Monday, March 24, 2008

IF MARC HAD ONLY CREATED THE LOMBARDA PIZZA WITH BAKED EGG, BITTO CHEESE, MOZZARELLA AND HOMEMADE COTECHINO SAUSAGE, AND NOT FOLLOWED IT WITH THE SQUASH TORTELLI WITH BUTTER, SAGE AND AMARETTI, DAYENU: The James Beard Foundation has unveiled its 2008 nominees for excellence in food cooking, writing and service. Among the highlights in the culinary Oscars:
  • Two nominations for my friends at Philadelphia's Vetri and Osteria -- outstanding service (the former) and best new restaurant (the latter), and a regional best chef nomination for Jose Garces of Amada & Tinto.
  • ALOTT5MA faves Mark Bittman, Masaharu Morimoto and Laurent Tourondel all getting book nods, plus a Barbra Kingsolver nomination for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
  • Among the journalistic efforts nominated, the Sun-Times' "Fish fraud: The menus said snapper, but it wasn't!" expose; Manny Howard's "My Empire of Dirt" (subsistence farming in Brooklyn?); GQ's Alan Richman on "The Seven Temples of the Food World" (jealous!) and "The Year of the Pig" (a David Chang profile in which he doesn't come off as quite as nuts as last week's New Yorker piece).
  • Two tv nominations for Top Chef.
  • Restaurateur of the Year nominees are a pretty well-known bunch: Batali/Bastianich, Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Chicago's Rich Melman of the LEYE empire, and Seattle's Tom Douglas.
Tell us what we should know about this year's nominees.

No comments:

Post a Comment