by Lucy Gordan | Oct 17, 2014 | Food, Food blog
text ©2014 On Sunday February 9 during the 10th edition of Identità Golose, Bavarian-born Heinz Beck, Rome’s only chef with three Michelin stars, was awarded the title of “Chef of the Year 2014.” Paolo Marchi, the Founder and Director of Identità Golose, and...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 15, 2013 | Food, Food blog
THE FIRST WOMAN CHEF IN ITALY WITH 3 MICHELIN STARS Text ©2013 In 1993-4 Annie Féolde became the first woman chef in Italy to be awarded a third Michelin star, which she still holds today. Another two women in Italy have since achieved this...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
THE HOTTEST YOUNG CHEF IN NEW YORK CITY Interview ©2013 Daniel Humm’s restaurant, Eleven Madison Park (at East 24th Street) in the Flatiron district, which he’s co-owned since 2011 with Will Guidara, his general manager, has three Michelin stars and four stars — the...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
THE YOUNGEST BELGIAN CHEF AWARDED 3 MICHELIN STARS Text ©2013 Photos ©2013 by Kristof Vrancken I first heard of Gert de Mangeleer and his partner Joachim Boudens (voted the best sommelier of Belgium in both 2005 and 2011) from Geert Van Hecke, the first...
by Lucy Gordan | Jun 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS AS THE HASSLER’S EXECUTIVE CHEF Text © 2013 Roberto Wirth, the owner and Director General of Rome’s luxurious Hassler Hotel, is the guiding light of Executive Chef Francesco Apreda’s successful career. At only 19-years old, thanks to...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
Interview ©2013 Last August I spent the first two nights of the press trip sponsored by Czech Tourism in New York at Prague’s Kempinski’s Hotel and the last three at Prague’s Four Seasons. I talked with the Executive Chefs at both hotels: Marek Fichtner of...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
Interview ©2013 During the press trip organized by Czech Tourism New York last August our Rome Bureau Chief Lucy Gordan met with Borek Šípek in his recently-opened glassworks in Nový Bor, where he cooked a Thai meal for everyone. For the complete history of his...
by Lucy Gordan | Jan 9, 2013 | Food, Food blog
THE RENAISSANCE MAN OF ITALIAN CUISINE Interview ©2013 Born in Brescia, Marino Marini is a chef, journalist, food historian, and book collector. Since 2004 he has been the librarian of ALMA, the International University for Chefs and Sommeliers, founded that...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
Co-Founder and Owner of Sicily’s First Didactic Agriturismo Interview ©2012 During the months of October and November the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Region of Sicily organized five week-long press trips to different predominantly rural...
by Lucy Gordan | Nov 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
PRAGUE’S FIRST CZECH CHEFS EACH WITH A MICHELIN STAR text ©2012 In March, 2012 the prestigious Michelin Guide: Main Cities of Europe awarded two restaurants in Prague: La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise and the Alcron of the Hotel Radisson Blu Alcron one Michelin star...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
FLANDERS’ MOST ADVENTUROUS CHOCOLATIER Text © 2012 Our tastes in food are closely connected to our childhood; what are your first memories of food? DP: Food is my life. Anyone’s connection to food is influenced by their parents, their grandmothers. I think...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
Author’s Note: Several months after my colleague and good friend, Phyllis Méras, published here her all-inclusive story, “In Search of Belgian Chocolates,” I too traveled to Flanders thanks to the New York office of the Flanders Tourist Board. My assignments were to...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
THE FIRST FLEMISH CHEF AWARDED 3 MICHELIN STARS text and photos © Thanks to the New York office of the Flanders Tourist Board, last May Lucy Gordan, the Rome Bureau Chief of Epicurean-Traveler.com, visited Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp and Mechelen. In Bruges...
by Lucy Gordan | Jul 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
Text © 2012 On February 5th, Felice Sgarra, a Pugliese from Andria, was in Milan to participate in Identità Vent’anni, a day dedicated to chefs who are not yet 30 years old. He just made it under the wire because the next day was his 30th birthday and that of...
by Lucy Gordan | Jun 12, 2012 | Travel, Travel blog
©2012 Last year I published two interviews in Epicurean-Traveler.com with Basel’s two top chefs, Peter Knogl and Tanja Grandits. Not to diminish their talents and charm, but Basel, all too often underrated, with its beautiful medieval Münster (cathedral),...
by Lucy Gordan | May 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
The New President of “Jeunes Restaurateurs d’Europe” in Italy text © 2012 Andrea Sarri’s restaurant “Agrodolce” is situated on the seafront at the quay of the port of Oneglia in the Ligurian city of Imperia on the Italian Riviera. It boasts one Michelin...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 9, 2012 | Food, Food blog
©2012 This hand-clapping rhyme is recited by thousands of English-mother-tongue children to count and eliminate fists when it comes to choosing who will be “it” — the leader, the hunter, the counter at the start of an outdoor game. Instead the number 4,000 refers to...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
AUTHORS of FEEDING THE DRAGON Interview ©2011 While in 2001 Nate Tate, today aged 30, was one of the first Texas college students to study abroad at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, his younger sister Mary Kate, 26, visited him there, and the two developed a...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
THE PIONEER OF AUTHENTIC ITALIAN CUISINE IN USA Marisa and Tony May photo by Robert Caplin text ©2011 by Lucy Gordan Tony May has been in the restaurant business in New York City for half a century. He is a “gastronomic ambassador and professor,” a living legend,...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
TONY MAY’S DAUGHTER, DISCIPLE, AND PARTNER text ©2011 I always begin my interviews with “food people” with the question: what are your earliest memories of food? MM: Pastina in brodo, which is still one of my favorite dishes, and nutella spread on bread. We’d...
by Lucy Gordan | May 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
SWISS CHEF OF THE YEAR 2006 Housed in a villa of the elegant suburb of Bruderholz on the top of a hill overlooking Basel, Tanja and René Graf Grandits’s peaceful and understated restaurant, Stucki, has one Michelin star and 17 Gault Millau points. Here,...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
TWICE ITALY’S BEST PASTRY-CHEF IS FROM JAPAN Interview ©2011 Tatsuya Iwasaki was born 34 years ago in the Japanese city of Saitama located10 to 15 miles north of Tokyo. After obtaining his diploma as a professional chef from the Hanasaki...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
SWISS CHEF OF THE YEAR 2011 Interview ©2011 Born on September 14, 1968 in southeast Bavaria, Peter Knogl has worked his way up the career ladder almost always at Michelin-starred restaurants in Germany, Spain, London, and Switzerland. Since 2007 he has...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 9, 2011 | Food, Food blog
NEW YORK’S TOP “ROMAN” CHEF Text ©2010 Photos ©2010 by Ellen Silverman Danny Meyer at Maialino Daniel (“Danny”) Meyer, born in St. Louis, Missouri, was raised there, in France (Paris and Bordeaux) and Italy (Rome) because his father owned a travel...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 10, 2010 | Food, Food blog
In 1989 “Sal” De Riso, already an accomplished chef, opened the Pasticceria De Riso on the sea front of Minori, a town on the Amalfi Coast, and his laboratory in Tramonti, seven kilometers inland. Within a few years his pastry shop was one of the most popular...
by Lucy Gordan | Nov 9, 2010 | Food, Food blog
CELEBRITY CHEF, RESTAURATEUR, AUTHOR, AND BUSINESSMAN text ©2010 While playing with his band in the Bavarian holiday resort of Waging am See, Alfons Karg first met the restaurateur Sebastian Schuhbeck, owner of the country inn “Kurhausstüberl” there, who first...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 13, 2010 | Travel, Travel blog
©2010 Think Germany and certainly one of the first images that comes to mind is a stein overflowing with a frothy beer. Few countries, maybe only Belgium, can come near to matching Germany for the quality and variety of its beer. Over 1,270 breweries nationwide...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 11, 2010 | Travel, Travel blog
MUNICH’S BEST HOSTS The Geisel brothers text ©2010 Geisel Privathotels is a Munich-based private hotel and gastronomy group founded in 1900 by Anna and Karl Geisel, the great-grandparents of the present owners, Carl, Michael and Stephan Geisel. Today it...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2010 | Food, Food blog
MUNICH’S TEMPLE TO GOURMET DINING Text ©2010 For over three decades Tantris in Munich’s non-descript residential neighborhood of Schwabing has been one of the best restaurants in the city, in Bavaria, and in all of Germany. “This attitude to life” was the brain-child...
by Lucy Gordan | Jul 11, 2010 | Food, Food blog
Text ©2010 Born in Rijeka in Istria, Daniela Kramaric not only became the first woman sommelier in Croatia, but also its best in 2001 and 2002. In 2002 she was also chosen the best sommelier for Central and Eastern Europe. Then she stopped competing to be the...
by Lucy Gordan | Jun 11, 2010 | Food, Food blog
text ©2010 On November 2, 1999, a white truffle or Tuber Magnatum Pico, the most prestigious of underground “mushrooms,” forever changed the life of Giancarlo Zigante, born on June 23, 1950 in Plovanija, in the northwest corner of Istria, not far from the common...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 11, 2010 | Food, Food blog
Interview ©2010 Emanuele and Michela Scarello Born in Udine on the 11th of July 1970, Emanuele Scarello is the chef/owner of “Agli Amici” in Godia, a charming rustic town, famous for its potatoes, five miles from Udine. “Agli Amici” has had a Michelin star...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 11, 2010 | Food, Food blog
Interview ©2010 photos courtesy of Elena Kostioukovitch Elena Kostioukovitch was born in Kiev in 1958, studied in Moscow, and moved to Italy in 1988. She is a professor at the University of Milan, an essayist, a translator, a literary agent and an author. Her 1988...
by Lucy Gordan | Jan 11, 2010 | Food, Food blog
text ©2010 An Aries, Gennaro Esposito was born 37 years ago at Vico Equense, a charming if chaotic town on the breathtakingly beautiful Amalfi Coast. There were two determining moments in his professional formation: an internship with Gianfranco Vissani, Italy’s...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
THE ONLY ITALIAN CHEF OUTSIDE ITALY WITH TWO MICHELIN STARS Interview ©2009 by Lucy Gordan Born in Ponte di Legno, a small town in Lombardy’s province of Brescia, Ilario Mosconi, aged 51, moved to Esch-Sur-Alzette in southern Luxembourg when he was thirteen....
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
Interview ©2009 Léa Linster photo by Marc Theis A born gourmet, buoyant Léa Linster (www.lealinster.lu) put Luxembourgian cuisine on the world map when in 1989 she became the first female prizewinner of the Bocuse d’Or, the highest distinction in the...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
Text ©2009 Photos ©2009 by Guy Hoffmann As the book flap of her splendid book, Culinary Luxembourg, says “Sylvie Bisdorff is the owner of Hotel-Restaurant Bisdorff in Berdof. This address is known throughout Luxembourg for its traditional cuisine: at the...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
FROM CHILD-PRODIGY TO TV CELEBRITY CHEF text ©2009 photos by Tim Bradley, Rochdale Observer A gregarious and flamboyant Virgo, dynamic Andrew Nutter won his first cooking award at age 13 and opened his first restaurant named Nutters sixteen years ago at...
by Lucy Gordan | Jun 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
Text & photos ©2009 Few foreigners would ever dream that along with pasta and gelato another multi-regional Italian dish is trippa or tripe, inexpensive, often stewed in tomato sauce and topped with grated cheese. An acquired taste even for Italians,...
by Lucy Gordan | Feb 9, 2009 | Food, Food blog
Text ©2009 Owned by the Alaimo/Conticello family for five generations, since 1834 L’Antica Focacceria San Francesco (Via A. Paternostro 58, tel. 011-39-091-320264) has been an institution in Palermo, and since 1939 a national monument. With a university degree...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 9, 2008 | Food, Food blog
interview ©2008 A true Capricorn, Joachim Koerper was born on Christmas Day 1952 in the city of Saarbrucken, Germany, not far from the French border. He started to study business, but his passion for cooking took over. After apprenticeships at...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 9, 2008 | Food, Food blog
Text © 2008 by Lucy Gordan Vítor Sobral’s impressive curriculum vitae is six pages long. It’s divided into several categories: his studies, his internships, his professional experience as a chef, consultant, teacher, cookbook author, jury member, and...
by Lucy Gordan | Nov 6, 2008 | Food, Food blog
Text © 2008 Born on October 24, 1979 in Cascais, the elegant sea resort just west of Lisbon, where he still lives, José Avillez wanted to be a chef from early childhood. His dream came true after graduating from university with a degree in business and...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 11, 2008 | Travel, Travel blog
I first read about Yotvata in Rome’s newspaper Il Messaggero on September 29, 2006, in anarticle called “Un ristorante, tante religioni: La pace si fa a tavola?” meaning “One restaurant, many religions: Peace is made at the table?” In...
by Lucy Gordan | Aug 6, 2008 | Food, Food blog
Text and photos © 2008 Are you contemplating a trip to Sicily? Once you’ve read even just one of Mary Taylor Simeti’s several books for background, I promise you’ll be winging towards Palermo in no time. With both a native’s intimacy and the fresh-eye of an...
by Lucy Gordan | Nov 6, 2007 | Food, Food blog
TOM KELLER: AMERICA’S SUPER CHEF New York City, November 5, 2007. The youngest of five boys, Thomas Keller was born on October 14, 1955 at Camp Pendelton in Oceanside, California to Edward, a Marine drill instructor, and Betty Keller, a...
by Lucy Gordan | Nov 3, 2007 | Food, Food blog
President of OLDWAYS, the Food Issues Think Tank text © 2007 Boston, November 6, 2007 After graduating from Harvard, Dun Gifford served three years in the US Navy before going to Washington D.C. There he worked in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, as...
by Lucy Gordan | May 3, 2007 | Food, Food blog
text © 2007 Photos by Chris Warde-Jones Naples, May 1, 2007 Think Italian cuisine and three dishes immediately come to mind: spaghetti, tomato, and pizza, yet none of them originated in Italy. Although pizza was almost certainly born more than 3,000 years ago in...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 18, 2007 | Travel, Travel blog
Rome/Vatican City, Easter Sunday 2007. It takes only about 45 minutes to make a complete trek around walls of Vatican City, the world’s smallest independent country of 44 hectares, or 108.7 acres. There’s a lot more to explore here than St. Peter’s,...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 9, 2007 | Travel, Travel blog
Like the hotel she owns and runs meticulously with her children Alexandra and Georg, Elisabeth Gürtler is super-Viennese and glamorous. Immediately after my return from the Sacher bakery, this petite, charismatic workaholic with sparkling periwinkle eyes and a...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 3, 2007 | Food, Food blog
Milan, March 7, 2007 Pietro Leemann was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, during the summer of 1961. At the beginning of the 1980s, at the height of the nouvelle cuisine rage, he began his career as a chef studying with Angelo Conti Rossini, Fredy Giradet, and Gualtiero...
by Lucy Gordan | Mar 3, 2007 | Food, Food blog
text ©2007 Vienna, March 29, 2007 Like the Hassler in Rome, the Sacher Hotel in Vienna is one of the few top hotels worldwide to have always been family-run. The Sacher is also unusual in another way. While most great hotels became famous for their hospitality first...
by Lucy Gordan | Dec 3, 2006 | Food, Food blog
New York/Vipore December 4, 2006 Tuscan Chef Cesare Casella is a Renaissance man of Italian gastronomy. The author of three books: Diary of a Tuscan Chef, Italian Cooking for Dummies, and True Tuscan, the most important breeder in the United States of chianine and a...
by Lucy Gordan | Oct 20, 2006 | Food, Food blog
The Towers of Parma Roma, October 3, 2006 The term “prosciutto” explains in one word the production process of this world-famous type of Italian cured ham. It derives from the Latin perexuctus which translates “deprived of all liquid.”...
by Lucy Gordan | Sep 10, 2006 | Food, Food blog
Text and photos by Lucy Gordan To write an article about Guangzhou and Cantonese gastronomy for a e-zine published in California and in the Bay-area no less may seem like carrying coals to Newcastle, but even some Epicurean Travelers may be going to China for the...
by Lucy Gordan | Apr 9, 2004 | Food, Food blog
The Parmalat scandal must not steal the limelight. A byword for fine food and good living since the Middle Ages, Parma and environs, known as “food valley,” had only shortly before received the gastronomic recognition it clearly deserves. After a 2-year...
