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Another Celebrity Chef Show Poised To Hit Cable

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By JEFF HOUCK | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 17, 2009

ANOTHER BOWL OF 'TOP CHEF'

Bravo will spin off "Top Chef Masters" later this year, pitting celebrity chefs against each other.

The recipe that worked for "Top Chef" will be recognizable. There's the exotically beautiful host (New York food journalist and former model Kelly Choi). There's a table stocked with unimpeachable judges (New York magazine's restaurant critic Gael Greene, Saveur magazine editor James Oseland and British journalist Jay Rayner.) And there are the signature quickfire and elimination challenges. The roster of "internationally famous" chefs has yet to be made public.

The winner of "Top Chef Masters" will have money donated to the charity of his or her choice.

I e-mailed Greene to ask how she was swept up into the project.

"I haven't a clue how they decided to call me. Or why they chose me," Greene replied. "I think I shall ask. Too bad I'm not allowed to write about the experience, but we are all sworn to secrecy."

I wondered what the notoriously image-shy Greene would do to protect her identity. A restaurant critic with a recognizable face is like a grenade with no explosive inside. Will there be a disguise?

"I may be disguised as Tom Colicchio," she wrote.

NEW BREAKFAST/LUNCH OPTIONS

Starbucks has begun serving chilled lunches at 20 of its Tampa Bay locations. The dozen salads, sandwiches, snacks and parfaits run between $3.45 and $5.95. Aiming squarely at female customers, the company is touting that each item contains less than 400 calories and between 10 and 20 grams of protein. The strawberry blueberry parfait, with fat-free yogurt, fruit and crunchy granola, looks like a nice midday treat.

If that's too frou-frou for you, you can start your day at Dunkin' Donuts. They're selling an oven-toasted breakfast sandwich featuring cherrywood smoked bacon, scrambled eggs and American cheese between two maple-infused waffles for $2.99.

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR LIPITOR

If you liked the chocolate-dipped (excuse me, "dipt") bacon at the Florida State Fair, you may want to set a course for the Florida Strawberry Festival, where chocolate-dipped pork rinds promise to be the rage.

The festival starts Wednesday and runs through March 8.

GREAT SERVICE? TELL ME ABOUT IT

It has long been my contention that the difference between a good meal and a great meal is not the food. It's the service. Conversely, the best food in the world cannot compensate if it is served in shoddy fashion.

As an example, I'll share the story of my friend Toby, who told me recently about eating at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Lake Buena Vista.

He and his family wanted to grab lunch. Toby's wife, Sara, who is a bit of a Disneyphile, had heard good things about The Wave, which has a stylish décor and serves organic American staples. The Wave is sort of tucked away on the first floor of the resort in a space that used to serve as an arcade. It's easy to miss.

Toby says the food was delicious. He raved about the lettuce-wrap appetizer, which came with sautéed lamb, bay scallops, red pepper and a delicious soy-rice wine vinegar sauce. But their server, Giselle, was "amazing."

When the couple realized they had forgotten to pack their son Riley's baby food, Sara asked whether the restaurant had any available. Giselle asked a chef to make applesauce from scratch.

"The baby food thing was quite a lucky break, because the first thing Sara asked for was if they had baby food and they said no," Toby told me. "Then the server suggested it. To me, that's the sign of a really good server — going above and beyond the call of duty."

I agree. Which is where you come in.

Everyone complains about poor service, but no one celebrates those who do their jobs in outstanding fashion.

If you've come across someone who has gone beyond the call of duty to make a drinking or dining experience more enjoyable, e-mail me at jhouck@tampatrib.com and tell me about it. I'll share your stories in this column.

REMEMBERING JANICE

There's a saying that no man is a hero to his own valet. The reason: They've seen too much.

I've always suspected the same is true for copy editors when it comes to the writers with whom they work. Anyone who has had the misfortune of being a backstop to my wild pitches of verbiage (this sentence included) cannot possibly hold me in high esteem for very long.

Considering that, I am very fortunate to have been in the editing hands of Janice Hall. For more than six years, she and I worked to produce the Tribune's Flavor section. There's no way to calculate the number of misspellings, grammatical bear traps and tangled, illogical recipes from which she patiently saved me.

She occasionally would ask a question about a story by e-mail. And most times, Janice would finish the dialogue with a simple response: "10-4 … thanks." The reply was so ever-present in her e-mails, I joked with colleagues that one day I would write a Wagnerian opera for Janice titled, "10-4 … thanks."

In December, I wrote a column about the best things I ate in 2008. In it, I originally wrote, "Daniel Boulud and Gavin Kaysen's Brand beef duo with caramelized beet and gratin served during the Bocuse d'Or USA gala at Epcot."

"Should this be Brandt beef?" Janice e-mailed to ask.

"Yes," I answered. Turns out the spell-check program automatically converted Brandt to Brand. I'd been in too big of a hurry to notice. Janice outsmarted the technology.

"10-4 … thanks," Janice replied.

I sent a note to my editor, noting the Dec. 30 date of the question. "Will this be the last '10-4 … thanks' of the year? ::: fingers crossed ::: ," I joked.

"Roger that," my editor replied. "Already got one myself, yesterday and today."

It wound up being the last 10-4 I got from Janice.

A few weeks later, she was reassigned away from food stories in a newsroom shuffle of duties. After that, she was out on sick leave after breaking her arm. She had been in and out of treatment for cancer for all the years I had known her. The broken arm didn't stop her. With no sick time left because of her cancer treatments, she eventually returned to her desk to edit copy with one good wing.

You would rarely have noticed anything was wrong by judging her mood. Through all of her medical travails, she'd still take time to send me a kind note when she liked a story I had written. We had different tastes in stories, but she was generous with praise nonetheless. It helped my cause that she also liked to cook and that we shared a great fondness for Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Mike Alstott.

On Saturday morning, Janice died from cancer at age 61. It's a testament to her sweet nature that I heard from many saddened friends and former colleagues when I posted news on a blog about her passing.

On behalf of every reporter and reader who benefitted from Janice's patient and meticulous nature, I can only say, "10-4 … thanks."

Jeff Houck

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