And the Winner Is.......

The music folks have the Grammies, the movie contingent has Oscars, and there’s something called the Golden Globes. In the food industry (aside from the silly “top chef” awards) there is the James Beard Awards. I guess they’re not called the Beardies, but they are a pretty prestigious award. They announced the nominees Monday, and they’re too numerous to list here.

There are about twenty (food service) categories, but chefs are divided up by region; mid-Atlantic, northeast, south, southeast, and so forth, and of course NYC rates a category unto itself. There are general overall awards; “Best” new restaurant; outstanding restaurant, outstanding chef, and so forth. The general categories are kind of dominated by New York, San Francisco, Chicago and so forth. DC restaurants did okay, with nominations for best chef (mid-Atlantic) for Restaurant Eve, Komi, and Obelisk (Michel, where are you???), with outstanding chef for Mini Bar..

Besides the restaurant related ones there is a plethora of writing awards as well. If you care to wade through the whole list here’s your chance.

TV Watching:

Last week returning to the digs after sorting books for the book sale, I relaxed a while and turned on the Food Channel. Sometimes in the dead time you can watch older versions of some of the shows while they were still interested in maybe helping you prepare foods rather than “it’s all about MEEEEEEEE!”. As fate would have it, I happened on dear Rachel Ray with a show about 30 minute meals, and endured her extreme perkiness long enough to watch her prepare some egg cup dish. The idea was that you stuffed some ham/prosciutto into a muffin tin, lined it further with spinach, cracked an egg into it and then baked it. I watched as she raved on about how wonderful the food would be and you could cook it real fast, etc. Well, the ham was indeed stuffed into the muffin tin, with odd pieces hanging over the edge in every which way, threw a handful of spinach in it without re-arranging, and then reached for the eggs. She probably made four or so while the camera was on her, and I bet that on at least three of the four, the yolk broke and ran all over the cup. No mention, no apologies, just yammering on about how easy this was. I guess if you don’t give a damn how it turns out, it is easy. And then at the end of the show (as with most if not all of the cooking shows), she plated the things, and ceremoniously took a bite. As if surprised she rolled her eyes and declared it was the best thing she ever ate. IF these people have any talent they shouldn’t be surprised it tastes good (at least to them). Yummy! Wow! This is great! Sigh.

And another thing while I’m on a roll, it’s kind of interesting to see how some of the chefs are dressed on these shows (okay, mostly females). Do they honestly cook in some of those blouses? Nuff said, use your imagination..

Happy Buzz:

There are flyers/fliers (i never know which is correct) around saying that the Dry Dock will re-open on the first of April (with a new menu). MFO will be on another Midwest driving odyssey, so I think I might just go check it out.

On the Brunch front, I was informed that Café Des Artistes and the Hilton Garden Inn feature Sunday brunches. And with the re-opening of the Dry Dock, they are re-instituting their brunch which I have always enjoyed (along with that complimentary Mimosa).

Okay, that’s it. Please continue to

DFD