Todd English and Erica Wang.
Photo: David X Prutting,
PatrickMcMullan.com
Todd English is speaking out for the first time since calling off his wedding to Erica Wang.
"I couldn't go through with it," the 49-year-old chef of Olives told People. "I thought I'd met my partner, but as things progressed [it] went down hill."
English has appeared on "Iron Chef America" and PBS's "Cooking Under Fire."
In the People interview, English accused his jilted fiancee of "physical and verbal abuse" and allegedly hitting him in the eye in September. The New York Post reports Thursday that English visited a New York City police precinct to report the allegations.
But she denied the abuse allegations to the New York Post earlier this week, telling the paper that English has left her without a job (she was his personal assistant) and an apartment, and forced her to pay $12,000 for wedding expenses.
"An animal wouldn't treat another animal the way he has treated me," Wang told the Post. "He is forgetting I am human. I don't deserve this. He has caused me, my friends and family so much pain."
Slashfood reported on Oct. 5 that Wang had thrown a party despite the nuptials being called off.
The Hungry Bride has been sated. She was married last Saturday in a simple and beautiful ceremony on the grounds of an estate in Washington D.C., the city in which she and her handsome groom, Jon, fell in love years ago. In addition to being Sarah's co-worker (visit me at ShelterPop.com for home decor ideas!), I was lucky enough to be one of her bridesmaids.
On the day of the long-awaited event, Sarah was as calm, cool and collected as ever and in true food-editor form, she remembered to eat breakfast. The details were thoughtfully chosen and worked together seamlessly. The girls' bouquets even had fragrant herbs like rosemary tucked inside!
After the simple ceremony, guests sipped on lemonade and sangria and waited a bit impatiently for what we knew would be one of the best meals we had had in quite a while. We all knew that baked chicken with droopy carrots and dried-out fondant-covered wedding cake wouldn't be on Sarah's menu. Instead, we were treated to lamb chops, macaroni and cheese, dim sum, s'mores and even cookies and milk.
Click through the gallery of pictures after the jump for pictures of the spread and the beautiful bride.
Todd English and Erica Wang. Photo: David X Prutting, PatrickMcMullan.com
What do you do when you and your celebrity chef husband-to-be call it quits just days before your extravagant wedding at an upscale New York City hotel?
If you're Erica Wang, the recently ex-ed fiancee of Todd English, you put on a chic black dress and party it up with your family and friends, the New York Post reports. English is the previously married 48-year-old owner of the Olives restaurants and star of season three of the reality-TV show "Top Chef."
Wang and English called off the wedding days before it was to take place at the St. Regis Hotel, and since several guests had already made the trip to New York for the event -- which gossip blog Gawker reports English had already paid for -- the would-be bride and "about 150 of Wang's closest friends and family packed into the posh party space 20 stories above Fifth Avenue," the Post reported.
"Everybody is having a fantastic time," a source told the Post. "People are dancing their butts off."
I've heard of brides getting so overwhelmed and busy the day of the wedding that they actually forget to eat. I found this notion pretty hard to believe until I started participating in weddings myself. All of a sudden you're rushing to get into a car to go to your hair appointment, then there's makeup, then you have to put on your dress and be ready for photos at a certain time. Before you know it, you're sitting down to the first course and your first meal of the day; and even then, you're busy making sure the bride has everything she needs.
With that said, I couldn't let this happen to me or my bridesmaids. The solution: have breakfast catered in my hotel room where everyone will be getting ready. Platters of fruit, danishes and croissants, along with yogurt and homemade granola, should please everyone. Even if the girls don't have time to formally sit down at the table and eat, they can grab a yogurt and eat it while they're having their hair done. The wedding day is long and arduous. The more energy we all have, the less cranky and more pleasant it will be for everyone.
Did you eat the day of your wedding? If not, was it because of the lack of time or were you too nervous? For those of you who have been bridesmaids, what would your ideal wedding-day snacks be? Let me know in the comments.
Tomorrow night on Top Chef, Gail Simmons has a special surprise for the Chef'testants. She's throwing her girlfriend a bridal shower and they are cooking!
Creating a menu around the old maxim:
Something old, something new Something borrowed, something blue And a silver sixpence in her shoe.
... should be no trouble for the teams (Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue ... where's Sixpence?).
The only problem is, some of them don't look too excited to be Gail Simmons' personal chefs. Isn't this supposed to be a competition, not a service?
The episode airs tomorrow night, Wednesday, December 10th, at 10/9c on Bravo with guest judge Dana Cowin, Editor-in-Chief of Food & Wine Magazine.
Who wants to invite me to a wedding with this cake? Please? I want it! I admit - it might be a little more pricey than the cake you were thinking of getting, but it's healthier. Surely sticking pieces of sushi in each other's faces is more romantic than frosting. Although, if you really wanted some frosting, perhaps you could add a green wasabi frosting. I'd be OK with that.
If you need some help with it, you should know that the picture came from the wedding of Jef and Jin Yoon and the cake maker has shared the recipe on her website. Now, you've got no excuses. It's sushi time!
In August of last year, I became the luckiest guy in the world when Christine Nylin accepted my proposal for marriage. Being the dork I am, I set out to make up a cocktail symbolizing the event. I named it The Union, which not only highlights the joining of two into one, but also happens to be the name of the restaurant where I tend bar.
That cocktail has gotten a lot of play recently, the recipe popping up on different web sites, magazines and recipe collections. And now, it has another moment in the sun, for on a spectacularly beautiful August 3rd in Seattle, I became even luckier the luckiest guy in the world when Christine became my wife.
In that spirit, I offer up our recipe to share with you. Check it out after the jump.
Tuxedo and matching wedding dress strawberries are always an elegant touch at a wedding. They are also pricey. I never really considered what it would take to make them at home until I came across a post on the subject at My Sweet and Saucy.
It turns out that they are fairly easy to make. My Sweet and Saucy has a step-by-step guide with pictures to walk you through the process. If you are hosting a wedding, you may want to check it out. Better yet, get a friend to check it out and make them for you!
She puts them in little bags and gives them away as favors. I've also seen them on a dessert table and served at the reception.
Have I mentioned how much of a geek I am? Well, just in case I haven't, now you know. I just love it when two of my passions cross over each other, especially when the results are this great!
Check out the post on Gizmodo for the whole story, but this is a wedding cake for, you guessed it, a Star Wars wedding. It's hard to tell how much of it is edible, exactly, but some of the details are amazing. The chef who made this cake used camera lens with a blue bulb behind it for R2's sensor for added realism. Have you ever seen a geek-y cake this awesome? I'd love to hear about it!
When it comes to wedding cakes, my primary requirement is that it taste good. So many wedding cakes turn out to be dry and tasteless, more like eating paste than dessert. But it seems that for many, the primary requirement for the wedding cake is that it must be carefully sculpted and attractive, taste be damned. However, I think that Texas bride Chidi Ogbuta may have taken her wedding cake a bit too far. For her September 22nd, 2007 wedding, she had a cake made in her own wedding day image. Will this be the new trend in wedding desserts? (For those of you who are really curious, there are more pictures in the article).
Millions of women love cream puffs and a good number of them wouldn't mind having a croquembouche - tower of cream puffs - at their wedding. Very few would actually want to be a croquembouche. Ukrainian pastry chef Valentyn Shtefano made his wife's wedding dress entirely out of cream puffs and caramelized sugar. It took over 2 months to make and used 1,500 puffs. Despite the fact that it appears to be heavy, the dress weighed only 20 pounds. Shtefano is a well-know figure in his town due to the elaborate desserts that he makes "in a place where cake is often layers of heavy cream, wafers and nuts or poppy seeds - more something to eat than to look at." His creations, like the dress, are both.
This is an interesting alternative to a regular punch bowl for parties. The Cocktail Fountain has a pump in the bottom bowl that forces the liquid - alcoholic or nonalcoholic - up to the top in a continuous stream. Thanks to some holes in the bottom of each upper level, the liquid streams down in a waterfall effect, allowing guests to fill their cups from a spout without fussing with a soup ladle in a standard punch bowl. On top of its serving abilities, the base of the fountain is illuminated, so the unit could actually turn into a beautiful centerpiece if you are serving clear drinks (an illuminated White Russian probably wouldn't have the same effect).
The fountain holds 4.7L of liquid and comes with eight cups, all of which hook conveniently over the edge of the lowest bowl.
Combine it with a chocolate fountain and I suspect that your party will turn into an event that people will be talking about for the months, if not longer.
I don't recall the 2nd amendment being written into the standard set of wedding vows, but then again, I'm also not from Texas, where this cake was prominently featured at a real wedding this past weekend. The gun was carved from a chocolate cake layer and stacked on top of the chocolate cake base, then decorated with rich frosting. The base is actually the shape of a target from the IPSC, a group that supports sport shooting and marksmanship.
Perhaps it's a less-than-common choice for a wedding cake, but all things considered, it's great that people are taking these celebratory cakes in new and unusual directions. After all, there is no reason why you have to have a plain white cake with flowers when you can have wedding cupcakes, snack food towers or anything that you (and your new spouse) really enjoy.
I am nowhere near getting married, but if I could somehow get cupcakes for a wedding delivered here from Australia, I might consider it.
These gorgeous cupcakes are made by Kylie Lambert for her bakery Le Cupcake...in Sydney Australia! I am sure the cupcake itself tastes great (it looks like vanilla), but it is the soft, subtle blue, and the detail of what is on top that got me. I suspect that Kylie pressed some sort of lace into fondant to create the look. Her other cupcakes are similar, some with the same lace impressions, others that are simply frosted, but have beautiful sugar decorations. I love the butterfly.
She doesn't have a website, but this photo, along with photos of all her cupcake artistry, is on Flickr.
Wedding cakes are always some of the most elaborate creations in the cake world, the perfect compliments to some of the most celebrated days. Wedding cakes can run into the hundreds and thousands of dollars, but few are as impressive as the cakes of celebrities. Used to being in the spotlight, what better way to highlight their wedding day than with a stunning cake? The Wedding Sutra has a photo gallery of many celebrity wedding cakes, and while the designs cover both the unique and the traditional, all are stunning. Above, you can see Mariska Hargitay's seven-foot-tall six-tiered chocolate and vanilla cake (left) and Leann Rimes' Chocolate Strawberry Cake, decorated with 35 dozen red roses (right). Getting inspired? If so, hopefully it's with ideas for your own cake and not for ways to gate-crash one of these weddings.
In August of last year, I became the luckiest guy in the world when Christine Nylin accepted my proposal for marriage. Being the dork I am, I set out to make up a cocktail symbolizing the event. I named it The Union, which not only highlights the joining of two into one, but also happens to be the name of the restaurant where I tend bar.
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