CHEFS
The James Beard Foundation and the Chelsea Market are getting together again to celebrate their Sunday Supper event. The annual event will be held this Sunday, March 25th. Multiple chefs from around the city and the country have come together to prepare the menu for this year’s Supper. Proceeds raised from the events will go to the James Beard Foundation and Fulton Youth of the Future’s Culinary Scholarship. Sunday Supper will be held in the market’s lofty main hall at a communal table where guests will enjoy a cocktail hour and “lively family-style feast.”
It is award season in the culinary industry! Voting on for The People's Best New Chef on Food & Wine's website began on March 5th and The James Beard Foundation's annual award finalists will be named on March 19th. Unfortunately, not all of us have the opportunity to travel the country wining and dining in the top rated restaurants in the country so Joonbug compiled a list of the nation's new and noteworthy chefs that are up for Best New Chef awards this year. Some of this year’s nominees may be cooking in your area!
After the devastating earthquake in Japan, people around the world banded together to support Japan’s relief efforts in any way they could. New Yorker Phil Michaelson took action in his own unique way.
"I wanted to bring the restaurant and food publishing industries together to help affected people in Japan," explained Phil Michaelson, creator of KeepRecipes.com.
He reached out to the country's top chefs and renowned foodies to contribute their recipes to the site’s newly launched initiative KeepRecipes for Recovery to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts in Japan. Some of the most esteemed culinary masters including Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, Chef Anita Lo of Annisa NY, Madonna’s personal chef of seven years Mayumi Nishimura, BONDST NY’s Chef Marc Spitzer, and Former Iron Chef Judge Eric Gower contributed a total of 21 Japan-inspired recipes.
It will come as no surprise that in these rather lean economic times even top chefs are feeling the pain. What is perhaps more unique (but by no means exclusive) to the restaurant industry, is the size of the boom that preceded the current downturn. Call it the Starbucks Syndrome: vast, rapid expansion and then the sudden realization that you’re a little bit f***ed.*
The data from the New York State Department of Labor shows that after adding 50,000 jobs over the last seven years, the New York City restaurant business has cut more than 10,000 jobs between October 2008 and January 2009. As a result, there is a deluge of unemployed talent in the industry, causing skilled cooks to accept positions that formerly, had anyone propositioned them with said offers a few years ago, would have caused them to choke on their steak tartare.
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