Meet The Team / Pervaiz Shallwani

Raj Vaidya. Photo: Michael Harlan Turkell

In a career that has included wine jobs at haute dining and wine destinations Per Se, Cru and, since June, the head sommelier at Daniel Boulud's flagship New York eatery Daniel, Raj Vaidya has paired more than his share of his duck with vino.

Born in Jersey, and raised in his parents' native Bombay and Singapore, Raj's wine tutelage began well before he was of legal drinking age, enjoying vino and good food with family and company. It laid the groundwork for post-college (a degree in political science and philosophy from Rutgers University) career in the wine business, where he first started working at New Jersey's Ryland Inn and did time in the biodynamic fields at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa.

As fall quickly approaches, we caught up with Raj to discuss the different elements one needs to consider when pairing wine with all those preparations of this wonderfully fatty, gamey bird, creamy foie gras and bloody duck à la presse.

Jonathan Waters. Photo: Robert Messick.

Strawberries with wine? It's not a pairing most people ask Chez Panisse sommelier Jonathan Waters about. In fact, he can't remember anyone ever asking him to take the sweet-tart berry -- which has dotted dessert menus for much of the summer -- and combine it with a crisp, ethereal vino. Champagne, yes, but wine, no.

"It's pretty rare that somebody would have strawberries with wine," says Waters (no relation to that other Chez Panisse Waters), who has worked at the restaurant for more than 20 years.

That said, he thinks the two are a very plausible match and was up to the challenge. We caught up with him to chat strawberries, Alice Waters' practice of finishing a meal with seasonal fruit, and his thoughts on organic wine.

Do you guys ever serve whole strawberries?
We do. We serve them at the end of a meal. Alice's idea is that the perfect end of a meal is a fruit. If you have ever read [David Mas] Masumoto's book about peaches ... we only serve strawberries for a very short window because it's a short season when they are perfect.

Does the restaurant serve them other ways?
We serve strawberries with other things for a longer period, like macerated strawberries over sherbet or strawberry shortcake.

Sara Reistad-Long and Camille Noe Pagán. Photo: JP Pagán

We caught up with Pagán to chat about her dislike of food "fanaticism," the evils of high-fructose corn syrup and how she not only has her steak, but eats it too.

Who is the site geared toward?
People who like food. We are speaking to a more general audience, male and female. People who read Gourmet, but might read Fitness, too. People who are really interested in food and their health.

Todd Thrasher. Photo: Allison Dinner

The celebrated Restaurant Eve in the Washington, D.C. suburbs features the beloved tomatoes from one local farmer on its menus. (The farmer in question, happily, has stayed free of the tomato blight sweeping the country.)

It's up to mixologist and sommelier Todd Thrasher to find the right vino to balance out the sweet, tangy summer favorite. A native Virginian who got his start in the drink biz by bartending his way through college, Thrasher has schlepped drinks at such esteemed places as José Andrés' Café Atlantico.

"People ask how you get into wine and I say you read a lot about wine and then tasting blind is how you get into it," he says.

After a sommelier course and a failed business try, he was ready to bolt from the industry for a career as a scuba instructor on a Caribbean island until he was hooked up with chef Cathal Armstrong. "The rest is history," he says.

We caught up with Thrasher to talk the Virginia tomato season, the art of tomato pairings and his tomato pet peeve -- teaming a raw tomato with a red wine.

Pat LaFrieda. Photo: Nick Solares.

Haute Burger. The idea seems silly of a food that was once so simple. (Grind meat. Form patty. Grill. Dress. Eat.)

That's no longer the case. Proprietary patties are big business, with big money to be earned in creating a mouth-watering blend of ground cow. A masterful mix could earn a chef the coveted crown of Burger King at one of growing number of cook-offs, such as the Feedbag's first annual cook-off in Summit, N.J., last weekend.

In New York, when a chef wants a custom burger, he often turns to third-generation meatman Pat La Frieda, whose family has been making burgers for nearly a century. He and his staff spend up to two months creating the right mix of meat for a chef.

"For the Shake Shack we made almost 30 different blends," La Frieda told us. "For Minetta Tavern's Black Label Burger, it was probably just as many. We tried different styles of meat, different weights. It was a process. I was eating burgers everyday."

We caught up with LaFrieda to get the juice on his family, the growing list of big name chefs trafficking in burgers and his decision this month to finally make three types of patties available to home cooks through Fresh Direct.