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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the American celebrity chef who received an Emmy nomination for an episode of the show No Reservations, which was filmed in Beirut just when the Isarel-Lebanon conflict broke out in 2006?
He was born on June 25, 1956 in New York City. In his best-selling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, he describes how his love for food was kindled in France, when he tried his first oyster on an oyster fisherman’s boat while on a family vacation.
Later, while attending Vassar College, he worked in the seafood restaurants of Provincetown, Massachusetts, which sparked his decision to pursue a cooking career. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978, and went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City, including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan’s. He eventually became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in 1998, which has become his home base.
As a writer, he gained immediate popularity from his 2000 New York Times best-selling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. The book is a witty and rambunctious exposé of the hidden and darker side of the culinary world, and is a memoir of his personal life as well. He subsequently wrote two more best-sellers, A Cook’s Tour (2001), and the exotic account of his food and travel exploits across the world written in conjunction with his first television series; and The Nasty Bits (2006), another collection of exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays about food.
Other books he has written include the Les Halles Cookbook and No Reservations. He has also written culinary mysteries, Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; as well as Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical, a hypothetical-historical investigation.
Known for consuming exotic and daring dishes, he is famous for eating sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of an Inuit seal hunt, and a whole cobra — beating heart, bile, blood, and meat — in Vietnam. He has declared that the fermented shark he ate in Iceland among the worst meals of his life.
He is an advocate for communicating the value and tastiness of traditional or “peasant” foods, including the varietal bits and unused animal parts not usually eaten by Westerners. He has also consistently noted and championed the high quality and deliciousness of freshly prepared street food in other countries — especially developing countries — as compared to fast food chains in the US.
Another of his major concerns is acknowledging and championing the industrious immigrants — often from Latin America — who make up the majority of chefs and cooks in many US restaurants.
He has received numerous awards for his writing and television work: Bon Appetit Magazine named him Food Writer of the Year in 2001 for Kitchen Confidential and the British Guild of Food Writers named A Cook’s Tour as Food Book of the Year in 2002. He has also received an Emmy nomination for the Beirut episode of No Reservations and, in 2009, the show won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming.
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Last week’s question: Who is the Japanese-American artist and landscape architect known for his sculpture and public works, as well as stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces?
Answer: Isamu Noguchi
Winner: Glenn Suarez of Quezon City
Text your answer to 0926-3508061 with your name and address. One winner will be chosen through a raffle of texts with the correct answer. The winner will receive P2,000 worth of SM gift certificates for use at Our Home, SM Department Store, or SM Supermarket. They can claim their prize at Our Home in SM Megamall. Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.
