Chef Eric Ripert’s PBS series Avec Eric won the 2011 Daytime Entertainment Emmy Award over the weekend in the “Outstanding Culinary Program” category. The show beat out Cook’s Country, America’s Test Kitchen, Lidia’s Italy, Paula’s Best Dishes, and Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. Incidentally, Avec Eric also won a Beard Award this year for “Television Program, On Location.”

 Olivier Desaintmartin of Caribou Cafe and Zinc, recently inducted into the Maitres Cuisiniers de France, gets an hour on the tee-vee, Tuesday, June 21 (10 p.m.) on the Food Network series Chopped.
In typical reality-show vagueness, the description goes like this: “In the appetizer round, one chef rushes with less than two minutes left on the clock to plate all of the ingredients. The competitors give their entree dishes a kick with tequila, but a surprising ingredient inks away the competition. Then, one finalist second-guesses what to do with simple ingredients …

by Sophie Gayot
I have had the pleasure of meeting French chef Bruno Lopez many times throughout his career.
I’ve tasted his dishes when he was working at different The Ritz-Carlton hotels, at the Regent Beverly Wilshire (now a Four Seasons), and the Hotel Bel-Air.
I was most impressed with his peach gazpacho with truffle oil, which he made when he was at the restaurant of the Raffles L’Ermitage hotel (now part of the Viceroy Hotel Group). I was sorry when he stopped serving the public when he became a private chef at the …