New York City Wine and Food Festival

A healthy mindset while cooking on the line isn't easy; a chef's focus is on creating delicious dishes all day, yet they often don't have time to eat a balanced meal themselves. In today's fast-paced environment, how can culinary talent stay healthy — and set a good example for diners along the way?

This question was the subject of a panel at the New York City Wine & Food Festival, where chefs Art Smith and Sue Torres, and Marc Murphy, culinary personality Katie Lee, and author Allison Adato talked about staying healthy in the food industry. While the easiest food to grab on the go — french fries, anyone? — isn't often the best choice, chefs recognize the importance of eating for health. Just ask Art Smith, who lost 95 pounds after a diabetes diagnosis. "There was no way I could run restaurants," he said of his prior health condition.

Now chefs like Smith are much more mindful about the impact their cooking has on clientele. "I'd rather have customers for a long time and not contribute to their demise," Smith says. "We are what we eat, and chefs are facilitators of food." Keep reading for a few healthy eating tips from chefs.

Wine connoisseur Mark Oldman teamed up with Roy Choi for the Pickles and Marinades: The Korean Way seminar at the New York City Wine & Food Festival to discuss pairing wine with even the most difficult flavors like acidic pickles and spicy Asian food. If you're looking for some tips to pair just about any dish with wine, look no further than Mark's basic suggestions. See his wine pairing rules here.

After tremendous success with the Food Network, several restaurants, a baby food line, and a handful of cookbooks, Tyler Florence is focusing his attention on wine. At a party in New York celebrating the national distribution of his labels, I had an opportunity to talk to Tyler personally about his venture into the winemaking world.

Despite his interest in wine, Tyler had no prior experience with blending, so he partnered with the Mondavi family, who helped create his signature wines. The chef also used his perceptive palate to guide him: "After years of experience [working with food], I know what tastes good," he declared. This led to the creation of two wine lines: Tyler Florence Wines, a casual, everyday line, as well as TF, a limited-production line.

Tyler worked with a "less is more" philosophy when designing the wine labels, because he claims winemakers put too much on the label, and then "the essence of the wine becomes lost." For the limited-production line, everything is abbreviated; Tyler kept it bare bones to evoke a sense of nonfussy sophistication. A 1930s library card inspired his Tyler Florence wines, as a reminder that these were handcrafted, and features the chef's own handwritten wine notes. Learn more about the wines.

At last weekend's New York City Wine & Food Festival, The New York Times hosted a TimesTalk with Nathan Myhrvold, author of the groundbreaking Modernist Cuisine and a new book, Modernist Cuisine at Home ($130).

In Myhrvold's original Modernist Cuisine, his high-tech methods involve centrifuges, sous-vide baths, and other seemingly space-age kitchen equipment, but this weekend, the kitchen scientist spent a great deal of time convincing the audience that his new cookbook is indeed intended for at-home cooking, using easily-attainable kitchen tools.

His concept? Using everyday appliances in newfangled ideas, like hyper-decanting wine with an immersion blender. Whether you love the modernist concepts or are a complete skeptic, Myhrvold mentioned 10 modernist techniques that seem counterintuitive but are tried and tested to achieve perfection in the kitchen. "The laws of physics and chemistry are involved in cooking, and so shouldn't we know what they are?" he reminds us.

See 10 of Myhrvold's at-home modernist techniques.

Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi

You'd be hard-pressed to find pair of busier chefs than Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone: in the past few years, they've opened two of New York's most sought-after restaurants, Torrisi Italian Specialties and Parm, and racked up countless nods, including the Food & Wine best new chefs award this Summer. At their flagship restaurant, Torrisi, they became known for innovative twists on American classics, from potato gnocchi with pastrami ragù (inspired by deli meat) to Champagne-foam-topped oysters Rocafella (inspired by Jay-Z).

Mario Carbone, Ray Isle, and Rich Torrisi at the NYC Wine & Food Festival

As the hosts of a New York City Wine & Food Festival seminar, Torrisi Family Dinner, the two showcased reinvented dishes like "fresh" polenta (polenta made with sweet, peak-season pure-corn cornmeal, milk, butter, local cheese, and fresh thyme) and French country-style pâté made with Italian beef sausage and burnt onions in lieu of pork. Over wine pairings from Ray Isle of Food & Wine, the culinary tour de force had an opportunity to talk about the inspiration behind their restaurants, what keeps them going, and what's next.