Don't Forget Wolfgang

It's like some kind of food time warp ... Friday was the beginning of the blur when I met chefs at Weyanoke Elementary School as part of National School Breakfast Week where they served a special breakfast for students, their parents, and staff members. They are members of the American Culinary Federation and the Nation’s Capital Chef’s Association. Chefs Chris Britton, David Ivey-Soto and Don Shaw and the NCCA partnered with the Fairfax County Public Schools Food and Nutrition Services and its director Penny McConnell, who was also on hand.

Later I interviewed the creator of the new shot glass mini-dessert for P.F. Chang's ... more on that in my print magazine ... but it means they have now have eight desserts with 300 or so calories made from a "kit" of ingredients.

Then it was on to The Source to meet with a small media group for lunch with Wolfgang Puck. I worked at a hotel El Encanto in Santa Barbara in 1980 where Wolfgang brought his kitchen and service staff from his Melrose Avenue LA Ma Maison (yes, there was a Wolfgang before Spago). We rekindled a memory or two before lunch (I have a DVD made from the old VHS tape of the event and my interaction with him in the kitchen on that evening) -- and then sat down to enjoy another Scott Drewno orchestrated meal. The resident Puck-ite is doing his interpretive culinary work with pizzaz -- and Wolfgang is at ease with sharing the local limelight as he travels about the world. He told me he travels 200 days out the year -- with a trip that night to Toronto to sell some pots and pans on Home Shopping Network and then he's got on the schedule trips to NYC, Las Vegas and Tokyo ... I lost track as he seemed to recite them in precise chronological order.

Saturday it was a trip to NYC for my wife's gallery opening at Tribes Gallery in the Lower East Side ... and then we came back Sunday for Michel's birthday celebration (see below). Tonight it's tequila/food at Oyamel and tomorrow it's back to NYC for the end of the Restaurant Show. So that's my excuse for this haphazard collection of posts -- not quite in order. Welcome to the CHAOS. At least I haven't been distracted/blinded by fancy hookers like the Governor of New York.

I can't complain.