Bryan Voltaggio

• Watch Bethenny Frankel eat her way through New York City. — Grub Street NY
• The Cooking Channel will debut a new show about food trucks, Eat Street. — Fork in the Road
• Napa Valley is getting its very own food festival. — Eater
• What you should know about the farm bill. — Serious Eats
• In search of Rome's holy trinity. — The Atlantic
• Creamy tomato tuna pasta is a delicious, fast, and easy dinner. — Food Wishes
• Beef tongue: so hot right now. — Huffington Post Food
• What cures Bryan Voltaggio's ADD. — The Feast

• The stories behind Bryan Voltaggio's five tattoos. — Eatocracy
• Milk Bar's pastry chef Christina Tosi will sell cookies at Fashion's Night Out. — Feast
• Josh Ozersky on burger purists. — The Daily Beast
• The time to get tickets to the SF vs. NY chef showdown known as Le Fooding is now. — Grub Street SF
• 15 chefs reveal their favorite off the beaten track restaurants. — Huffington Post Food
• Avoiding dinner-party wine gaffes. — Chow
• Foods to consume while breastfeeding. — The Epi-Log
• How to trim and portion tenderloin steaks. — Serious Eats
• Master chefs will cook and compete at the US Open. — Eater

For me, one of the highlights of the Food & Wine Classic was a special lunch created by Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio and his brother Bryan. The luncheon was hosted by Williams-Sonoma in the sleek Aspen eatery N9NE Steakhouse. While it was sunny and hot outside, the cool interior of the underground restaurant was the perfect backdrop to the Voltaggio brothers' modern menu. Using products from a new line that's to be released by Williams-Sonoma this Fall, the brothers demonstrated molecular gastronomy techniques that involved sous vide machines, smoking guns, and liquid nitrogen.

Before the interested eyes of a group of select journalists, Michael turned frozen cubes of cream cheese into a melt-in-your-mouth snow and Bryan cut slices of perfectly cooked harissa lamb, fresh out of vacuum-packed plastic baggies.

To take a closer look at the amazing three-course meal, check out all of my photos after the break.

This morning, the James Beard Foundation announced the finalists to its annual awards, the culinary world's most prestigious honors. To generate buzz, the foundation live-tweeted the nominations from New Orleans. After releasing a long list of semi-finalists last month, the selection has been narrowed down to three to five finalists per category.

The list honors a variety of people in the industry, from upcoming chefs like Timothy Hollingsworth (Rising Star Chef) and Bryan Voltaggio (Best Chef Mid Atlantic) to culinary bigwigs such as Tom Colicchio (Outstanding Chef) and Rick Bayless (TV Food Personality).

Even Food Network stars like the Barefoot Contessa (Television Show, In Studio or Fixed Location) and Alton Brown (TV Food Personality) have been recognized. The awards not only highlight extraordinary chefs and restaurants, but cookbooks, websites, and journalism. The category that I was most excited about is Best New Restaurant — three of them are in San Francisco! The winners will be chosen and announced on May 3. To take a look at the full list of nominations, read more

Just before the winner of Top Chef Las Vegas was crowned, Bryan and Michael Voltaggio teamed up to launch a new website, VoltaggioBrothers.com. By Christmas, they'd announced plans for a new video series with media company EQAL. Wrote Bryan: "Being forced to cook something in 20 minutes with bizarre ingredients is fun, but not what we normally do in our restaurants. These videos will give you a better sense about our culinary point of view and our passion for cooking."

Their first webisode, titled "Deconstructing the Voltaggio Brothers," debuted yesterday. While we didn't see any demos, we did learn, in between snippets of the brothers making brioches and pop rock lollipops, that Michael excels at poetry, and Bryan would've been a landscaper in another life. Take a look when you read more