[Televisionary]

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,...

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...

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 ha...

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-select...

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.

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 e...