World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025

On Monday, the World's 50 Best announced the top 50 restaurants in the world for 2025 at an event in Turin, Italy on Monday evening. Maido in Lima, Peru was named No. 1, the second time a restaurant from this city landed in the top position (Central won in 2023). Spain’s Asador Etxebarri became the bridesmaid again at No. 2… read more

Amanda Hesser leaving Food52

Amanda Hesser, one of pioneering website Food52's founding members, announced in her newsletter that she is stepping away from the company. She will focus on her Substack Homeward in which she is chronicling her home renovation in Ojai, plus providing design picks, recipes, and travel recommendations. Hesser said that after 16 years at the company, it is time for her… read more

Nagi Maehashi wins cookbook award, beating rival she accused of plagiarism

RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi won the Illustrated Book of the Year category in the 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) for RecipeTin Eats - Tonight, beating nominee Brooke Bellamy, who Maehashi recently accused of copying her recipes without attribution in Bellamy's cookbook. Bellamy insists the accusations are false and says she has faced relentless online harassment since Maehashi came… read more

Martha Stewart and José Andrés team up for a new show

Lifestyle maven Martha Stewart and everyone's favorite humanitarian chef José Andrés have teamed up for a new cooking show from NBC that is also streaming on Peacock. Called "Yes, Chef!", the show puts a new twist on the reality TV competition. Instead of cutthroat competition, the contestants will have to be good teammates in order to advance and ultimately collect… read more

Allegations of plagiarism – updated

Today the creator of the popular blog RecipeTin Eats and cookbook author Nagi Maehashi, shared allegations of plagiarism against Brooke Bellamy, author of Bake with Brooki. You can read her post here where Nagi shares two examples of her recipes she believes to be copied - collage below shows the Caramel slice comparison. Nagi also claimed that a recent reprint… read more

Lessons from a lifetime of cooking

When I was a fresh-faced college graduate 30 years ago, I was far from an accomplished cook. In fact, I was terrible. This was a shortcoming I was determined to overcome, because I really liked eating and did not have the resources to frequently dine out. This was before the ease of finding instruction on YouTube, so I looked to… read more

Charles Phan has died at age 62

Today we learned the unfortunate news that Charles Phan, renowned chef and author of Vietnamese Home Cooking and The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food, has passed away at the age of 62. Reports emerged over the weekend indicating that the talented chef had been admitted to the hospital. His family has since confirmed that he suffered cardiac arrest. Phan was… read more

Southern cooking legend Nathalie Dupree has died at age 85

We are saddened to share the news that Nathalie Dupree, celebrated Southern chef and cookbook author, passed away yesterday at age 85. South Carolina chefs shared outpourings of affection for Dupree, with Carrie Morey saying "Heaven just got a little more buttery and delicious...you have always inspired me — to take a chance, keep going, do for others, work harder,… read more

The end of an Ottolenghi era

Yotam Ottolenghi is by far the most popular author in the EYB Library. The top three books by number of Bookshelves are his, and he has five of the top 10 books in the Library. If you look at individual recipes ranked by buzz, Ottolenghi again dominates. For the past seven years he has written a weekly column for The… read more

The complexities of the Ina Garten/Martha Stewart relationship

One could argue that the two biggest female culinary icons alive today are Martha Stewart and Ina Garten. Both have had big years, Stewart with a documentary about her life and Garten with a recently-published memoir. In an interview about her documentary, Stewart suggested that there was bad blood between the two, saying that she felt like Garten abandoned her… read more

Is the term ‘food writer’ a valid description?

I subscribe to a variety of culinary websites, including Christopher Kimball's Milk Street. In his most recent Milk Street email, Kimball staked out a controversial position on food writers, saying that "[t]he entire notion of being a “food writer” is suspect, since it should be no different than being a writer," amidst a rant about the state of modern food… read more

Barbara Lynch is closing all of her Boston-area restaurants

Last year we reported on a scandal involved revered Boston chef Barbara Lynch in which former employees recounted tales of alleged abuse and harassment at her restaurants. Lynch's rags-to-riches story was chronicled in a 2017 memoir that recounted her rise from a hard-knocks South Boston childhood to culinary stardom. The James Beard Award-winning chef shuttered a handful of restaurants in the wake… read more

The Great British Bake Off 2024 begins next week!

Everyone's favorite baking competition will premiere its 15th season on Channel 4 at 8pm on Tuesday 24th September in the United Kingdom. While official word has not been released, we hope that new season will then air on Netflix in the US on Friday, September 27th. Fingers crossed. Updated: Netflix has announced that the show will air in the US… read more

Why the UK is katsu crazy

Food trends are often cyclical - one era's craze spawns a multitude of copycats, dies down, and then gets resurrected years or even decades later. This happened with the Cosmopolitan cocktail, and as chef and cookbook author Tim Anderson writes in an article for Vittles, it is currently happening with katsu curry in the UK, which he is calling the "Katsuification"… read more

Saveur’s Q&A with Sara Moulton

Sara Moulton's culinary career is long and storied. After graduating top of her class at the Culinary Institute of America, Sara worked in fine dining restaurants, cooked for Julia Child, and was the food editor of ABC’s Good Morning America and was Gourmet magazine’s executive chef before the magazine shuttered. She's also written several successful cookbooks. Somehow I missed an… read more

The growing world of Substack newsletters

As the world continues its shift to digital publishing, new media crop up to replace the old guard, and that is especially true with newspapers and magazines. Long-form online stories reminiscent of the early days of blogging are rapidly replacing printed media (thankfully with the exception of cookbooks!) via newsletter tools like Substack, Ghost, Medium, Buttondown, and Beehiiv. Of these,… read more

Catching up with Asma Khan

Asma Khan is the creator of Darjeeling Express, a London restaurant that began fifteen years ago as a dinner for 12 guests at home - Indian food, lovingly cooked from family recipes going back generations. The restaurant is run by an all-female staff, and Khan eschews the traditional authoritarian style of kitchen brigades, opting instead for a quieter, more collaborative… read more

Portland’s star chef Naomi Pomeroy dies

Naomi Pomeroy, a shining star of the Portland restaurant scene, died last weekend in a tragic accident. The 49-year-old chef was tubing on the Willamette River near Corvallis, Oregon with her husband (fellow chef Kyle Linden Webster) and another party on Saturday, when the group hit a snag and were pulled under. Her husband and the other person were removed… read more

Ottolenghi answers the eternal question: why so many ingredients?

It is safe to say that our Members love Yotam Ottolenghi. His books hold the top three slots in the EYB Library in popularity: Plenty currently resides on 13,927 Bookshelves, followed closely by Jerusalem and Ottolenghi Simple. Two more of his books are in the top 10. To provide more perspective, the most popular non-Ottolenghi book sits on 7,984 shelves… read more

World’s 50 Best announces 2024 slate

On Wednesday evening, the World's 50 Best announced who was on its list of best restaurants in the world. The ceremony was held in Las Vegas, marking it as the culinary destination it has grown to be. In addition to the list of restaurants, there were additional awards, such as Neil Perry winning the Woodford Reserve Icon Award. You can… read more

What Padma Lakshmi’s been up to since leaving Top Chef

As Top Chef began season 21, long-time host Padma Lakshmi was nowhere to be seen. She had announced her departure from the show last year, noting that she planned to spend more time on her show Taste the Nation and other projects she had in the works. If you follow her on Instagram, you have probably seen a lot of… read more

World Central Kitchen team members killed in Gaza

We've written several times about World Central Kitchen, the humanitarian aid group founded by chef José Andrés in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Since then, the group has been on the front lines of natural disasters, armed conflicts, and other crises. Today we learned the devastating news that seven WCK team members in Gaza were killed in a strike… read more

Is GBBO sizing up possible Prue Leith replacements?

Prue Leith has been the co-host of The Great British Bake Off ever since Mary Berry left following the show's move from BBC to Channel 4. She has been there not only for the regular series, but also for the specialty shows like the holiday themed programs and the Stand Up To Cancer episodes. Last week Leith said she wouldn't… read more

Hairy Bikers star Dave Myers has passed away

Dave Myers, one half of TV cooking duo The Hairy Bikers, has died at the age of 66, two years after revealing he had been diagnosed with cancer. Born and bred in Barrow-in-Furness, Dave Myers joined the BBC as a make-up artist, and while traveling the world with hit TV series he picked up recipes with Si King, who became… read more

Catching up with Carla Hall

Carla Hall burst onto the scene with her run to the finale on season 5 of Bravo's Top Chef. Since then, Hall has kept busy with a variety of projects, on television and off, including a stint on The Chew. Next up for the busy chef? A new show on Max: Chasing Flavor, which the NYT's Kim Severson says is… read more
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