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The 2008 Bon Appetit Magazine Awards Celebrate Today's Best Chefs, Tastemakers and Food Artisans
Last update: 2:02 p.m. EDT Sept. 5, 2008

NEW YORK, Sept 05, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Bon Appetit magazine will award the most inspirational, influential, and innovative leaders in the world of food at a gala dinner in New York City on September 15th. Editor-in-Chief Barbara Fairchild will bestow the winners with the Bon Appetit Magazine Award at the critically acclaimed restaurant Del Posto, celebrating the winners' outstanding achievements in changing the way we all eat and drink for the better. Here are this year's winners.
Additional details may be found in the Bon Appetit Awards feature in the October issue of the magazine and online at bonappetit.com.
CHEF OF THE YEAR: Michael Psilakis/chef-restaurateur, NYC
Growing up in a Greek household on Long Island, Psilakis learned the foundations of traditional Greek cuisine; today he's recognized for reinventing it. During the six short years the 38-year-old chef has been cooking professionally, he's created a Greek revival with his critically lauded restaurants Anthos and Kefi in New York. "It was a hard sell, especially in the beginning," says Psilakis. "I got tired of answering the question 'Is it really Greek?'"
His dishes -- cubes of raw tuna dusted with chili powder and flavored with apple and feta; octopus with bay leaves, fennel, and lemon confit -- may be unexpected, but they're perfectly in step with the flavor profiles of his Mediterranean forefathers. Earlier this year he opened Mia Dona, a cozy Italian restaurant. Next up is a cookbook based on stories from his childhood, and possibly the realization of his ultimate dream: his own restaurant in Athens.
PASTRY CHEF: Gina DePalma/executive pastry chef, NYC
Ask DePalma about her ultimate food fantasy, and she describes this scene: her entire (and very extended) Italian family sitting around a table after a great meal, cracking nuts, slicing fruit, and eating a Bundt cake. While Bundt cake might seem a humble choice for an acclaimed pastry chef, DePalma considers a well-made Bundt cake sublime. As the executive pastry chef at New York City's acclaimed restaurant Babbo, she's been hailed as a creative genius, whipping up dazzling desserts with simple Italian ingredients like sweet dough and ricotta. "When I create a new dessert, the first thing I think about is how I want it to taste, what I want the flavors to be, not what it should look like or how it will be constructed," says DePalma. "If a strawberry isn't perfectly red, ripe, and heady, then why bother?" Her first cookbook, Dolci Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen, came out last October, and she's now at work on her second, which will chronicle her travels in Italy.
RESTAURATEUR: Tom Douglas/culinary entrepreneur, Seattle
Tom Douglas stands back to let local food products shine. In so doing, he ignited the Seattle restaurant scene in 1989 with Dahlia Lounge, an instant success. He went on to create six other successful and distinctive venues, all within a few blocks of one another. His latest venture being Serious Pie, where dishes like a Penn Cove clam and house-made pancetta pizza bake up in an applewood-fired oven. "It's all about offering good value and respecting the food," says Douglas. "When you've got an incredible piece of king salmon or a perfect peach, you have to step away from it and avoid the urge to manipulate it." Now that he's covered Seattle, Douglas wants to get into kitchens across the country: His custom housewares line, Tom Douglas by Pinzon for Amazon, debuts this September.
HUMANITARIAN: Heifer International/non-profit hunger relief, Little Rock, Arkansas
During the 16 years that Jo Luck has served as CEO of Little Rock, Arkansas-based Heifer International, she has traveled to more than 60 countries, slept on dirt floors, been robbed, and survived an earthquake. But when your job is to fight global hunger and poverty, it's all in a day's work. The idea of Heifer International is simple: to help people become self-reliant by providing revenue-producing livestock like cows, rabbits, and goats. The organization requires each recipient to complete training that stresses values like gender equality, environmental stewardship, and philanthropy, so that donations have a lasting impact. "Every recipient of a Heifer animal must provide training, or the first healthy female offspring, to another family in need," says Luck. "Each recipient becomes a donor, and there is great dignity in that." This year, Heifer's enormous impact was recognized by a $43 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will help fund training of dairy farmers in East Africa.
COOKING TEACHER: Bobby Flay/chef, media personality, NYC
With "Show, don't tell" as his mantra, Flay has been inspiring legions with the tastes of southwestern and regional American cuisine since 1991, when he opened Mesa Grill at the tender age of 25. "Telling someone to get a bunch of ingredients together has zero impact," says Flay. "When you take the dish and show someone how it's done, it becomes so much clearer." His approachable, down-to-earth style has translated successfully to four Food Network programs, eight cookbooks, and six restaurants. "My passion comes from being able to create on the fly," says Flay, who rarely measures ingredients and instead stresses the importance of letting taste be the guide. Another sign of Flay's gift for teaching: He's still humble enough to learn. On his latest show, Grill It!, amateur grilling enthusiasts teach him a trick or two. A self-professed burger maniac, Flay opened Bobby's Burger Palace on Long Island in July.
FOOD ARTISAN: Anson Mills/heirloom grain producer, Columbia, SC
Anson Mills founder Glenn Roberts is on a one-man mission to preserve some of the country's lost grains. Roberts first started working with heirloom seeds when he was asked to create period dinners at restored inns. Unable to find the right ingredients, he set out in search of the rice, corn, and buckwheat he read about in historic literature and cookbooks. His sleuthing took him to the fields of Carolina bootleggers, and soon he was planting the precious seeds on his 110-acre farm. The crop rotation is done the old-fashioned way, and grains (hand-milled in small batches on the day they're ordered) are mailed out the same day. "We grow limited amounts of extraordinary stuff for people who are incredibly careful about the integrity of their ingredients," says Roberts, who includes chefs Charlie Trotter and David Chang on his short list of worthy recipients. The lasting fruits of his hard labor? Working with others who are just as passionate about food, and grits good enough to stand the test of time.
DESIGNER: Heath Ceramics/handcrafted pottery, Sausalito, CA
It's natural for a passionate chef to obsess not only about the food, but also the plate it's served on. Luckily, demanding chefs (and home cooks) everywhere have come to count on Heath Ceramics for high-quality design and timeless style. Co-owners Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic have been keeping the tradition of handcrafted American ceramics alive since they bought the factory from designer Edith Heath in 2003. By staying true to the renowned designer's original shapes, richly colored glazes, and unique clays, the duo resurrected the brand by resisting quick and easy shortcuts, focusing instead on superior production and craft. Their work has drawn notice from exacting chefs and many, like Alice Waters (who ordered custom plates for Chez Panisse), have come calling. "We've been able to make design integrity our top priority, while keeping the entire production here in this one building," says Bailey. "As with good food, incredible care and consideration go into making our dinnerware."
WINE & SPIRITS PROFESSIONAL: Jim Koch/brewmaster, Boston
Koch has been on a 25-year crusade to give beer its rightful place at the table, just like wine. A sixth-generation beer maker and founder of The Boston Beer Company, he produced the first batch of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in 1984, using a yellowed copy of his great-great-grandfather's recipe. Since then, Koch has been at the forefront of America's craft beer renaissance. He is currently leading a campaign to host multi-course beer dinners across the country with A-list chefs. "Nothing is as interesting to me as discovering the surprise of new food pairings," says Koch, who recently devised a tapas-and-dark-lager pairing. For him, the qualities that make a great brew aren't any different from those that make a great wine: a complex taste that's bold but balanced and fills the mouth with notes ranging from caramel to soft citrus. His idea of the ultimate winning combination? A strong cheese with a big, bold beer.
FOOD WRITER: Michael Pollan/literary omnivore, Berkeley, CA
Pollan has a knack for timing. Just as America's interest in organic and sustainable food began to grow, his influential fourth book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, hit the shelves with a concise, searing look at the "long and complicated, environmentally ruinous industrial food chain." It helped fuel a national awareness as readers thought hard about what's really for dinner. "I met so many people who said they couldn't finish The Omnivore's Dilemma because every time they turned the page, they found something else they couldn't eat anymore," says Pollan. "People were looking for the omnivore's solution." His follow-up book, In Defense of Food, is just that. In clear, elegant language, he addresses the national desire for healthful, authentic food and, above all, teaches us how smart choices can become second nature.
TASTEMAKER: Monterey Bay Aquarium/seafood conservation, Monterey, CA
In the early '90s, overfishing caused the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery. When the Atlantic swordfish and other marine life faced a similar fate a few years later, the Monterey Bay Aquarium created a dynamic exhibit outlining the effects of overfishing and took a hard look at their own habits. "We realized that we had to 'walk the talk,'" says executive director Julie Packard. They created a list of sustainable seafood served at Portola, the aquarium's restaurant, and it became the catalyst for the Seafood Watch program. In nine years, they've distributed more than 24 million wallet-size Seafood Watch guides and created a mobile version for cell phones and PDAs. Researchers assign three ratings to popular seafood: "best choice," "good alternative," and "avoid." "We're finally waking up to the reality of needing to change our food system," says Packard. For the Atlantic swordfish, the wake-up call came just in time: Its population is now on the rise.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Carlo Petrini/activist-pioneer, Milan, Italy
The concept of the Slow Food movement was born in 1986 when Petrini, then working as a journalist in Rome, watched a protest against the opening of an American fast-food chain restaurant in Piazza di Spagna. For Petrini, the presence of a chain restaurant in one of Rome's most celebrated piazzas encroached on taste and, worse, a way of life. In response, he founded the Slow Food movement to campaign against the standardization of taste and the destruction of regional food culture, and "to defend gastronomic pleasure and support a slower, more aware pace of life." Thanks to his efforts, the call for action has been taken up by supporters around the world at a pace that's anything but slow: The movement now has 86,000 members; a University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy; and Terra Madre, a highly respected summit for the international food community to meet and work together.
Excerpted from Bon Appetit Magazine, October 2008
SOURCE Bon Appetit