Food & Wine Serves The Taste of Beverly Hills

The four-day, multi-tent event conveniently spread about the Beverly Hilton parking lot, hosted a bevy of famed culinary institutions, along with a variety of fresh faces and places.  Food & Wine magazine, and presenting sponsor LG, provided a tableau of diverse samplings from some of the finest culinary talents in Beverly Hills and the surrounding areas.  Among the notable personalities hosting events were Larry King, Wolfgang Puck, Ted Allen, and Kerry Simon.

Among the exhibitors providing up close and personal service of tasty menu samplings were names both in the heart of and a stone's throw from Beverly Hills.  The Bazaar, Bouchon and  Spago were visible among niche favorites like Jitlada, Wurtskhuche and Father's Office.  Among Beverly Hills' rising stars were bright up and comers like Victor Cassanova and his modern Italian fare from Culina at The Four Seasons, along with new ventures from long-familiar talents such as Kimmy Tang's increasingly popular 9021Pho.

While celebrity chefs like Ludo Lefebvre and Tim Love spun exciting demos and provided some intimate face time with the attending public, equally enjoyable were the breakout sessions hosted in the Hilton hotel.  We had the distinct pleasure of seeing featured sommeliers battle it out in a boys vs. girls blind tasting panel.  What started as a rare treat for aficionados to sample a slate of wines selected by event curator, Bonnie Graves, became a spirited competition between the sexes.  Panelists included local favorites David Rosoff (Osteria Mozza), Dana Farmer (CUT), Christopher Lavin (XIV), Caroline Styne (AOC), Jonathan Mitchell (The Palm), Rebecca Chapa (CIA), Mark Mendoza (Comme Ça) and Diane DeLuca (The Estates Group).

Ultimately, the success of The Taste of Beverly Hills lay in the unified celebration of fine dining and quality casual cooking in Los Angeles.  Following LGs "Taste of Something Better" cook-off, in which three amateur finalists and their recipes faced a panel of judges, Chef Tim Love shared with LASates his thoughts on the changing Los Angeles culinary scene.

"The food is really coming around again," admitted the Texan chef proprietor and season two "Iron Chef America" winner.  "There are some surging, fun things happening."  The charismatic chef lauded his favorites as evidence of this. "There are places like Animal or Church & State.  They're really not doing a new thing, what they're doing is they're going back to the roots and doing it well."

This direction of dining in L.A. was echoed by the host of Food Network's "Chopped," Ted Allen.  "You have fantastic chefs working here.  Nancy Silverton, Scott Conant has arrived, and obviously Wolfgang Puck played an integral role in the growth and appreciation of fine dining."

The "Iron Chef America" and "Top Chef" judge provided an elegant summary to what we've known about Los Angeles all along. "There have been great restaurants in Los Angeles for a long time.  The growth and improvement in American cooking is certainly true here."