Word: chefs
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GOLDEN ROCK INN Coinciding with a dramatic extension of its dining area by Aman Resort designer Ed Turtle, this popular resort, tel: (1-869) 469 3346, now boasts well-known British-born chef Janice Ryan. Her dishes highlight the importance of marinades and seasonings - especially allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers - to the very best Caribbean cooking. Outstanding are conch chowder, coconut-water-and-rum shrimp salad and spice-rubbed snapper with tamarind...
...cooking contest is downright bizarre. Why not have a kissing contest? Or a baby-naming battle? The notion of taking something so subjective, personal and essentially un-competitive as cooking and making a Mortal Kombat-style tournament seems, at least on its surface, patently insane. (The original Japanese Iron Chef took this as a given, and presented the contests as the whim of a wealthy madman.) If you've ever participated in a cook-off, you know how meaningless the scoring is, how opaque and arbitrary the judges' standards are, how random and unpredictable the results...
...anything, cooking contests have become an inescapable part of our culture: Top Chef remains a ratings juggernaut, and The Food Network's Iron Chef likewise. Competition barbecue gets bigger every year. And even on the local level, every city is seeing more and more local cook-offs, from high-end ones like Cochon 555 that feature some of the best chefs in town, to pro-am affairs like the Cassoulet Contest or Meatball Slapdown, events I recently judged in New York...
...Bocuse d'Or plays at a higher level, and brings fanatical nationalism into the mix, but it's the same essential spirit - Top Chef finalist Kevin Gillespie had a shot this year, and season 3 winner Hung Huynh two years ago. Gillespie pulled out because he didn't have time to prepare, but Hung almost won the qualifer two years ago. Still, Top Chef and its ilk are roundly mocked by actual top chefs (no matter how many appear on the show as guest judges.) So why would culinary demigods like Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud and the great Paul Bocuse...
...version of the Apollo program. There's no real reason to do it, the difficulties are nearly insoluble, and the cost in time and money is prohibitive. But to plant the flag on the alien surface of European haute cuisine! To beat the Frenchies at their own game! The chef that pulls that off will be a hero to his peers, and will make his career overnight...