"Rick Bayless" news and stories

Over the weekend a tweet from celebrity chef Rick Bayless caught our attention. It read: "O, wht 2 do? Peanuts all thru r kitchen, severe allergy guest. Cnt serve in good conscience, 4 his safety. Says we owe him $ 4 inconvenience."

While we were unable to reach the chef to get the gritty details, the incident certainly caught the attention of Bayless' Twitter followers and those with food allergies -- who agreed that the chef made the right call, including Chris Wiess, VP of advocacy and government relations for the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN).

"When I first read the tweet, I was impressed with his response. It does seem like he took the issue to heart. If a restaurant manager or employee looked around and assessed the situation, and felt that they couldn't provide a safe meal, we wouldn't want them to take a risk. What Rick did was very admirable," said Weiss.

For chefs and restaurant owners, guests with food allergies aren't going away anytime soon, and the consequences are deadly serious. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases 100 to 200 people die in the United States from severe food allergy-related reactions each year. (Keep reading, and take our food-allergy poll after the jump.)

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• Popular American dishes are born from sea to shining sea.
• Take a sweet peek behind Jacques Torres' chocolate curtain.
• Domino's also shares -- shares TV production secrets, that is.
• South-of-the-border sage says not to fear chiles, then makes mole.
• Cook up these dishes before cherry season is kaput.
• You too can grill green.
• Gobble this burger fit for Michelle Obama.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• Rick Bayless is voted the best chef of 2009 -- a well-deserved honor -- beating out Food Network favorites.
• Let's put it this way: Williams-Sonoma got the electoral-college nod.
• Wind down 2009 and fill up for 2010 with sweet potato and bacon in endive boats.
• If you come across a well-coiffed onion, will this instrument come in handy?
• Bacon continues its starring role to the very end.
• Is family-style dining the way to go during the holidays?
• Roll the dice for New Year's fortune with Hoppin' John soup.

Xoco's churros are hard to get. Photo: ehfisher/flicker.

Would you wait three days for a "Top Chef" churro?

Rick Bayless, one of Chicago's top chefs and the winner of Bravo's "Top Chef Masters," is extending his gourmet Mexican empire to street food. Last week, he added XOCO (pronounced "Sho-Co") to his string of Windy City hot spots including Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. The latest aims to bring authentic Mexican tortas and caldos (sandwiches and soups) to the masses. How did it go over with the locals? The line snaked out the door.

When Slashfood swung by for after-dinner churros -- the delectable fried-dough treats sprinkled with sugar and spices -- it took three nights of trying to get in.

Chicago's own Rick Bayless may be the king of Mexican cuisine in America, but his win on "Top Chef Masters" proved the chef could also cook through the canon of other world cuisines.

Bayless slogged through tongue, Southern Italian cuisine and Oaxacan mole to emerge victorious on the competition.

"It's really hard," Bayless tells Slashfood of the experience. "Plain and simple, really really hard."

Now he's offering his advice to winning the competition.

"What I learned going through the first competition is that it's a game," Bayless says. "Yes, you have to be a good cook, but you have to be able to play that game."

So, all you "Top Chef" wannabes, you need to create a strategy.

"You have to choose which path you're going to go down and you never look back. Once you start second-guessing yourself, you really lose your focus, and then you can't do a good job with what you're doing," he says. "A couple of times I chose to do something and then halfway through I'd go 'Wow it would have been so much better if I'd done something else,' I'd say 'No, put that away and make the absolute best out of this thing that you did.'"