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My love for Balthazar is not a secret. I always question how much of my enjoyment of their food is connected to their warm, well worn, perfect environment. I try so hard to not let things like decor affect my enjoyment of the food, but I admit with Balthazar it’s [...]

I am a big big believer in focus leading to quality. (Note: not just a big believer. That’s TWO bigs!) I enjoy all sorts of restaurants that focus on one item — chocolate, hot dogs, bagels, etc. But one of my favorite foods is macaroni and cheese. It’s a perfect food item in my opinion. [...]

Living in Seattle my choice for fried chicken is a place called Ezell’s. Honestly, it’s not as good as everyone claims. The texture of the coating is nice and crunchy, but the non-spicy chicken I had there was essentially flavorless. The spicy was, well, spicy, but not much else.
But this week, I’m in Manhattan. My [...]

Top chef brings a parade of amazing guest judges each season. Most I know by name, many I know by sight, all make me nod with respect.
But last night I just about jumped when they brought out Johnny Iuzzini.
Iuzzini is on my team, the dessert team. He is the pastry chef at Jean [...]

It seems every publication is all lists this time of year. What to gifts buy for this person or that, what to wear for holiday gatherings here or there, and finally, the “best of” lists.
We all have them, and personally, I love talking about them. Do you agree, disagree, what would you add [...]

After my second week at WD-50, Rosio the pastry sous gave me a green light. She encouraged me to ask Alex questions, many of them, telling me that he wants stagiers to really get something out of there time here. Oh, that was music to my ears.
The next afternoon, while we were all [...]

After my third day at WD-50, a strange thing happened.  I found something I thought I had lost; my reason for cooking.
Years ago, I worked for Seattle’s most talented chef, Scott Carsberg.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many very talented chefs in this city, doing very nice things in their restaurants.  But Carsberg has [...]

Within the culinary world, we feel a series of creative ripples. Depending on your place in this world, you feel them at various times, with various impacting strengths. You may taste something in a European restaurant, that eventually is seen in Seattle, which may make it’s way into a cooking magazine 5 years later, [...]

June 26th, 2007
For nearly 12 hours today, I was in pastry heaven.
I have no pictures to share with you, and I don’t want to muck up the entire experience by putting it into long paragraphs full of words that can’t possibly describe what I saw, tasted, and learned.
But here is a little bit about what [...]

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My love of street food is no secret. I sometimes feel that many chefs who run entire restaurants should spend time manning a street food cart so they can understand freshness, flavor, and most of all focus. Of course, for most people, living in the United States means (to borrow [...]