James Beard

NEW YORK -- A New York waitress in search of Chesapeake Bay rockfish ducked into the kitchen of the James Beard House, where she worked. "I hear the fish is fabulous," the waitress told visiting chef, Michael Rork, owner of the Town Dock Restaurant in St. Michaels.Rork smiled as the waitress ate a plate of herb-crusted rockfish with creamed sweet corn and tomatoes. The waitress was sampling Chesapeake Bay victuals that soon would be served to a crowd of diners filling the Greenwich Village townhouse turned headquarters of the James Beard Foundation.

Walnut Creek, Calif -- Marion Cunningham, whose lively revision of the prim and outmoded "Fannie Farmer Cookbook" has made it once again a kitchen standard, is talking on her kitchen phone."

Last week, reader Bucky contributed this Top 10 list of Food Quotations on Dining@Large (baltimoresun.com/diningat large): Somewhere along the way, I started jotting down quotations that struck me as insightful or funny or potentially useful for staff meeting arguments in a little spiral-bound notebook that I carried around with me in my briefcase. ... I went into my collection of quotations (now stored on Microsoft Word) and dug out some of my favorites that would meet the pesky "food-related" requirement.

New York -- For years the James Beard Awards have been dubbed the Oscars of the food world. Monday night the food show did a pretty good job of imitating the movie awards. The winners basked in the hot, white lights of television. The presenters read bad jokes from TelePrompTers. And the line of award winners trooping to the stage seemed endless. The winners weren't as well-known or as beautiful as movie stars. But the food was better. The ceremony ran from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m with a three-hour break in the middle for -- what else?

If you have a hunger for something new, join the growing caravan heading to an old city by the sea. Atlantic City, home of the lobster dinner, cheese fries on the Boardwalk, and saltwater taffy, is fast becoming a gourmet paradise. This sea change was brought on, in part, by the opening last year of the $1.1 billion Borgata, the first new casino to come to the city in 13 years. As notable as its gaming tables are the restaurant tables of several talented and well-known chefs. In its reincarnation as a gambling mecca, the once-faded Atlantic City has never lacked for glitz, but has rarely been known for high-quality food.

New York -- It's a glorious late-summer morning in Greenwich Village, the sky a slice of pure blue above the buildings, a gentle breeze blowing, temperatures that require a jacket. On West 12th Street, a khaki-colored Trooper swings up to the door of No. 167, and the driver and two passengers leap out and begin unloading: two huge stock pots, two wooden crates of corn, a box of tomatoes, cases of wine, two plastic containers filled with pecan caramel tarts.Thus provisioned, and armed with the tools of their trade -- comfortable shoes, leather kits of personal knives and implements -- the three descend to the kitchen of the James Beard House, where they will prepare dinner for nearly 100 people that evening.

The nominees for the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards were announced today! Winners will be announced in May. Baltimore’s own, Duff Goldman, received two nominations. Here’s a short list of nominees of interest. For the full list, visit jamesbeard.org. James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Awards TV Food Personality/Host Alton Brown Show: Good Eats Bobby Flay Show: Brunch @ Bobby’s Duff Goldman Show: Ace of Cakes Television Program, On Location Ace of Cakes Host: Duff Goldman Avec Eric Host: Eric Ripert Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern Host: Andrew Zimmern James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards Individual Food Blog Politics of the Plate Politicsoftheplate.com Barry Estabrook Poor Man’s Feast Poormansfeast.com Elissa Altman Red Cook Redcook.net Kian Lam Kho Food Section of a General Interest Publication GQ The Editors of GQ San Francisco Chronicle Jon Bonné and Miriam Morgan The Washington Post Joe Yonan James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards Best New Restaurant ABC Kitchen NYC Chef/Owner: Jean-Georges Vongerichten Owner: Phil Suarez Benu San Francisco Chef/Owner: Corey Lee Girl & the Goat Chicago Chef/Owner: Stephanie Izard Owners: Kevin Boehm, Rob Katz, and Daniel...

Three Baltimore chefs will make their James Beard House debuts on May 30 when they prepare a Chesapeake Bounty dinner for the James Beard Foundation. The chefs, Chad Gauss ( The Food Market ), Cyrus Keefer ( Birroteca ) and Sajin Renae ( Fork & Wrench ), are behind three of the most popular and well-reviewed restaurant openings of 2012. The menu for the Chesapeake Bounty dinner has not been finalized. The Chesapeake Bounty dinner is one of more than 200 culinary events open to the public that take place at the James Beard House in New York City throughout the year.

Andrew Zimmern's "Bizarre Foods" picked up a James Beard award for TV Show, On Location at Friday night's Book, Broadcast and Awards. Zimmern, the headliner for this Saturday's Foodie Experience event at the Hippodrome, won an individual James Beard award in 2010 for TV Food Personality . The award for TV Show, Fixed Location went to "Chopped," and its host, Ted Allen, won this year's award for Media Personality/Host....

The James Beard Foundation announced the finalists for the 2013 James Beard Foundation Awards, and Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen is among the five finalists for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic, one of 10 regional categories. This is the first time Gjerde has made it to the finalist level. Among Baltimore chefs, only Cindy Wolf has made it to the finalist round, twice, in 2006 and 2008. “It's exciting,” said Gjerde, who learned about his nomination soon after it happened.  “We were in our managers' meeting at Woodberry, and unbeknownst to me a couple of employees were following the Twitter thread [of the nominations announcement]