I'm exhausted. The night of the Beard Awards I end up hanging out at various after-parties until three in the morning. A couple of things I wanted to mention: The Beard Awards were much more emotionally resonant this year because we dedicated them to New Orleans. The live music was great (for the first time), the recorded music they used to accompany the winners' stroll to the podium was all amazing old New Orleans r and b (think Louis Jordan's Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens), and the food (all from New Orleans chefs) at the reception was real, honest and soulful. I had way too much of Willie Mae Seaton's transcendent fried chicken, and I would have had seconds... More

5:57 PM: Mario Batali is not nervous. 6:01 PM: Jean-Georges Vongerichten looking dapper as usual. 6:05 PM: Cokie Roberts is an extraordinarily gracious and charming host.... More

Willie Mae Seaton makes the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life. And I've eaten thousands of pieces of fried chicken across America in search of the best. Willie Mae Seaton's chicken has a crisp and crunchy exterior, is just salty enough, and has that cosmic "oneness" between skin and crust. And if you want to taste it, listen up. Now pushing ninety, Ms. Seaton was wiped out by Katrina. Her restaurant, Willie Mae's Scotch House, was until a few years ago a true neighborhood treasure savored by her fellow Treme residents and some foodies in the know from New Orleans and beyond. Now the Southern Foodways Alliance, along with the Viking Range Company, is trying to raise... More