"chefs" news and stories

I like to give one of my cookbooks, which I sign with a personal note and add a sticker to a recipe that would best fit the personality of the person I'm giving it to. With that I also pair one or more of the items on the ingredients list.
• A magnum of the Bastianich wine that would best pair with the recipe.
• A Lidia-designed platter that the dish from that recipe could be served on.
• A cluster of products to make that recipe...for example, if the sticker is on the Truffle Risotto page, then I'd give Carnaroli Rice and a fresh truffle.

It's true that the 12 Days of Christmas are officially from December 25 to January 5, but maybe you need some gift-giving inspiration now instead of after the big day. And who better than a chef to give gift advice for all the cooks in your life. Our 12 Days of Christmas starts today, with the fabulous and funky Carla Hall.

The Chef: Carla Hall, Owner of Alchemy (Washington, D.C.), finalist in Season 5 of Bravo TV's Top Chef

The Gift: "There are a couple of directions I go in when giving holiday gifts. My first go-to gift would be a kitchen tool. I'm not a tool-chick, but I feel that every kitchen should have certain basic tools, other than knives, that serve more than one purpose or are used regularly – a microplane, a good peeler (not a harp peeler), a serrated peeler, a benriner (not that I'm cheap, but an inexpensive mandoline) and metal tongs."

Where to Find It: Williams-Sonoma.

Wolfgang Puck is about to take on Europe with his first restaurant on the continent, a Cut steakhouse opening in April or May in London's Mayfair section. Puck's fourth Cut (joining others in Beverly Hills, Las Vegas and Singapore) will be an 80-seat restaurant located on the ground floor of the Dorchester Group's newest luxury hotel 45 Park Lane, opening in 2011.

And the menu? "It's going to have more seafood," Puck told Slashfood. "The seafood is really great over there. And in the winter we'll have game birds -- grouse, woodcock, and all that stuff."

Puck's company is managing the new Cut. "It's easier for everyone that way," he said. The hotel fronts the capital, but doesn't have to run the business. "It's better for them," the Austrian-born chef said. "These hotels are not great at running restaurants. We are." (Among the Dorchester Group's properties are the Bel-Air, in L.A., The New York Palace, and Paris hotels Le Meurice and Plaza Athénée, as well as London's The Dorchester).

Puck, who has lived in Los Angeles since 1975, was in New York this week to promote a new line of canned soups and stocks, half of which are gluten free and organic. From Vegas to tinned soups to pheasant under glass . . . welcome to Wolfgang's World.

It used to be fairly common for restaurant reviewers to receive notes penned by chefs after a review came out. If the review was favorable, the handwritten missive would be polite and congratulatory. If the review was negative, sometimes the chef -- perhaps oblivious to his posterity -- might unleash invective.

Later, of course, the pen dried up in favor of email as the medium of choice for irate chefs to write to critics, and the practice has continued. In my work with the Village Voice, I personally have received angry emails from chefs, though polite thank-yous still predominate. The waters have further been muddied by the ascendance of blogs as a medium of review, and the rough-hewn quality of criticism they often exhibit. Many chefs have commented, both in public and in private, of their distaste for blog reviews, which often occur just days after a restaurant opens for business, and are hence deemed unfair by the chefs.

Restaurateurs and chefs have decided to fight back. New York chef David Chang banned food photography in his restaurants, in an apparent attempt to keep bloggers from taking pictures of food and posting them with reviews. In a 2008 roundtable discussion conducted by the Chicago Tribune, chefs Graham Bowles and Bill Kim expressed irritation at instantaneous reviews of their restaurants that appeared on foodie websites like Yelp and MenuPages, igniting a debate in the Windy City that continues today.

"Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio has written in the current issue of Saveur of his love for Parker House rolls, an American classic invented at Boston 's Parker House Hotel in the late 19th century. This being the 21st century, his version is smaller and less flattened than the original, and the top is sprinkled with salt, but he serves them every evening at his eponymous Colicchio & Sons restaurant in Manhattan, and reports that guests often eat three or more. It got us to wondering what other breads have become associated with renowned chefs.

Here, and after the jump, a half-dozen cooks and their favorite breads:

David Chang, who founded the Momofuku restaurant mini-empire, where Asian-American fusion is the rule, is a big fan of northern Chinese bao – puffy and pale steamed flatbreads that can be folded over a variety of ingredients to make little sandwiches that at Momofuku he calls ssams. The most popular is made with pork belly, but the same bread is served on the side with the entrée of pork shoulder and raw oysters at his East Village restaurant Ssam Bar.