Naughty Girl and a Night On the Town

Owning her own place and shaping it with the flavors, feels and smells truly representative of her culinary vision was what appealed most to the Louisiana-born chef. And despite a wildly successful 12-year run at her former restaurant, the temptation was much too great to ignore.  Continue Reading

Cleveland Chefs Get Creative To Showcase Beef Diversity

It’s not to say that Cleveland chefs David Kocab and Matt Mytro don’t appreciate a good steak. Both chefs — with prominent Italian-centric restaurants just miles apart on the championship city’s east side — love a sizzling steak. But they also believe chefs can be very creative when it comes to beef. So they joined forces to create a special dinner showcasing these ideas.  Continue Reading

Trading Places In Kentucky: Chef and Rancher

Josh agrees. The Louisville chef spends six days a week at the helm of his fine-dining restaurant. One of his daily duties is to field questions about the safety of his beef and where it was raised. “From a chef and owner standpoint, having more knowledge for my guests — to have these experiences and stories — is priceless,” he says.  Continue Reading

Saltgrass Steak House Serves Big, Authentic Texas Flavor

It’s been said that everything is bigger in Texas. Truth be told, most things in Texas are the same size as anywhere else. You see, it’s not size that makes Texas different — it’s just that Texas is more, well, Texan. And if you need an example of that, just walk into any of the nearly 60 Saltgrass Steakhouse locations across Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, Nevada, Missouri, Oklahoma and Florida.  Continue Reading

Rollin’ on The River (and the lake, and more!)

Since opening their first concept nearly two decades ago, restaurateurs Mark and Larkin Hammond and business partner Bob Munnich have built a reputation by meeting their customers where they are … and then blowing them away. Approachability, it should be stated, is the hallmark across the trio’s ever-growing portfolio of restaurants, which started with their two-level, fine-dining-upstairs and casual-dining-downstairs …   Continue Reading

Where Chefs Come To Play With Their Food

The Certified Angus Beef ® Education & Culinary Center in Wooster, Ohio is a wealth of talent and intriguing ideas. A chef, entire culinary team or other foodservice industry group arrives on an almost daily basis to experience what is essentially a working ‘think tank’ for beef. Chefs and restaurateurs come to experiment with flavor, create new menu …   Continue Reading

Two Chefs and A Rancher, Trading Places

Twenty-three miles. That's the difference between this rancher and these chefs. Twenty-three miles separates pasture and professional kitchen, yet it’s rare for these separate ends of the same beef spectrum to meet in the middle. They shoulder their own responsibilities with precision and pride, confident the other guys — and everyone between — will uphold his end of the table.  Continue Reading

Let’s Chat with Chef Scott Neuman

Are chefs considered superheroes? Maybe not, but they do have the power to transport guests on flavorful adventures anywhere in the world. With the perfect combination of herbs, spices and ingredients, one bite can carry diners to new cultures. Chefs not only feed stomachs, but souls as well. One of these superhero chefs is Scott Neuman, executive …   Continue Reading

5 Tips for Ordering A Perfect Steak

Restaurants are as unique as the chefs in their kitchens. Our biggest challenge, dear steak lover, is to find one that suits our personal dining habits, expectations and yeah — most importantly — our taste buds! When you have a hankering for the perfect steak, remember these tips when you order:  Continue Reading

Aubrey’s Is Artfully Delicious

Follow the mountainous stretch of Route I-75 south through southern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee’s Daniel Boone National Forest and you can’t miss the billboard on the hill: Aubrey’s. Real Comfort. Real Food. Real Good.  Continue Reading

You’re gonna like Jersey Mike’s

This post was written by freelance writer Laura Conaway. Calling Jersey Mike’s a sub shop seems like an understatement. It’s a chain of restaurants that maintains a local vibe where quite often, everyone really does know your name. The folks at Jersey Mike’s put premium quality and freshness at the forefront of their business model. …   Continue Reading

Peaceable assembly and tasty eats

If father-daughter tandem Mike and Kyle Barnes had their druthers, they would simply get paid to argue … err, hold civil discussions. Unfortunately, the job market for such a profession isn’t exactly flourishing. But for years, the father-daughter pair met daily for “debates” at a small breakfast place in their native Wooster, Ohio, and what started …   Continue Reading

Tasty Travels: boast-worthy bites

I’m always on a quest for beautiful food and I found it at the grand opening celebration of Hobart’s Steakhouse in Ontario, Canada. Guests at the restaurant’s new, second location enjoyed a grand opening affair of appetizers and main dishes that had mouths watering. And speaking of grand fare, check out these lip smacking dishes! …   Continue Reading

Diner style with a modern twist

More than seven months since Hurricane Sandy unleashed her fury across the eastern seaboard, a sense of normalcy has slowly returned to metro New York City. The busy streets have resumed their bumper-to-bumper waltz, sidewalks are bustling and cash registers are ringing. This is where Darryl Harmon calls home. In late 2012, Harmon left his …   Continue Reading

Dinner for your dearest

After years of research, I have determined the ideal Valentine's Day offering is not a box of chocolates, nor a perfectly composed poem — or even a new power tool. My beloved would be over the moon if, instead of platitudes, I served him a sizzling hunk o' boeuf.  Continue Reading

Now that’s trendy

We called it “Restaurant Week in Wooster” though it was an unofficial reference with little meaning beyond our kitchen door. We invited a group of folks to visit us in Ohio — a cross-section of individual restaurateurs, corporate chefs and academia. We wanted to pick their brains and teach ’em a thing or two about …   Continue Reading

Two Rivers in Baltimore

Chef Mark Morgan has been around the culinary world long enough to recognize a good piece of meat when he cuts into it. But then he received a phone call from a farmer — nearly 1,000 miles away — who happened to be standing in the middle of his field. That’s when the culinary head and …   Continue Reading

The best of trends

Bacon. Molecular gastronomy. Micro greens. Cupcakes. Food trucks. Pickles. Gourmet coffee. Truffle oil. Love ’em, hate ’em, or used-to-like-’em-but-now-I’m-sick-of-’em, food trends are a fact of life in a culture that’s become interested in ingredients and concerned with all things culinary. Popular ingredients will come and go, but there are also other factors at play in …   Continue Reading

Big award in the Little Apple

Just imagine, if you will, how many restaurants across the nation serve beef. It’s got to be a pretty enormous list, ranging between every fast-food outpost with a 99-cent burger on the menu, to the finest white tablecloth venues in the swankiest resorts — and everything in between. Now, imagine what it must feel like …   Continue Reading

Flat iron fabulous

I ordered a steak salad at a local restaurant. Luscious bites of flat iron steak sliced thin and grilled to medium doneness over a bed of Romaine lettuce, with a sprinkling of sauteed mushrooms and blue cheese. Yummy! Have you heard of the flat iron steak? It’s the poor man’s savvy shopper’s beef tenderloin. Flat iron — also called …   Continue Reading