Like Water for Choclate uses Magical Realism to capture the transformative qualities of everyday food and drink into something more. Also consider reading (and enjoying) Joanne Harris' amazing Chocolat.
There is no place like Paris and nothing sweeter than the taste of chocolate.
Combine these two and you have the legendary World Chocolate Masters, the major confectionary competition studied by all in the industry for trend identification.
Unlike many other contests that focus on a team effort, this feat of culinary mastery highlights the talents of a single supremely skilled chef, seeeking to be the best among the very best.
Each year the WCM is a breath-taking pageant of skill, artistry, hope and heartbreak as both the basic and the nearly unbelievable, all crafted in chocolate, are present to a panel of the world’s toughest culinary judges.
Congratulations to this year’s winners: Chefs Frank Haasnott, Yoshiaki Uezaki and Palle Sorensen, representing the Netherlands, Japan and Denmark respectively – truly the new masters of chocolate!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
What chef, what F&B director, what sommelier has not had their day made easier through the use of a laptop computer,iPhoneor iPad? Who has not eased the stress of the day with music thanks to an iPod? Or failed to cheered when our professional values were shared with diners in the amazing film Ratatouille?
Yet Jobs has left an even greater gift for us all than those wonderful tools listed above. That gift is a view of what true creativity is about and how we achieve it. Nowhere is that better captured than in his address to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford University near his home in California.
Please take a moment and watch this astounding presentation about courage and creativity. Then, if you find it appropriate, share it with others – thanks in large part to the very technology that Jobs created and shared with all of us.
Thank you Steve Jobs! You made all our 'jobs' a lot easier!
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
It only takes a look at the photographs that captured their evening out at the Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Virginia to see that this is a couple dedicated to each other.
That mutual commitment is mirrored by the restaurant's owner Chef Cathal Armstrong and his beautiful wife and professional partner Meshelle, both hailing from Ireland. Their esteemed 50 seat restaurant is named after their first child, Eve.
Chef Armstrong trained in France but has always maintained his commitment to source and quality that reaches back to his Irish childhood.
With multiple stars awarded for excellent as well as a deep loyalty to sustainability, Chef Armstrong’s Restaurant Eve was a perfect choice for the First Couple who have provided to the nation an active role model for healthy eating.
Yet as every professional in our industry knows, style, elegance and stars-awarded don’t just happen, just as great marriages don’t just happen.
It takes work, commitment, dedication and skill. When it’s done well, it only looks easy – a lovely picture, a dinner served with grace and charm.
Perhaps there is no more perfect example of the ease of expert expression than the new Air France ad airing global. The dancers are subtle and graceful, gently hinting at a mystery only revealed at the end, yet always capturing the elegant essence of the Air France experience.
But before the dance (or dinner) comes the endless and very necessary preparation. In an amazing double release, Air France has also documented the efforts involved in the “staging” of the magic.
And while many of the televised foods shows have opened a window for consumers to glimpse the working wonder of a professional kitchen, it is only a brief image of the steam and strain.
What is not captured are the years of training prior to mastery, the untiring eye seeking perfection, the effort to discover the ever new while never forgetting the richness of the past.
Like any great marriage, it requires that one focus every day on the values expressed through medium of everyday life. It requires caring; it requires simply truly Loving what we do and deeply respecting all those we share our day with.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
Correspondent Michael Okwu follows Keller from his award-winning Bouchon Restaurant in Beverly Hills to The French Laundry, Keller’s original fame-making Napa Valley restaurant.
Along the way you’ll see why Keller has won so many multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation (among a long list of others) as well as high praise for almost every international food critic visiting his two legendary restaurants in California.
Key to his success is his respect for every staff member (he knows them all by name) as well as an appreciation for each ingredient and product in his kitchens. (Be sure to check out how and why he stores fish in a certain way).
The film also includes glimpses of his home kitchen, the perfect reflection of a very busy professional chef as well as many childhood images that document his amazing career path.
As Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. He was, of course, referring to Paris during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution.
But he was also referring to his own beloved London when he wrote that sentiment in his groundbreaking novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
London still mirrors that statement as it was just three weeks ago that the Australian chef Brett Graham and his staff at London’s famed restaurant, The Ledbury, drove rioters from their restaurant with kitchen tools in hand.
Now Harden’s, one of the United Kingdom’s leading restaurant review guides, has ranked them first among London’s many outstanding restaurants. Congratulations once again and well done. They completely deserve it!
Their first place ranking is based on the reviews submitted by over 8,000 delighted diners which puts The Ledbury's staff among such former winners as the well known chef Gordon Ramsay.
It seems that The Ledbury staff can both defend and create with equal skill and finesse their restaurant and their guests. Now that’s a truly well trained staff!
When in London, be sure to visit there -you will find both the staff AND cuisine memorable as all of London does.
Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011 at 3:16PM 
There is no place like Paris and nothing sweeter than the taste of chocolate.
