When it turned out that one of them was in the hospital, Ms. Cooke and her lead chef talked their way into the intensive-care unit to visit him.
(Pity the new kitchen lead, chef de cuisine Brian Drosenos, who had to deal with the ultimate VIP in his first week on the job). The attention lavished even on non-billionaires is noteworthy, too.
"We can pop off the heads if it's a problem, but people can appreciate that there's more flavor," said Michael Brack, the lead chef and an owner at Smith Street Kitchen, who considers shrimp-head sucking in his dining room "a little overenthusiastic".
While you might recognize him from an appearance on "Iron Chef America," he established his reputation as the lead chef at top-rated Culina at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Nina Simmons, a lead chef instructor for a pilot program funded by TASC (The After School Corporation and The Pinkerton Foundationon, an apprenticeship program for 25 selected Bronx high school students from TASC affiliated schools.
Leading chefs like Mr. Oliver, Dan Barber and David Burke seem to be wallowing in — and advertising — a new intimacy with the animals they cook.
The interest in grain dishes has led chefs to explore buckwheat's potential, updating it and using it in untraditional ways.
European influences have led chefs to reinterpret classic black dishes, while the African diaspora continues to expand the vocabulary of a cuisine that has always been absorptive and adaptive.
Leading chefs and other industry insiders say a "cultural shift" – including the presence of more women at the top of the profession – is ushering in a new era of calm, with a generation of sweet-tempered cordon bleus shooing away their irate elders.
From a desk in Midtown Manhattan, I went on at length about my theory of the tyranny of wild spring foods, about the herd mentality that leads chefs to put them on menus when they shouldn't, and about the high price people pay for dirty, stinky roots.
