Linda Tay Esposito is a self taught chef whose food represents a commitment to authenticity and a tribute to the cuisines of the Pacific Rim. She grew up in Malaysia, lived in China and Hong Kong and has traveled extensively in the region exploring the vast culinary offerings and traditions and brings these exciting flavors, passion and knowledge to the classroom. Her style of teaching makes even the most complex of curries simple to make and a gastro-adventure experience of “Flavor Explosions.”

A freelance culinary educator, Linda teaches at the Whole Foods Market Culinary Center and at Sur La Table Cooking School in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also a lead chef at San Francisco-based Parties That Cook where she teaches Mediterranean cuisines in a team building setting. Her company, Flavor Explosions, offers private culinary coaching and classes.

Fatty Crab
http://fattycrab.com/

Fatty Crab West Village
643 Hudson Streethttp
New York, NY 10014 212-352-3592

Fatty Crab UWS
2170 Broadway
New York, NY 10024
212-496-2722

Zakary Pelaccio is the award-winning executive chef/partner at the critically acclaimed Fatty Crab, a small Southeast Asian eatery focusing on Malaysian Cuisine. Prior to opening Fatty Crab in 2005, Zakary was the executive chef/partner at the critically acclaimed 5 Ninth Restaurant, located in the heart of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Previously, Zakary was the chef at the highly lauded Chickenbone Café, a modern gastropub located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2007, Zakary Pelaccio developed a Malaysian-influenced restaurant called Suka, in London’s ultra-hip Sanderson Hotel that won England’s Food & Travel Magazine “Best Asian Restaurant of 2007” award. Zakary’s most recent endeavors include Cabrito, a small Mexican eatery in Greenwich Village that utilizes local products. Zakary opened a second Fatty Crab on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on March 4, 2009 and is also in the process of opening a Southeast Asian influence barbecue restaurant called Fatty ‘Cue located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Zakary’s approach to food is not only a product of time spent with chef luminaries like Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller, but is also heavily influenced by his travels across Western Europe and his time spent traveling throughout Asia and living in Malaysia. Fatty Crab is based on Zakary’s experiences in Kuala Lumpur and his favorite Malaysian restaurant just outside of Kuala Lumpur that specialized in Chili Crab and Malaysian Rotisserie Chicken Wings.

It is not only his global travels that inform his sense of culinary style; his palate is just as affected by his surroundings. Pelaccio is a passionate member of Slow Food, for which he edited a Slow Food USA eating and drinking guide to New York City, and is an ardent supporter of using fresh seasonal products from small, local farms and regional artisans and merchants. Zakary is also on the advisory board of Heritage Foods USA, a new company focused on resurrecting rare and near extinct breeds of animals indigenous to the United States.

Zakary began his culinary career by training as a manager and purchasing agent with the Myriad Group, NY, owners of Tribeca Grill, Montrachet and Nobu. He then moved to the Food Network, where he wrote scripts and worked as a field producer for the program “Dining Around,” which focused on reviewing restaurants throughout the country.

Soon afterward, Zakary began to follow his passion for food into the kitchen and spent time traveling and working in Asia. He worked as a cook for a year at the renowned Seri Melayu restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and spent time in the kitchen of the Westin Hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Upon his return from the East, he attended the French Culinary Institute, from which he graduated first in his class. During that time, he worked at the critically acclaimed Union Pacific Restaurant. After graduation, he worked as a cook in some of the country’s most renowned restaurants—The French Laundry in Napa Valley, CA and Daniel in New York City. In addition to his culinary studies, Zakary received a BA from the University of Vermont with coursework completed in Florence, Italy, the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University.

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As a child, bland boarding school food in England motivated Eleanor to learn cooking from her mother. Introduced to using a cast iron wok by her mother, she has been an advocate and enthusiast ever since. Now a wok cooking teacher, Eleanor also offers an indispensable “Wok Star Kit”. However, when she started teaching, she realized she needed to adapt wok cooking for busy lifestyles. This led to her mantra: “No-recipe, no-measuring makes weeknight dinners easy to accomplish and encourages a make-as-you-go attitude.”

Be a Wok Star blog: http://eleanorhoh.blogspot.com

Wok Star Kit: http://wokstar.us

Park Avenue
100 E 63rd St
New York, NY 10065
(212) 644-1900

Craig Koketsu fostered his passion for precision, knowledge, and flavor by working with acclaimed chefs from diverse backgrounds at some of America’s top restaurants. As executive chef of Quality Meats, Koketsu draws from his experience to create a rustic New American menu that features innovative interpretations of classic flavors.

Koketsu started at Stars in Palo Alto, California working with renowned chefs Jeremiah Tower and Joyce Goldstein. After moving through all the posts in the kitchen, he received the distinction of being named banquet chef for all private events at Stars, which allowed him to create more intricate and innovative dishes.

As Koketsu learned about the luminaries of the culinary world, he realized that a move to New York City was crucial to work with the chefs he admired. Once in New York, Koketsu landed a position of chef de partie with Gray Kunz at the famed restaurant Lespinasse. Chance intervened when the young chef was afforded a rare opportunity to work with another remarkable talent, Christian Delouvrier, who replaced Kunz after his departure from Lespinasse. Koketsu stayed on Delouvrier’s new team and became poissonnier, which was the post he held when Lespinasse earned a four-star review from the New York Times. A year and a half after the review, Koketsu was honored with the highest position in Delouvrier’s kitchen, chef de cuisine. Koketsu was selected to create the culinary concept and menus of Quality Meats, which he has executed with a great sense for classic dishes and an innovative take on flavors.

Trissa Lopez

Banker by day and frustrated cook the rest of the time, Trissa grew up running around the kitchens of her mother and grandmother, both of whom jointly managed one of the Philippines’ most established Spanish restaurants.  Trissa chronicles her food (mis)adventures through her blog, Trissalicious.

Akira Back

Executive Chef, Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant and Lounge at the Bellagio Las Vegas

A Korean native and former professional snowboarder who was raised in Colorado, Chef Akira Back brings his sense of adventure and boundless creativity into the kitchen at Yellowtail, which opened in summer 2008 at Las Vegas’ Bellagio Resort & Casino. Back’s menu embodies classic Japanese cuisine, which features innovative creativity utilizing fresh ingredients from the world’s top purveyors. As a result, Chef Back was awarded the title of “Rising Star” by Restaurant Hospitality in October 2008. In addition, he had the distinguished honor of hosting a multi-course dinner at the prestigious James Beard House in December 2008 and March 2010.

Back spent his early years as a professional snowboarder, showing off his talents in extreme movies and garnering praise by industry magazines like Snowboarder and Transworld. To supplement his income, Back started cooking in local Aspen restaurants to earn extra cash. He soon realized that the adventure and thrill he experienced on the slopes also existed in the kitchen. After seven years on the professional snowboarding circuit, Back decided to pursue a full-time culinary career.

After graduating from The International Culinary Schools at The Art Institutes in Colorado, Back began his epicurean adventure in earnest in 1993 at Kenichi in Aspen. He was later recruited to expand Kenichi in Austin, Texas, followed by Kenichi in Kona, Hawaii.

Back’s love of travel and culinary exploration took him to Japan and throughout Europe, where he trained under the leading master chefs, including Masaharu Morimoto and Brian Nagao, and learned the value of using rare and exotic ingredients. In 2003, Back returned to Aspen and was hired as the Executive Chef of Nobu Matsuhisa’s namesake restaurant.

In 2008, Back appeared on an episode of the Food Network’s Iron Chef America and battled Iron Chef Bobby Flay. He is spokesperson for third generation Japanese knife company Suisin knives. Furthermore, he was featured on a prime time commercial for The International Culinary Schools at The Art Institutes in 2008 on the Food Network.

Taekyung Chung & Debra Samuels, Co-Authors, The Korean Table: From Barbecue to Bibimbap 100 Easy-To-Prepare Recipes

Taekyung Chung, Korean, and Debra Samuels, American, met 15 years ago in an Indian cooking class in Tokyo when both were living in Japan as ex-pats. They shared many interests and became friends. Debra returned to the States and Tae Kyung continued to live in Japan but over time they lost touch. When Debra returned to Tokyo in 2005 for another year, a mutual friend invited them both to a dinner, not knowing that they had met previously; he just thought these two women have a lot in common and would enjoy each other’s company. A delightful surprise was waiting for both. Their friendship was re-kindled and a professional partnership began. Taekyung came to Boston in July 2007 and spent three weeks shopping and cooking with Debra as they visited local farmers markets, fish mongers, Asian grocers, and supermarkets—discussing how to bring innovative contemporary Korean cuisine into an American kitchen. Their common language is Japanese!

Taekyung Chung has lived in Japan for over 17 years. She has been teaching Korean cooking for 20 years and has her own cooking studio in the heart of Tokyo. She is well-known in Japan for her innovative and healthful approach to Korean cuisine. Ms. Chung has published two cookbooks in Japanese: one on vegetarian cuisine and another one for the public television cooking series called “Today’s Cooking,” on Korean cuisine for health and beauty. She is a contributor to newspapers and magazines and is often the subject of many articles. She also holds a certificate from the Institute of Korean Royal Cuisine. Ms. Chung is a restaurant, menu and recipe consultant for new Korean restaurants and has clients in Tokyo’s famous Ginza area, Tokyo suburbs, as well as in Yokohama and Hiroshima. She has done numerous demonstrations and presentations in schools, for Korean cultural societies and at well-known department stores as well as around the world.

Debra Samuels owned and operated Eats Meets West, a successful catering firm in the 1980s and has taught cooking for over two decades.  In 1992 she developed the popular ‘Kids Are Cooking’ series, a program on food, culture and nutrition that ran for three years at Boston’s Children’s Museum.  In 2003, she helped produce a nutrition education and cooking guide for teens– “The Power of Eating Right”– for Operation Frontline, part of the national organization, Share Our Strength, focused on ending hunger in the United States.

Debra has lived abroad for more than a decade in Japan and Italy, and has studied Italian, Indian, Korean, and Japanese cuisine. She has done countless cooking demonstrations and classes all over the Boston area as well as for the United States Embassy in Tokyo and its American Cultural Centers in Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka. In 2007, Debra did a program for The Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. entitled: “Taking the Lid of of Japanese Cuisine – Culture in a Box.”  This program was about Japanese obento– the perfect portable meal.

In addition to offering a range of cooking classes, Debra is a food writer and food stylist for The Boston Globe. Her articles appear in the Food and Travel Sections and reflect her love of food, travel, and teaching. She also has published in Japanese magazines and journals, and has done food styling for the local print and broadcast media. For more information, go to www.cookingatdebras.com.