Chef

John M. Vernarelli, who served in Korea and Vietnam as a military police officer and later had a second career as a chef, died Aug. 14 of lung cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Perry Hall resident was 80. Mr. Vernarelli, one of 14 children of Italian immigrants, was born at home on East Chase Street. When he was 16, he tried to enlist in the Army, until military authorities learned his age and he was sent home from Fort Meade to Baltimore. "The next year, on March 27, 1947 — one day after his 17th birthday — he enlisted," said a nephew, Mark Vernarelli, who is a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correction Services.

With its Creole-Cajun-Deep-Southern roots, New Orleans sizzles with creative cuisines and larger-than-life chefs. You may have heard of a guy named Emeril who cooks here or Paul Prudhomme or the Brennan family who runs the famous Commander's Palace restaurant.You may not have heard of Anne Kearney or her French Quarter bistro Peristyle if you live outside Louisiana or even the Big Easy.But in the food world, the 32-year-old chef is making an impact. In the past year, Kearney -- a perky, blond-haired cooking whiz -- joined the ranks of Food & Wine magazine's best new chefs, won a Robert Mondavi Award of Culinary Excellence and was nominated for a prestigious James Beard award.

Tucked away in small-town Easton is a tiny inn that's poised to conquer the hearts (and stomachs) of food lovers in the mid-Atlantic. From a cozy kitchen in a 1790s red brick house, a New York native with an Australian obsession has been quietly offering up dishes that meld Down Under flavors with Chesapeake delights. Soft-shell crabs are served with a Vietnamese-inspired caramelized coconut jus infused with lemon grass. Australian "bay bugs" (slipper lobsters) are grilled and paired with a green papaya salad and yellow bean dipping sauce.

For more than 100 years, from the debut of its first dining car in 1853 until the coming of Amtrak in 1971, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad enjoyed a reputation as the finest restaurant on wheels.Generations of Marylanders who rode the "Beano" -- as locals pronounced it -- to New York or Chicago or Detroit still savor memories of pork chops Normandy, hush puppies, crab cakes, warm apple pie, dumplings, broiled shad or terrapin stew.For former chef Percy Peters, 76, who spent 15 years cooking aboard the railroad's dining and office cars, the memories are as fresh as the rolls he baked daily in a coal-fired oven aboard trains traveling at 80 mph.Peters cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, Wall Street moguls and movie stars, and thousands of ordinary people who rode the B&O in the time before airplanes and interstates changed train travel.

James Bernard "Jimmy" Watkins Jr., a veteran Baltimore & Ohio Railroad dining car chef who during his 36-year career prepared thousands of meals for passengers, including Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, died March 30 of prostate cancer at his Pikesville home. He was 89. Mr. Watkins was born in Baltimore and raised in Glen Burnie, and was a 1939 graduate of Glen Burnie High School. He began his cooking career in the late 1930s, working as a lunch counter cook at Read's drugstore at Howard and Lexington streets, and soon began looking for a better job because "they didn't pay no money," he said in a 34-page typed transcript of a taped interview made for the Hays T. Watkins Research Library at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore in 2002.

NEW YORK - To see him and to hear him, you'd think Jean-Georges Vongerichten a typical French chef. He grew up in Alsace, on the French-German border, "with a lot of rich food, foie gras and sauerkraut."This genial, 41-year-old "chef's chef," who's been collecting accolades the way Mark McGwire collected home runs, trained in a Michelin three-star restaurant and worked in the South of France, learning and using the techniques and ingredients that for hundreds of years have defined French gastronomy as one of the wonders of the Western world.

In his newest TV show, internationally known chef Jacques Pepin bares all. No, this isn't some sordid peek into the life of a celebrity. After all, Pepin is only a baby in the bare-bottomed buff shot taken more than 60 years ago in his hometown of Bourg-en-Bresse in Southeast France. Rather, the innocent nudie scene sets the stage for a celebration of Pepin's life and a half-century in the kitchen. The famed chef, who now lives in Madison, Conn., was only 13 when he donned his first toque and headed to culinary school as an apprentice.

Gerry Garvin struts down the aisle with a black chef's smock, sunglasses, knee-length khaki shorts and clogs to deliver a cooking presentation at a health fair at a local church. As he prepares to make four dishes featuring cherry tomatoes, including ones with clams, mussels, and Chilean sea bass, a woman in the audience begins walking toward the back of the church. "Where you going?" he asks as he prepares the pan with oil. "Don't walk out when I'm trying to do my thing!" Garvin, who is in his late 30s and lives in Los Angeles, does his thing most days on TV One's Turn Up the Heat with G. Garvin.

Ted Stelzenmuller has parted ways with Of Love & Regret, the Canton restaurant he opened this spring with Stillwater Ales founder Brian Strumke. The chef is now back at Jack's Bistro full time. Both Stelzenmuller and Strumke have acknowledged "creative differences" about the direction of the menu at Of Love & Regret. For the short term, chef de cuisine Keith Curley, formerly of Red Maple and Aida Bistro, will be running Of Love & Regret's kitchen, according to Strumke. He will be joined by Joshua Evans, who has worked in Chicago and, moreso, Philadelphia at places like Le Bec-Fin and James on 8th. But Strumke hesitated to assign titles or positions, or to commit to any particular direction for the menu, except that it will be changing.