Well, when a chef and his ingredients really, really love each other… In this week’s installation of “The Evolution of a Special” we’ll take a journey across three time zones and nearly a year. Several months ago I traveled to LA with my chef-buddy Brian Cartenuto to eat at great places and have some meetings…

I’ve seen the movie Chef twice now. I’ll probably see it again and will buy it when it comes out in digital format. My first viewing was a surprise gift from my sons, and the second trip was with some of my staff. To say that this film resonated with me is an understatement. It…

Mississippi has long been known as cradle of creative culture. 2014 has been proclaimed the Year of the Creative Economy. As a member of Mississippi’s culinary scene, and a business owner who considers what I do a valuable part of the Creative Economy, I’ve overjoyed to see Mississippi’s creative culinary product beginning to get its…

The culinary product is a very important part of any region’s creative economy. Yet, I believe, it is often overlooked. As Jackson in specific and Mississippi as a whole concentrate on both promoting the creative economy and building a culinary product, I believe we must position our restaurants and chefs as valuable components of the…

Thought you might like to check this out. A couple of years ago Andrew Zimmern (the Bizarre Foods guy) was on a project called “Appetite for Life” and came to Jackson to interview the restaurant community about our efforts for The Miracle League organization. Sooo…. I ended up hangin’ with Andrew for a good part…

To quote a certain Austrian nanny (since Austria does share a border with Italy), let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start. My profession as a chef and restaurateur of an Italian Trattoria did not naturally evolve from a lifetime obsession with Italian food, or from deep Italian family roots. It came…