Gala Chef Q & A: Thomas McNaughton

by JBF Editors on May 06, 2013

Thomas McNaughton, Flour + Water, San Francisco

What’s your go-to guilty-pleasure food?

Pita chips and spicy hummus. Though when in Jersey, pork roll sandwiches.

Describe the last great meal you ate.

I finally took some days off and went to Sayulita, Mexico. Margaritas and tacos on the beach were exactly what I needed.

What’s the dish you’re most proud of?

It’s hard to say. We’re constantly trying to evolve our dishes, and they’re always changing. Perfection is a journey and not an end goal.

What’s your favorite movie snack?

Salumi and cheese at home.

What’s your earliest food memory?

It’s funny because I’m now obsessed with natural fermentation, but as a kid I hated pickles. If my burger came with a pickle and it was touching the fries, I wouldn’t even touch the fries.

What do y... Read more >

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2013 James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Cecilia Chiang

by Nicole Citron on May 06, 2013

The Lifetime Achievement award is given to an individual whose lifetime body of work has had a positive and long-lasting impact on the way we eat, cook, and/or think about food in America.

Restaurateur Cecilia Chiang recalls James Beard’s delight after his first meal at her landmark San Francisco Chinese restaurant, The Mandarin, in the early 1960s. “This is so different from what I had before. This is very tasty. What do you call this kind of food?” she remembers him asking. Unlike most Americans at the time, Beard’s experience with Chinese food extended beyond bland, Americanized dishes like chow mein and egg foo young. His Chinese-born childhood housekeeper, Let, had been an accomplished chef whose cooking made a deep impression on Beard at an early age. Even so, the profound flavors in Chiang’s northern Chinese, Shanghai, and Sichuan specialties were unlike anything Beard had ever tasted before.

Authentic, regional dishes such as beggar’s chicken (baked in clay), Sichuan spicy... Read more >

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Gala Chef Q & A: JBF Award Winner Christina Tosi

by JBF Editors on May 06, 2013

JBF Award Winner Christina Tosi, Momofuku Milk Bar, NYC

What are your go-to guilty-pleasure foods?

Nachos and cookie dough.

What’s your favorite movie, and why?

Desk Set. Katharine Hepburn has such wit, such intelligence, but is still a silly gal. I love the enthusiasm, charm, and pace of the movie.

Describe the last great meal you ate.

I just had dinner at St. Anselm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We ordered nearly everything on the menu and died for it all.

What’s your earliest food memory?

Grilled cheese and tomato soup.

What’s the dish you’re most proud of?

Cereal milk panna cotta with avocado purée, chocolate-hazelnut, and cornflake crunch. And the fried apple pie with miso butterscotch and sour ice cream. I created them simult... Read more >

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America's Classic: Prince's Hot Chicken Shack

by JBF Editors on May 06, 2013

123 Ewing Drive, Nashville 
Owner: Andre Prince Jeffries

Hot fried chicken, long popular in towns across the South, has become synonymous with Nashville. A visit to town doesn’t count unless you make the pilgrimage to this joint, set in an abbreviated strip mall alongside a nail salon, for crispy yardbird with a cayenne-soaked coat of armor.

Thornton Prince was the original owner. He was a handsome fellow. One of his girlfriends grew weary of his late-night carousing. As a revenge tactic, she doused his Sunday morning favorite, fried chicken, with cayenne pepper. But her plan backfired: he liked it. By the mid-1930s Prince and his brothers had perfected the process and opened a café, which they originally called the BBQ Chicken Shack.

Current owner Andre Prince Jeffries, great-niece of Thornton Prince, continues the family tradition. She brines her chicken, flours it, fries it to order, and slathers it with a secret layer of hot spices. You can order it fro... Read more >

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