Chef Report

Cameron Cuisinier’s dreams of a catering career led him to culinary school. Now he’s unemployed and $43,000 in debt, and he’s not alone.

From TV chefs to reality shows where the winners get their own restaurants, it’s a hot time to be in the kitchen. Record numbers of would-be chefs are enrolling in culinary schools, some of which charge $20,000 a year or more. But the restaurant business has always been a tough way to make a living, and many graduates find themselves saddled with debt and working long hours at low-paying, entry-level jobs.

“When they’re trying to get you enrolled in these programs, they tell you you’re going to come out making top dollar,” said Cuisinier, a recent graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. “I’ve just been way disappointed.”

Industry observers say celebrity chefs like Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse — with his trademark exclamation, “Bam!” — helped launch the craze. The rising popularity of cable TV’s The Food Network and reality shows like “Top Chef” and “Hell’s Kitchen” are fueling it.

“It looks really fun on TV,” said Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., one of the country’s premier training grounds for chefs. “You’ve got an audience adoring you. You say, ‘Bam!’ and throw some stuff on a plate and everyone goes nuts.

“That’s not what happens,” he said. “The work is long and hard. There’s a lot of pressure.”

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Cameron Cuisiner poses for a photo at home in Monterey, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006. Cuisinier is $43,000 in debt. And it wasn’t a fancy car or credit cards that got the 24-year-old there, it was dreams of a catering career. Cuisiner spent the money on culinary school. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

SEOUL, Dec. 20 (Yonhap) — U.S. restaurant chain Hooters will open its first restaurant in South Korea next month, the company’s local unit said Wednesday.

Hooters, known for its brand image of waitresses with tight shorts and low-cut T-shirts, is scheduled to open its first restaurant in Seoul on Jan. 18, Hooters of Korea Inc. said in a statement. full story…

CHICAGO, Nov. 29 PRNewswire — Five-star chef Charlie Trotter will bring his superlative-culinary experience to the Elysian Hotel and Private Residences, flagship of a new ultra-luxury brand, under construction at 11 East Walton Street and scheduled to open in 2008. The venture marks Trotter’s first collaboration in the U.S. and the latest success for the Gold Coast development.

“We talked with some of the nation’s foremost chefs about creating a restaurant truly attuned to the quality and character of the Elysian. In Charlie, we found the ideal partner, whose standards of excellence equal our own,” said David Pisor, founding partner and chief executive officer of the property’s developer, Elysian Worldwide. “Widely regarded as one of America’s finest chefs, Charlie is an icon and true innovator in the worlds of food and service. We couldn’t be more thrilled about our association with him.” more…

Celebrity Chef Daniel Boulud screamed vicious obscenities at Hispanic workers and promoted unqualified white workers who fit the upscale image of his four-star French eatery Daniel, a lawsuit claims.Seven Latino and Bangladeshi busboys and runners who worked at Daniel sued Boulud in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday, accusing the award-winning chef of racial and ethnic discrimination.

“They don’t want to see anyone who is a captain who is Bengali or Latino,” said Mir Kadir Mamun, 30, a Bangladeshi busboy from Queens who says he was fired in May after airing complaints with federal officials. “They are never going to promote us.”

The workers say they were also forced to remain in back-breaking, low-paying jobs that require lifting heavy trays of food. more…

The first orders Walter Scheib III remembers receiving from Laura Bush’s new social secretary, Lea Berman, still ring in his ears: “We need to stop serving this country-club food.” Scheib, who was then the White House executive chef, was speechless for several moments before he finally blurted out, “We are not serving what we want; we are serving what the first family wants to have.”Within two months of Berman’s arrival, in December 2004, Scheib was asked by the chief usher, Gary Walters, who is in charge of White House operations, to hand in his resignation. Scheib agreed to stay on until his replacement was found, but the next day he told The New York Times that he had been fired. As soon as the article was published the White House asked him to clear out immediately.

Quite a comedown, he admitted in a recent interview, from his days in the previous administration, when Hillary Clinton had charged this fiercely competitive, meticulously organized chef with bringing “what’s best about American food, wine and entertaining to the White House.” His sophisticated contemporary food was generally considered some of the best ever served there.

But he was quick to say he would only talk about his difficulties as long as it was clear that he has no complaints about Laura Bush. more…

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay opened his first U.S. restaurant on Thursday, with an assurance he would not try to push New Yorkers into their own kitchens as he did British women.

Ramsay said he would not interfere with the “fascinating scenario” in restaurant-loving New York, even though his television crusade for home cooking struck a chord in Britain, where he said young women had become a lazy “chardonnay and Pringle (potato chip) brigade.”

New Yorkers eat out at least four times a week, with the trend growing every year, a Zagat dining survey released last month showed.

Ramsay’s new restaurant, with formal dining for 45 people and a bar for more casual dining for up to 70, already is booked for the first two months. The menu feature dishes such as his signature Cappuccino of White Beans and lobster ravioli.

“I’m not here telling New Yorkers they have got to get into their kitchens,” Ramsay told Reuters as he stood in the sparkling $6.5 million kitchen of “Gordon Ramsay at the London” in the new luxury London NYC hotel. more…

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Chicken’s most familiar face is about to get a new look. 

Kentucky Fried Chicken is unveiling a new logo today for Colonel Sanders. He’s shedding his white suit jacket for a red cook’s apron. (More….)

Chef Edouardo Jordan started his culinary career at an early age in the kitchens of his mother and grandmother in St. Petersburg, Florida. As a top graduate of his high school, Edouardo had a decision to make: culinary school or college. He chose college. After graduating from the University of Florida with degrees in Business Administration and Sports Management, Edouardo, determined to apply his degrees, started an online restaurant guide for his hometown. His love for food and restaurants drove him to indulge his self in food. Spending nearly a year researching recipes, visiting restaurants, managing the website and critiquing food, Edouardo decided to follow his passion, he enrolled into culinary school. As a student at Le Cordon Bleu’s Orlando Culinary Academy, Edouardo excelled in the classroom and the kitchen, managing to graduate top of his class. Edouardo has studied under some of the greatest minds in the industry, spending time under pastry chef Ewald Notter in Orlando, Florida; Chef Marty Blitz at Mise en Place in Tampa, Florida; Chef Thomas Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville, California and a stint at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. Chef Jordan is currently working under Chef Jerry Traunfeld at the Herbfarm restaurant in Woodinville, Washington and spends his days off catering to his magnificent clients in the King County and surrounding areas.

Thank you for your interest in Nouvelle Personal Chef Service. If you have any questions or would like to set-up an interview please contact Chef Jordan.

Ejordan@nouvellechef.com

Phone: 425-489-4127

HYDE PARK, N.Y., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ — Reinforcing its prominent role as an innovator in foodservice research, The Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) President Dr. Tim Ryan, today announced the establishment of a unique program — The Menu R&D and Flavor Discovery Initiative — a program dedicated to the science of food research and development for the foodservice industry.The initiative will begin with four founding partners, The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup Company, Tyson Foods, Inc., and Ventura Foods. Each has pledged $250,000 to directly support three key areas of applied research, student scholarships, and curriculum development. The partnership also will buttress the expansion of menu research & development as a critical foodservice industry discipline and professional career endeavor. more…

The popular franchise will soon be serving a portobello mushroom sandwich created by competitor Betty Fraser. Check out the recipe:

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Golfer John Daly is now a restaurateur.The doors swung open Wednesday to John Daly’s Restaurant and Bar at the former East End Grill site in Olive Branch near Kroger.

The space was closed for 17 days for renovations. Workers painted the walls an appropriate shade of “golfer’s green” and hung framed pictures of everything Daly and everything golf on the walls and along beams.

Christian Georgi, who owns the East End name, went in 50-50 with Daly to open the restaurant. Georgi still is operating the two other East Ends in Memphis, and he runs the Daly restaurant as well. Daly, a sometimes Memphian, will pop in at his restaurant from time to time. more…

British TV chef Gordon Ramsay has revealed George Clooney and Brad Pitt kicked up a fuss after they were evacuated from his restaurant when the kitchen caught fire.

The stars were enjoying dinner at Ramsay’s top London eatery Claridge’s, during a break from filming ‘Ocean’s Twelve’, when a fire broke out in the kitchen.

All diners were evacuated, however, Ramsay did not get much cooperation from his Hollywood clientele. more…

A new dish is now appearing on menus across the United States: the $40 entree. Such prices used to be the stuff of four-star, white-tablecloth meals, the kind that ended with a diamond ring on the petit four tray. But now entrees over $40 can be found in restaurants that are merely upscale or even chains, where diners wear jeans and tote children. In geographic terms, New York and Las Vegas have led the charge, and in culinary ones, steak and lobster were first and are still most prevalent. But the $40 entree is migrating: to restaurants in Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Denver, and to ingredients such as fish and even pasta.NOT THE CHEFS’ CHOICE?

Restaurateurs say rising rents, ever more elaborate interior decoration and the increasing cost of premium ingredients — especially beef and fish — leave them little choice. “Forty is the new 30,” said Richard Coraine, of Union Square Hospitality Group, which recently began charging $42 for a 1¾-ounce appetizer portion of lobster for lunch at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Bobby Flay, who recently crossed the $40 mark in his Las Vegas and Atlantic City outposts, says he intentionally loses money on many other entrees to keep prices reasonable.

NEW LONDON, Conn. — The most important person on a movie set isn’t always the director, writer, producer, cameraman, sound technician or even the star.

Sometimes, the most important person on a movie set is the chef. This makes Roger Poirier the big man on campus during the filming of the ESPN miniseries “The Bronx Is Burning,” which is taking place at Dodd Stadium.

On a recent Tuesday, Poirier made breakfast and lunch for 190 people. He turned out both meals from a restaurant-quality kitchen housed in a vehicle the size of a UPS delivery truck. Salads, vegetables, starches, chicken, beef and fish were all prepped and cooked in Poirier’s truck and served on a buffet line by his three assistants.

The cooks have been at the stadium since Sept. 23. They all work for Hanna Brothers Catering of Slidell, La., an eight-year-old company that specializes in catering film- and television-production locations. “The Army runs on its stomach, they say, and I think there is some truth to that in the film business as well,” said Jim Hanna, a co-owner of the company. Poirier, 43, has worked for Hanna for seven years, but he has been feeding crews on the sets of commercials, movies and TV shows since his father bought a catering truck when he was a teenager. He is a self-taught cook who keeps all his recipes in his head.

It is almost literally a life on the road. Poirier, who is married with two children, figures he is home in Missouri about two months a year. He has worked TV shows ranging from “Cheers” and “Dynasty” to “Star Trek: Next Generation” and “LA Law.” He has worked just as many movies, ranging from the current “The Guardian,” starring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher to the upcoming “The Good Shepherd,” starring Al Pacino and Angelina Jolie. more…

A Mill Creek woman gave the competition the spatula smackdown Saturday, winning a national burger contest and $10,000.Elizabeth Bennett, a 36-year-old event planner, won first place in the non-beef category of Sutter Home’s Build a Better Burger contest.

“I think I just stood there in shock,” she said after her win was announced. “Five or six TV cameras were in my face, and they handed me an oversized check.”

In front of a live audience, Bennett grilled against four other finalists in a pressure-filled cook-off. She prepared her original recipe for Opa! Burgers, which beat out nearly 9,000 other entries in August to win a finalist spot in the competition in California’s Napa Valley.

Bennett’s burger, named for the Greek expression of celebration, features a Mediterranean-inspired lamb patty on rustic bolo rolls.

She created 18 burgers in three hours for a panel of celebrity chefs. After sampling the hot burgers, the judges grilled Bennett on stage in front of an audience. more…

Elizabeth Bennett

For those who would like an authentic touch of Dracula’s homeland at a Halloween party, consider preparing some of the dishes of Romania. Although Romania has never been known as a culinary hotbed, the cuisine is coming of age, much as Ireland’s did, as chefs reinterpret the basics.

No longer part of the Soviet bloc, Romania is attracting interest as a tourist destination, which means the foods will become more inventive and well-known as time goes on.
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Dinner at the Count’s

I went scavenging for a beer in my father’s fridge the other day and made a shocking discovery. The man had a free-range chicken sitting there, right next to the arugula. This is a man who grew up in small-town North Carolina thinking gizzards are gourmet, who even today takes his lunch to work in an empty bread bag (the same empty bread bag)–a lunch most often consisting of a half-gnawed pork chop and a biscuit pilfered from Mama Dip’s. But he knows his arugula from his radicchio. How did this happen?

You’ve got to wonder how professional chefs can compete when the gourmet food world is closing in on us. Weekly farmers’ markets throughout the Triangle boast heirloom tomatoes and just-stretched mozzarella; the local Teeter carries sashimi-grade tuna; you can’t drive five miles without running into an Asian or Hispanic specialty market; and we all know someone who can quote from Kitchen Confidential. Of course, the restaurants know we’re learning their secrets. So they up the ante. I’ll see your six-burner gas-top range and raise you a thousand-pound wood-burning grill. Hmm. With a warming drawer, you say? Well … how about this laboratory-grade water bath? Or some liquid nitrogen? Try that at home.

When every other kitchen in Brier Creek is installing a custom-color Wolf range, when your dad can sear a pork belly just as well as the next guy, why go out at all? (more….)

In a dynamic documentary style, “Gourmet’s Diary Of A Foodie” pastes together a whirlwind tour of China from Beijing to Shanghai and rural villages in between. Food on television is dominated by eye candy, silly prattle, and 30-minute meals, and some say offers nothing for real cooks. So this new series, produced by WGBH-TV, may fill the void for a more demanding audience. “The show is meant to appeal to serious foodies,” says co-executive producer Michael Selditch. “We went out the door with that crowd in mind and tried to bring back stories that hadn’t been done before.”

As such, the viewer goes down the old alleyways of Beijing, where chef Li Qun demonstrates fruitwood-roasted Peking duck. In the village of Xi Tang, which is on the water and famous for its snacks, we get a close look at zongzi dumplings, lean and fatty meats with sticky rice, wrapped in aromatic reed leaves. In Shanghai, we are whisked into the kitchen of chef Jereme Leung , who specializes in what he calls new-Shanghai cuisine for the emerging middle class (a riff on the traditional drunken chicken served in a martini glass with a granité on top), and in Daxing, outside of Beijing, we go to the house of Dr. Du, the village doctor, where lunch is being prepared in side a rustic kitchen in a giant iron wok over a wood fire.

Gourmet’s editor-in-chief , Ruth Reichl , thinks of the show as a “magazine on the air. ” “ It’s so graphically rich in the same way that the magazine is,” she says by phone from New York. Behind the camera is Zero Point Zero Productions, the New York-based team responsible for “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” and other popular shows. The filming style is fast and unpredictable. With plenty of close - ups, stylish cropping, and moody natural lighting, everything is slick. “We were trying to achieve a look that could match the elegant photography in Gourmet magazine,” says Selditch.

The show really moves. Each 30-minute episode (there are 20 this season) has a theme, with local food journalists serving as translators and reporting on what they know best. Lydia Tenaglia, co-executive producer and director of “Diary of a Foodie,” was already connected to an international network of food people from her work on Bourdain’s shows. “We ended up talking to a lot of the same people and going deeper into stories that we had begun to explore on other series,” she says. more…

Gordon Ramsay and Alex Ferguson have topped a list of bosses people would least like to work for. 

The TV chef and the Manchester United manager were joined by Alan Sugar - originally known for his PC production but now thriving as leading “baddie” in The Apprentice show. (more….)

Celebrity chefs and fancy wine lists are being snatched up by aviation executives as the latest airline accessory in the realm of plush leather seats and personal televisions.As carriers have begun to rebound from the post-9-11 slump, they are clamoring to win loyalty among customers, especially from those passengers willing to pay for premium-class services.

And though airline food is not a meal most travelers look forward to, it has fast become an easy and rapidly changing vehicle for legacy and low-cost carriers alike to set themselves apart.

‘Now that they’re getting so incredibly competitive, everybody’s got to pull a rabbit out of the hat and come up with something,’ said Michelle Bernstein, the celebrity chef of Food Network fame who has been hired by Delta Air Lines to develop entrees for its new international BusinessElite class. (more…..)

A NEW REALITY-COMPETITION SERIES THAT might have landed on Bravo or the Food Network is coming to PBS. Producers are taking advantage of new ad models emerging on the “noncommercial,” nonprofit network.

“The Wine Makers,” a battle among 12 oenophiles for the chance to launch their own label, is slated to launch in 2007. Producers are promising national distribution on the 350-plus public-television stations, which they will have to secure themselves, since the national PBS arm isn’t involved.

Top-tier sponsors are being offered a five- to 15-second spot before and after the half-hour show. So far, Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance, which promotes wine produced on California’s central coast, is onboard. Producers are searching for up to three other marketers. A deal with a non-endemic advertiser is near, according to producer J.J. Levine.

The sponsorship model for “The Wine Makers” is reflective of the new PBS. The network has traditionally relied on underwriters and image advertisers, but with funding sources drying up and competition from cable–for viewers and differentiated content–intensified, bottom-line considerations are key. Pre- and post-roll spots are gaining traction as the inveterate “brought to you by” tags may be losing steam.

In addition to the premium-level sponsorships, “Wine Makers” producers–independent Doc City Productions, which has produced multiple wine-oriented shows, and South Carolina Educational Television–are offering branding opportunities on the show’s Web site and other promotional tie-ins. PBS disapproves of paid product placement, a staple of competition reality series such as “Top Chef” on Bravo and “The Apprentice” on NBC. more…

Stonington CT– When it comes to seafood, there’s nothing fresher than the fish, clams and lobsters caught in Connecticut.That was the simple message local fishermen and state officials had for 35 chefs and food-industry professionals from across the state who spent four hours at the Town Dock Wednesday learning about Connecticut’s seafood industry.

The visitors learned how the fishermen catch lobsters and fish, and they toured a scallop boat to see how the shellfish are flash-frozen on board. They watched workers at Gambardella Seafood sort, process and pack fish for shipping, and they listened to a shellfisherman describe the steps taken to ensure the state’s clams and oysters are of the highest quality.

When it was over, they watched three chefs — including the celebrated author and television personality Jacques Pepin of Madison — turn locally caught scallops, clams and flounder into ceviche, chowder and appetizers. More………

BOISE, Idaho (Reuters) - A 2-year-old boy who drank a spinach shake died from E. coli in a case that is likely related to the U.S. health scare around spinach, a health official said on Friday.

Kyle Allgood, of Chubbuck in the heart of Idaho’s potato country, died on Wednesday night at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, said Ross Mason, a spokesman for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

“His mother or someone in the house made him a spinach smoothie,” Mason said.

“It’s pretty likely that he died of E. coli,” he said.

The outbreak of E. coli had killed one person and made at least 157 ill. Farmers have stopped harvesting their spinach crops and supermarkets are no longer selling the vegetable traditionally known as a healthy food as investigators seek to find the source of the problem.

It was not clear if the child had eaten the spinach before or after officials warned against eating fresh spinach, Mason said. more…

Two ex-waitresses at an East Side bar are suing their former employer, having filed a multimillion-dollar sex-harassment lawsuit, accusing their former bosses of ordering female employees to be weighed as part of a scheme to keep track of their weight.

Alexandria Lipton, 25, and Kristen McRedmond, 27, filed suit in New York Supreme Court against the Sutton Place Bar and Restaurant on Second Avenue near 54th Street.

The two women claim they were humiliated and sexually harassed by their boss, whom they knew only by his first name, Neil. Lipton claims the manager kept tabs on waitresses’ poundage by ordering some of them onto a scale in the restaurant’s office.

“When they got in the office, they were told and/or coerced into getting onto the scale,” Lipton said.

Lipton said she didn’t work that day, but when she came back and refused to tell the manager her weight, he guessed it.

“He looked me up and down, looked at the bouncer standing next to him and goes, ‘135,’ and he looks at the bouncer and they nod to each other, and he writes my weight down on a pad of paper,” Lipton said.

The two ex-employees are represented by attorney Rosemarie Arnold, who said Redmond physically resisted when a beefy manager tried to pick her up to get her on the scale while another manager looked on.

Arnold said no men were subjected to being weighed; only female workers were singled out for the weigh-ins. more…

Alexandria Lipton, 25

There used to be a time when we would gather around the dinner table and enjoy wonderful food: Food that would nourish the body, mind and soul. We shared family events, and simply enjoyed each other’s company.

In today’s fast-paced world, enjoying a “home-made” family meal has become a thing-of-the-past. Where eating at a nice restaurant is a cost prohibitive solution, many have turned to the less nutritious fast food. In either event, something seems to be lost.

At “Chefs”, we have the solution. Our staff will assist with the menu planning, and shopping. Finally, as chef-for-the-day, using our industrial kitchen you prepare 8 to 12 meals that will feed your entire family: body, mind and soul. more…

” I grew up with food being an integral part of my home. I take what I know, and ideas from where I’ve been. I incorporate seasonal ingredients with fresh herbs and zesty spices to create unique dishes with a sense of style and bold flavors. “

-Chef Alexandra I. Lopez

U.S. health officials told California farmers to improve produce safety in a pointed warning letter last November, nearly a year before the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to spinach.

In fact, the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995 linked to spinach or lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration says.

Though state and federal officials have traced the current outbreak to a California company’s fresh spinach, they have not pinpointed the source of the bacteria that have killed one person and sickened more than 100 others.

The FDA is still warning consumers not to eat fresh spinach.

There is no evidence of tampering in the outbreak, FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro said Monday. That leaves a broad range of other possible sources, including contaminated irrigation water that has been a problem in California’s Salinas Valley. The area on California’s central coast produces much of the U.S. spinach crop.

There have been 19 other food-poisoning outbreaks since 1995 linked to lettuce and spinach, according to the FDA. At least eight were traced to produce grown in the Salinas Valley. The outbreaks involved more than 400 cases of sickness and two deaths.

In 2004 and again in 2005, the FDA’s top food safety official warned California farmers they needed to do more to increase the safety of the fresh leafy greens they grow. more…

A California natural foods company was linked Friday to a nationwide E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened nearly 100 others as the company issued a recall of certain brands of spinach, including the Trader Joe’s brand.

There are five Trader Joe’s stores in southeast Michigan.

Grocers across the country pulled spinach from shelves, and consumers tossed out the leafy green.

Food and Drug Administration officials said that they had received reports of illness in 19 states.

The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, based in San Juan Bautista, Calif. The company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.

Natural Selection Foods has recalled all of its fresh spinach and any salad with spinach in a blend because they are possibly contaminated with E. coli. The affected packages have best if used by dates of Aug. 17 through Oct. 1. Consumers with questions can call the company at 800-690-3200. more…

LONDON - Two designers have come up with an unusual way of escaping a flash flood: a dining table that can quickly be converted to a life raft.

The table, entitled Either Oar, has removable legs that convert into paddles and a built-in buoyancy tank. It is part of a series of designs created “as a response to climate change and natural disasters of recent times,” an apparent reference to crises such as Asia’s tsunami in 2004 and last year’s Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

The table will be on display as part of the Design Museum’s Design Mart exhibition, which opens in London on Sept. 20 and celebrates new talent.

The “Climatized Objects” range was designed by David Cameron and Toby Hadden.

Other dual-purpose devices include a vase that switches to an emergency flashlight if knocked from its ledge, and a series of picture frames that turn into flashing navigational aids.

“We’ve always wanted to do a project that translates the way people in emergency situations use everyday objects in innovative ways in order to stay alive,” the pair said in a statement. more…

Most people probably don’t think of Whole Foods as a restaurant.

But plenty are using it that way, as the organic food giant is now second in take-out sales in the casual/fast casual dining segment, according to a stock research report from CIBC World Markets earlier this year.

The Austin, Texas-based chain’s nearly 200 stores racked up $450 million in prepared food sales in 2005. That surpassed all of the casual dining restaurants, such as Olive Garden and Outback, and all of the fast casuals, except Panera Bread. (Neither category includes traditional fast-food eateries like McDonald’s.)

The organic and natural foods industry is up to $25 billion-$30 billion in annual sales in the U.S. - about 5 percent of total food sales - with growth at double-digit rates, CIBC reported. And Whole Foods has been a prime beneficiary, with annual sales growth of 15-20 percent. Take-out offerings are an estimated 8-10 percent of sales, compared to 2 percent for the typical grocery store, CIBC reported. more…

Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. Pictures is cooking up another comedy caper about murdered chefs — only this time set in Sin City, one of the world’s new culinary capitals. Eric Gold is producing.

Remake of the 1978 laffer “Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?”–starring George Segal and Jacqueline Bisset — will see its title shortened to “Who is Killing the Great Chefs?”

Studio has hired scribe David A. Goodman to pen the script, with Oliver Platt attached to star in the one of the two lead male roles.

Gold told Daily Variety that it made perfect sense to have the film take place in Las Vegas, where many of the world’s greatest chefs, including the likes of Todd English, Nobu Matsuhisa, Michael Mina and Joachim Splichal, have flocked.

In the updated version, Platt will play a food critic who comes to Vegas to check out the action, reprising the role played by Robert Morley in the original. But when a chef is found murdered in the same way his signature dish is prepared, the critic becomes a suspect. more…

CHICAGO — Don’t come between foodies and their foie gras.

That was the message sent by Chicago diners who dug into foie gras dishes Monday, on the eve of the city’s ban on foie gras. High-end restaurants had special foie gras tastings to protest the ban, and even a few down-home sandwich and pizza joints added it to their menus for the occasion.

At the 676 Restaurant & Bar on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, chef Robert Gadsby topped foie gras with Pop Rocks candies, wrapped it in prosciutto, and blended it into hot chocolate as part of an “Outlaw Dinner” that also featured such controversial ingredients as wild morels, absinthe, unpasteurized imported cheese, and hemp seeds. While the seven-course, $140 dinner was completely legal, all the ingredients have been banned at some point.

Gadsby called the foie gras ban ridiculous.

“What’s next?” asked Gadsby, who also hosted an Outlaw Dinner last month at his Noe Restaurant & Bar in Los Angeles, where foie gras will be subject to a statewide ban by 2012. “They’ll outlaw truffles, then lobster, beluga caviar, oysters. There are diners who eat to fill a hunger urge, and there are diners who eat to be dazzled. If you take away the luxury ingredients, how can you dazzle them?”

Food Network and Guinness World Records will team up on special four-night primetime event Food Network Challenge: Guinness World Record Breakers Week starting Monday, Oct. 9 at 9 p.m. (EST/PST).

During the special, competitors will attempt to set or break 10 Guinness World Records, including crafting the tallest sugar sculpture, throwing the highest pizza toss, making the most pancakes in one hour and building the largest popcorn sculpture. more…

Food Network has picked up its reality chef hunt The Next Food Network Star for a third season. The show, in which aspiring TV chefs compete for a show on the channel, is casting now. Filming will begin with eight new contestants in New York in January and the show is set to debut in June.

In a related matter, Food has given a second season order to Guy’s Big Bite, the show hosted by last season’s Next Food Network Star Guy Fieri. The Sunday morning show will return with 13 new episodes. more…

NEW ORLEANS - Katrina left a number of restaurant industry heroes in her wake. There were the chefs who rushed back as soon as possible to dish out food such as John Besh, Scott Boswell, Bob Iacovonne, Paul Prudhomme and Donald Link.

And there were big restaurant companies that didn’t panic, like the various Brennan families, who kept employees on their payrolls for several weeks after the storm.

But mere mention of two of the city’s highest-profile exports - Emeril Lagasse and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse - still draws venom from New Orleanians who feel scorned and abandoned.

The Ruth’s Chris chain, which laid its roots in New Orleans in 1965, moved its headquarters to Florida within a week after the storm. Its original Broad Street location, behind which founder Ruth Fertel lived until she died in 2002, is closed for good.

For superchef Emeril Lagasse, meanwhile, Katrina’s aftermath was also anything but happy, happy, happy. The most famous TV chef in the world - and most certainly Louisiana’s best-known citizen - was criticized for quickly firing employees at his New Orleans corporate office.

He was also taken to task in a commentary titled “Where’s Emeril?” by Times-Picayune restaurant writer Brett Anderson for failing to even visit the city where he owns three restaurants until months after the storm. The Bam! chef told Anderson that he was preoccupied with a national book tour for his 11th cookbook.

New Orleanians were nonplussed.

“That Lagasse, one of popular culture’s great media masters, took a pass on the chance to put his own mega-celebrity to good use at such an unprecedented moment,” Anderson wrote, “is just one of the many post-Katrina mysteries.”

After a New York Post columnist quoted Lagasse dissing the city (”It’s lost. It’ll never come back.”), Lagasse complained that he was harassed at a supermarket near his West Bank home, and then got “cut off on the road by a family throwing me the bird.”

Lagasse has since denied ever making the comments attributed to him in the Post. Eric Linquest, Lagasse’s vice president of operations, also said it was a “team decision” for Lagasse to stay in New York where “he could best help the situation” by raising money. more…

Who could possibly be next in the battle of Cheesecake photos? Some I would like to see, some should just stay in the kitchen. Please add your comments and be heard.

Gale Gand

Giada De Laurentiis

Ina Garten

Paula Deen

Sandra Lee

Sara Moulton

Not to be outdone by Rachael Ray, Cat Cora has now broken the seal on “sexy” in the kitchen. The 39-year-old Greek beauty, who hails from Jackson, MS, is the only female Iron Chef on the Food Network series. more…

Please leave your tasteful replies below.

Celebrity “cook” Rachael Ray was the first of the Food Network staff to pose in FHM. Followed by Cat Cora it makes you wonder who’s next?

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Gene Grabarnick longed for a hotel with all the things a man would want on a getaway with friends.

Where the concierge ushers guests to the hottest clubs. Where requests, from hand-rolled cigars to a favorite beer in the mini-bar, are unflinchingly filled. Where luxury is wrapped in sexy, swanky style.

So, he built it. (more…..)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Meat-eaters usually assume a grass-fed steak came from cattle contentedly grazing for most of their lives on lush pastures, not crowded into feedlots. If the government has its way, the grass-fed label could be used to sell beef that didn’t roam the range and ate more than just grass.

The Agriculture Department has proposed a standard for grass-fed meat that doesn’t say animals need pasture and that broadly defines grass to include things like leftovers from harvested crops.

Critics say the proposal is so loose that it would let more conventional ranchers slap a grass-fed label on their beef, too.(more….)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 (UPI) — The House of Representatives could vote this week on a bill that would ban the butchering of horses for human consumption in the United States.

Horse meat processing is a $40 billion industry in the United States. But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports it is almost invisible because the meat is shipped overseas and there are only three slaughtering plants in the country, all foreign-owned. (more….)