"It's impossible to glean by looking and tasting whether a dish was created by a man or a woman." Photographs by Belathée Photography On Monday night I was one of two sacrificial guys (Alinea's Grant Achatz was the other) on a panel discussion titled Gender Confusion: Unraveling the Myths of Gender in the Restaurant Kitchen. We delved into the following fascinating, potentially freighted, and cosmic question: Do women working in restaurant kitchens have discernibly different cooking styles than their male counterparts? And, can supposedly sensitive palates tell the difference? Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin and thoughtful writer–food philosopher Gwen Hyman, co-author of Urban Italian (written with her chef husband Andrew Carmellini), were the women Achatz and I got to... More

For the first time in his life, chef Andrew Carmellini found himself cooking at home every night in his three-by-nine-foot kitchen. Instead of an army of sous chefs and dishwashers, it was just him and his food-writer wife, Gwen Hyman. Carmellini has worked at establishments like Lespinasse, Cafe Boulud, and, most recent, A Voce. Faced with doing his own prep work and grocery shopping and equipped with the standard New York–sized kitchen, Carmellini found himself cooking Italian with an urban twist. And so, Urban Italian: Simple Recipes and True Stories From a Life in Food was born. This book is basically the story of my life. Well, minus the part where I'm a respected professional chef. But I, too, am... More