The Daily Beast: "Meet Flynn McGarry: America's Next Great Chef is 14 Years Old"

McGarry and BierBeisl chef Bernard Meiringer. (Will McGarry)

The chef behind hit Beverly Hills pop-up restaurant Eureka is Flynn McGarry. I sit down for an elaborate 11-course meal and interviews the teenage prodigy.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Meet Flynn McGarry: America's Next Great Chef is 14 Years Old," in which I sit down with 14-year-old culinary prodigy Flynn McGarry, whose $160 a head supper club and pop-up restaurant Eureka has become destination dining in Los Angeles.(Plus, see my Instagrams of my May 1st meal at McGarry's Eureka and read what McGarry has to say about several specific dishes from the menu.)

A recent 11-course tasting menu at Eureka, a monthly pop-up restaurant at Los Angeles’ BierBeisl, included a dish of fresh and dried English peas concealing a hidden parmesan and whey pudding, a live scallop under a cucumber foam, gnocchi made from ash, and an unctuous sous-vide egg yolk encircled by hedgehog mushrooms, pork skin snow, and a sauce made from preserved lemons and radish greens.

On an evening in early May, this was a meal that showed the precision, vision, and creativity of its gifted chef, one that soared on a deliberate rhythm and flow: plates arrived at just the right moment with an explanation of the dish’s ingredients, each showcasing the season to perfection. The chef, Flynn McGarry, moved in the kitchen with grace, charring ramps for a dish of sturgeon and tapioca with a charred onion sauce before spinning around to sauce a plate—on which quivered a single slice of blood-red dehydrated beet—with just the right amount of raspberry-black pepper vinaigrette.

Without seeing him, you would never know that the chef isn’t old enough to drive.

At 14, McGarry is already a commanding presence in the kitchen. His youth seems at odds with the perfection, skill, and beauty of the dazzling array of dishes that are sent out over the course of this evening in a style that McGarry refers to as “modern American progressive.” McGarry is already something of a culinary wunderkind in Los Angeles, charging $160 a head for Eureka, a monthly dinner that originated in his parents’ home in the San Fernando Valley and now resides at a high-end Austrian restaurant in the heart of Beverly Hills. Over the course of the evening, professional chefs wandered in to take a peek at food being prepared by the culinary prodigy, a term that McGarry himself doesn’t wear easily.

“I’ve come to terms with it,” said McGarry. “I’m not going around comparing myself to Mozart, but I do think that there is a little bit of natural talent… I’m sort of gifted in the way that my taste buds are aligned correctly, which is a really weird way to think. Like any other prodigy, I’ve worked ridiculously hard on this.”

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The Daily Beast: "Chopped: Why I’m Obsessed with Food Network’s Reality Competition Show"

Food Network’s Chopped returns for its fifteenth season. I write about why sea cucumbers, speculoos, and lacinato kale--on the surface, ingredients which many of us have never heard of--matter.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Chopped: Why I’m Obsessed with Food Network’s Reality Competition Show," in which I I write about my insatiable obsession with Food Network's Chopped, and how the competition show brings a deeper and richer awareness of food and culinary diversity to the public at large.

When the Food Network, the culinary-themed cable network available in approximately 99 million American homes and 150 countries around the globe, launched Chopped in 2009, no one could have imagined the eventual impact the show would have.

And by no one, I mean me.

I was initially less than enthusiastic about Chopped—a culinary competition show featuring four chefs squaring off by cooking an appetizer, entrée, and dessert from various mystery basket ingredients—during the early part of its run. I complained about the under-lit sets, the under-enthusiastic judges, the under-utilization of knowledgeable foodie host Ted Allen. I compared it unfavorably to Bravo’s Top Chef, from which it had appeared to borrow its overall conceit.

Over time, Chopped course-corrected: the set now no longer looks like it’s perpetually twilight, and the judges—a selection of well-known and well-respected chefs and restaurateurs—are now very much engaged and invested in the action in front of them. As for host Ted Allen … well, I always wish the show’s producers would give him something to eat, or at least offer him a chair.

I came back to Chopped a few years ago to discover the show’s transformation from staid and predictably over-produced competition show into something more intriguing and rewarding: a show that celebrated the competitive nature of chefs and brought a level of awareness—of technique, of ingredients, of culinary passion and poise—to a wider audience than ever before.

Years ago, Food Network’s primetime lineup was overflowing with how-to cooking programs. In the late 1990s, you couldn’t flip on the channel without seeing Emeril Lagasse or Ming Tsai or Bobby Flay preparing a dish, step by step, for the viewers. There was even a live call-in program, Cooking Live Primetime, hosted by Sara Moulton, which often featured sommeliers and wine experts in the mix. It was approachable, accessible, and most definitely focused on viewers who understood food and its preparation.

Over time, the network subtly changed its remit; in more recent years, it is stocked with various culinary competition shows, programming that places the emphasis more on competition (whether it be cupcakes, elaborate cakes, chocolate structures, new program hosts, etc.) than the food, per se. It wasn’t necessarily food television for foodies, but rather escapist fare for people who might derive more enjoyment from watching people cook than cooking themselves. (A spinoff network, the Cooking Channel, was created in 2010 to service the latter group.)

Chopped, however, occupies a unique strata within the world of Food Network. It might, like its similarly themed brethren (the terrifying Sweet Genius, for example), be a reality competition show in the vein of Top Chef, but Chopped manages to be absolutely riveting television that educates, informs, and thrills at the same time.

Four chefs enter the kitchen; one is crowned the Chopped Champion at the end, having gone through three courses and no less than a dozen mystery ingredients, ranging from the mundane (leftover pizza) to the sublime (abalone). The clock is relentless as they churn out dish after dish, being judged on creativity, taste, and presentation. Egos flare, tempers simmer over, and occasionally true culinary genius and ingenuity is glimpsed.

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The Daily Beast: "Art in the Age: Ex-Ad Man Steven Grasse’s Wonderfully Weird Spirits"

It's a little bit off the beaten path for this site, but as much as I'm passionate about television, I'm equally obsessed with food and cocktails, particularly the spirits made by Art in the Age, an organic, artisan spirits company based out of Philadelphia that produces “historically based artisanal crafted spirits, each one completely different.”

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Art in the Age: Ex-Ad Man Steven Grasse’s Wonderfully Weird Spirits," in which I talk to Hendrick’s Gin creator and former ad man Steven Grasse—once called “the Don Draper of outrageousness”—about his eclectic spirits venture, Art in the Age.

The shelves of local liquor stores are piled high with concoctions such as bubble gum vodkas and root beer schnapps, sickly sweet libations that are not only synthetically flavored but also reminiscent of a candy store.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Art in the Age, a Philadelphia-based spirits company that has carved out a name for itself as makers of what founder Steven Grasse—an ex-ad man once deemed “the Don Draper of outrageousness”—calls “historically based artisanal crafted spirits, each one completely different.”

In just a matter of a few years, Art in the Age has dominated that nascent spirits category with its sophisticated and original products, such as ROOT, SNAP, and Rhubarb Tea (formerly known as RHUBY). Each of the spirits has its origins in the Colonial and Federalist-era past, recapturing a piece of American history in a bottle. ROOT is based on “root tea,” a folk recipe from the 1700s and precursor to root beer; SNAP recalls a Pennsylvania Dutch Lebkuchen (ginger snap); Rhubarb Tea is based on an alcoholic rhubarb tea recipe favored by Benjamin Franklin. The company’s latest offering, SAGE, is now on shelves.

In keeping with the company’s ethos, SAGE is a “garden gin” redolent of sage, rosemary, lavender, and fennel, and is inspired by avid horticulturist Thomas Jefferson and Bernard McMahon, Jefferson’s botanical advisor. McMahon, the author of the 1813 book Flora Americae Septentrionalis, was tasked by Jefferson with chronicling the 130 different plants discovered by Lewis and Clark on their fabled exposition. With SAGE, Art in the Age has concocted a spirit that uses the botanicals that link Jefferson, McMahon, and Lewis and Clark. Like all of their products, it transports the drinker to a pre-industrial time in our history, recalling “an earlier, more verdant world, when nature was more abundant and adventures more frequent.”

The 47-year-old Grasse, Art in the Age’s founder, is passionate about reconnecting to pre-industrial times. (The company’s name is derived from Walter Benjamin’s landmark 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”) “It’s a personal interest of mine,” said Grasse, speaking to The Daily Beast. “I’m obsessed with before the world turned to shit, pre-industrial era—which started in 1840—and the stories of America before industrialization happened.”

“When we set out to start Art in the Age, we challenged ourselves,” he said. “I wanted to create the weirdest thing I could think of and put it in the simplest bottle possible and see if I could make that work. But I also wanted to create something that was really interesting and different and mix in my personal interest in history.”

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The Daily Beast: "Sweet Genius: Ron Ben-Israel is the Scariest Man on Television"

Ron Ben-Israel may be a renowned pastry chef in real life, but as the host of Food Network’s cooking show Sweet Genius, he terrifies me.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Creepiest Man on Television," in which I discuss just why Ben-Israel freaks me out and review his Food Network show, Sweet Genius, a bizarre and often head-scratching mishmash of styles, tones, and freaky weirdness.

The scariest man on television is obsessed with cakes.

Ron Ben-Israel, the host of Food Network’s bizarre culinary competition series Sweet Genius, absolutely terrifies me. Watching the show reduces me to cold sweat, imagining that Ben-Israel has forced me into the Saw-like confines of the Sweet Genius set, where I must bake a génoise while he cackles eagerly at my misery before murdering me.

Sweet Genius is a variation on the network’s highly successful Chopped: Four chefs—pastry chefs and confectionary makers in this case—must cook three courses from pre-selected mystery ingredients, and one chef gets eliminated each round, leading to a final showdown between the last two competitors. This is hardly a novel conceit (in fact the entire show seems to be a direct reaction to Bravo’s Top Chef: Just Desserts), but here the courses—or “tests” to borrow the Sweet Genius parlance—are composed of chocolate, candy, and cake rounds, and the judge may cause you to wet your pants in fright, even if you’re not appearing on the show.

Overseeing the action from a thronelike place of power on a raised dais, Ben-Israel seems to be a cross between Fringe’s Observers—chromelike baldpates whose alienlike eyes skim over the action but never quite connect with it—and Austin Powers’s Bond-villain spoof Dr. Evil, given their similar physical appearances, fondness for wearing purple-blue and self-serious natures.

It’s the last element that’s the most troubling. While there’s clearly an overt aura of enforced theatricality to the proceedings, Ben-Israel takes his persona a little too far. There’s the spine-chilling way in which he tastes elements of the contestants’ dishes with an insane amount of fastidiousness, as though he were solving a complex differential equation or dissecting a victim rather than, well, eating candy. Adding to this sense of unease is the way with which Ben-Israel speaks, an exaggerated blend of winking coyness and thunderous voice of evil, announcing the inspiration for the dish (Ballerinas! Live baby chicks! A ventriloquist dummy!) and the way in which he slams his hand down on the large, overtly cake-shaped button that controls the show’s conveyer belt.

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The Daily Beast: "Inside ink.: Top Chef Michael Voltaggio's Next Act"

Michael Voltaggio, the swaggering winner of Top Chef prepares to open two Los Angeles eateries, ink. and ink.sack (opening this week!) in West Hollywood.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "A Top Chef’s Next Act," in which I sit down at the restaurant with the chef to discuss sandwiches, his future, his personal regrets, and how The New York Times insulted him.

ink. is set to open in September in Los Angeles, while lucky Angelenos can get a taste of ink.sack's amazing sandwiches this week.

Top Chef Taste: Inside Michael Voltaggio's Sandwich Shop, ink.sack

Yes, I ate my way through the menu at ink.sack last night.

ink.sack, of course, being the top secret sandwich shop overseen by Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio, which the chef unveiled last night at a press event held at his upscale boite ink., which is slated to open on West Hollywood's Melrose Avenue next month.

(For more on both restaurants, you can read my feature over at The Daily Beast, ""A Top Chef’s Next Act," because of which I had to keep mum about ink.sack for several weeks now.)

After a champagne-fueled question-and-answer session in the dining room of ink., Voltaggio took us two doors over to the newly unveiled ink.sack, which has a soft opening today (Wednesday) and will be fully operational tomorrow. This is not a restaurant, per se, but a small sandwich shop with no seats, no alcoholic beverages, and no tables whatsoever. (It's intended as a takeaway shop, though there are narrow counters for those of you who want to stand and eat rather than rush back to your offices.) It will be open Wednesdays through Sundays, from 11 am to 5 pm... or until they run out of food, whichever comes first.

As for the food, each sandwich was outstanding in their own way. The ethos behind ink.sack is simple: these are familiar sandwich concepts redone with a modern flair, and the relatively small size of reach (roughly four inches) and low price point ($4-6 each) means that you can mix and match with abandon. So what's on offer? Let's take a preview at the menu.

Sandwiches

Cold Fried Chicken: House-made ranch cheese, Gindo's Spice of Life

Spicy Tuna: Miso-Cured Albacore, wild rice, Sriracha Mayo

Banh Mi: Pork cheek, chicharrones, pickled vegetables

The Jose Andres (a.k.a. "The Spanish Godfather"): Serrano ham, chorizo, lomo, manchego

C.L.T.: Chicken liver mousse, curried skin skin, lettuce, tomato

Maple-Pepper Turkey: Camembert, mustarda, arugula

Beef Tongue "Reuben": Appenzeller cheese, kraut, Russian dressing

House-Made Snacks

--Two different kinds of potato chips, including one with salt, pepper, and vinegar and fiery Maryland Crab chips, redolent with Old Bay Spice.

--Vacuum-packed fruit, including one with compressed watermelon, sriracha, and lime, and another with pineapple, jicama, mango, melon, and chile y lemon.

--And ink.sack's fitting take on dessert (which I didn't get to try): ice cream sandwiches. The shop will offer two, including one with peanut butter and jelly, and one with Mexican chocolate chip and Horchatta.

I don't think I can pick a favorite when it comes to the sandwiches (which will change seasonally as well as more quixotically, depending on Voltaggio's wont), as each was incredible in their own way. The cold fried chicken (sous vide chicken is chilled, breaded, and fried and then topped with ranch "cheese"--made from centrifuged buttermilk from which the curds and whey are separated and then flavored--hot sauce, and Gindo's proprietary spice blend) was a knock-out on so many levels, the chicken rendered perfectly smooth by the sous vide process, with a nice balance of heat and coolness. Banh mi had an unexpected jolt of crunchiness from the crackling embedded within.

Elsewhere, The Jose Andres was a Spanish-influenced version of the classic Italian "Godfather" sub, here scented with paprika (from the chorizo) and a winning blend of cured meats and manchego. The C.L.T. and "Reuben" were both clever and thoughtful modern twists on classic American deli sandwiches, elevated to new levels through unexpected ingredients (chicken liver mousse/chicken skin and beef tongue). The maple-pepper turkey is house-brined and perfectly paired with luscious camembert and mustarda; the green pepperiness of arugula sets it off quite nicely.

In fact, my only complaint was with the spicy tuna sandwich: while the flavor profiles were amazing (those strands of nori were genius), the tomato that was contained with the spicy tuna rendered the interior too wet, as a bite led to much of the liquid being dribbled onto the floor (or one's shirt). If you're going to use tomato to bind it together, it needs to be super-drained and removed of all wetness. Otherwise, this sandwich could get really soggy, real fast, especially if you were hoping to get it to go.

But this is a minor quibble from a place that's still tinkering with its menu but has its concept down pat before even opening its doors to the public. The street fruit idea is genius, embodying both the refreshing and reviving qualities of fresh fruit with some nice heat, rendering the vacuum-packed bags as a course that fits snuggly between sandwich and dessert. (It's very nearly a street-level palate-cleanser, to be honest.) The potato chips--both kinds--are made over at the kitchen at ink. (everything is, in fact) and were perfectly crisp and seasoned, with not a hint of greasiness.

ink.sack is the sort of convivial and imaginative sandwich place that we all wish were in our individual neighborhoods. Or at the very least, conveniently located around the corner from our offices. Look for the lines to form almost instantly.

ink. is set to open in September in Los Angeles, while lucky Angelenos can get a taste of ink.sack's amazing sandwiches this week.