As any music store clerk or rock critic will tell you, most CDs aren't very good. Same goes for the majority of novels and movies. Yet cookbooks seemingly escape criticism. If the pictures look nice and the font is sharp and the layout easy to read, there's a good chance somebody will buy it no matter the quality of the recipes inside. But like CDs and movies, most cookbooks aren't very good. When it comes to buying cookbooks, the best advice is caveat emptor.
There are just too many unproven re
New York Times
New York restaurateurs, from left, Mario Batali, Sirio Maccioni, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
New York City has lots and lots of restaurants: famous ones, dumpy diners, snobby boites, vintage saloons, burger joints, tapas bars, tandoori temples -- you name it. But even in the biggest restaurant town in America, the competition for customers in the worst economy in decades has taken on an almost desperate edge. In today's New York Times feature by restaurant critic F
Although it won't be televised like the Oscars or the Grammys, the cooking equivalent takes place tonight at the Lincoln Center in New York City where the James Beard Awards are announced. The only chef from Kansas City to make the finals is Colby Garrelts from Bluestem, who's nominated for the "Best Chef Midwest" category. He's been nominated three years in a row, now. Last time I talked to Garrelts, he said he wasn't worried, because he and Megan, his wife and pastry chef, "know the drill."&nb
​Reality cooking shows have tended to focus on the winners -- until last night's debut of Worst Cooks in America. The Food Network's latest has 12 cook-testants, each vying to go from the worst cook in America to winning $25,000. For this six-episode series, contestants are split into two competing teams, one guided by Anne Burrell (the tough but fair chef) and the other by Beau MacMillan (a significantly more serious Mario Batali), for a series of elimination challenges.
