Venice, Calif.: 1 (1%)

Grégory Pugin, Veritas, New York City: 1 (1%)

Justin Aprahamian, Sanford, Milwaukee: 0 (0%)

Benjamin Bailly, Petrossian, West Hollywood, Calif.: 0 (0%)

Vanessa Garcia, Restaurant Charlie at the Palazzo, Las Vegas: 0 (0%)

David Gilberg, Koo Zee Doo, Philadelphia: 0 (0%)

Carly Groben, Proof, Des Moines, Iowa: 0 (0%)

Colin Hazama, Kauai Grill at the St. Regis Princeville, Kaua‘i, Hawaii: 0 (0%)

Perry Hoffman, Etoile Restaurant at Domaine Chandon, Yountville, Calif.: 0 (0%)

Matthew Lightner, Castagna, Portland, Ore. 0: (0%)

Joshua Smith, A Mano, New Orleans: 0 (0%)

Lee Styer, Fond, Philadelphia: 0 (0%)

Sameh Wadi, Saffron Restaurant & Lounge, Minneapolis: 0 (0%)