It’s my three-week-long summer break from school, and I’m eating my way through St. Louis, where my parents have lived for the past year. A few nights ago, they took me to Pi, an environmentally-friendly restaurant that serves what Barack Obama considered the best pizza he ate during the course of his... Read More

Shana Tov! It's the Jewish New Year! I'm a practicing culinary Jew, meaning I spend more time connecting with my Jewish roots in the kitchen than the synagogue. As a result I tend to do more recipe searching than soul searching during the High Holidays (bad for my place in Olam Ha-Ba, good for my dinner guests).

This Rosh Hashanah was my first in New York, and ... Read More

I had the good fortune to dine at Esca recently, Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich and chef David Pasternack's Italian seafood restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. The entire meal was wonderful, but what lingers with me even more than maccheroni alla chittara with sea urchin and crab meat, is the parsley. The parsley at Esca is a revelation.

Parsley is the red headed step... Read More

Cooks tend to have minds that reside permanently in the gutter. As Anthony Bourdain observed in Kitchen Confidential, "As an art form, cook-talk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules…All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects." But even if o... Read More

In professional kitchens, most of the creative work is left to those in charge. The same is true of culinary school, but there are certain times at the FCI when students design something of their own. This is especially true during the last two levels, when students working in the restaurant are asked to design amuse bouche, sandwich, omelette and vegetarian items. If... Read More