Chef report: Andrew Carmellini gives 10 commandments

Andrew Carmellini is a consummate New York City chef who seems to balance running restaurants with writing cookbooks, consulting on sausages and, this past week, acting as guest editor at Food Republic.

The chef-owner of Locanda Verde, The Dutch and Lafayette has been sharing videos of how to make a baguette — more visually appealing than informative, but still worth a couple minutes — his 10 commandments of being a New York City chef, and 10 things he hates, including casting agents lurking around his restaurants for cooks to be reality TV contestants. “Stop trying to lure our professionals into a life of parody,” he said.

He also shared one of his soups with local 29-unit chain Hale and Hearty, where proceeds from the sales of his coconut squash soup were given to a local food bank.
 

Get some of my Coconut Squash Soup this week @HaleandHeartyNY and proceeds go @FoodBank4NYC pic.twitter.com/cp7TeAJIWb

— Andrew Carmellini (@andrecarmellini) February 14, 2014

Another chefs’ chef in New York, former Chanterelle chef and owner David Waltuck, told Eater that he’s opening a new restaurant that he plans to call élan with his former general manager, George Stinson. Although Waltuck has held various jobs and consulting gigs since closing Chanterelle in 2009, this is his first foray in restaurant ownership since then.

Many chefs have taken to Facebook lately to share news, gather information or express their opinions.

Christopher Lee, a former Food & Wine Magazine Best New Chef and a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year, has run big New York City kitchens such as the now-shuttered Gilt at the Palace Hotel and Charlie Palmer’s flagship, Aureole. In recent years he’s been working on other projects, including a stab at his own restaurant. But he recently told his Facebook friends that he’s heading to Miami Beach, Fla., to become chef of a legendary South Beach restaurant, The Forge, where he’s replacing Dewey LoSasso.

Meanwhile, pastry chef Michael Laiskonis, who spent years as executive pastry chef of Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin and is now creative director at The Institute for Culinary Education in New York City, is using Facebook to do some research. He has been asking his friends questions ranging from the pros and cons of pastry chefs running their own business to what pastry chefs’ career goals are to what first comes to mind when people think of “pudding”.

Legendary chef Jacques Pépin, used the social network simply to wish everyone a happy Valentine’s Day, and to tell the world that chocolate is his favorite vegetable.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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