Food Wine

10 tonight BRAVO The chefs must come up with tasty food for astronauts on space missions. With Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin (right) and guest judges Anthony Bourdain and Food & Wine magazine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin.

Few people outside of the food business get to watch the making of a restaurant - a process that mixes excitement and frustration. But local restaurateurs Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook, owners of Zahav, a new restaurant-to-be, have agreed to allow The Inquirer to follow the progress of their latest venture. Readers of the new blog ( http://go.philly.com/zahav ) can follow Zahav through design and construction, procurement of the liquor license, permitting issues with City Hall, menu selection, and staff hiring - all the way to opening night.

A little past noon a week ago yesterday, Dana Cowin, the birdlike editor of Food & Wine magazine, balanced herself uncertainly atop a chair at Osteria, the northern Italian darling on North Broad. She had some words to eat, she announced: Philadelphia was really not the "boring" food town she'd once thought and, in fact, had once proclaimed at a food conference. She'd actually come down and visited from New York since then. Actually, had a few cocktails, checked out Capogiro's artisan gelato (pictured here)

Donde esta Pernot? Where oh where did Vega Grill's ex-fabuloso chef go? After reaping raves and inclusion in Food & Wine magazine's list of best new chefs in America, Guillermo Pernot is hard at work preparing his new restaurant, Passion, at 211 S. 15th St., slated for a sometime-in-October opening. Meanwhile, you can dine on his Latin-inspired cuisine once again on Thursday, Oct.1, at the Eagles Fly for Leukemia fund-raiser at Edge, 4100 Main St. in Manyunk. Called Soul y Passion, "a celebration of the Latin-American passion for life," the event - at $50 a head - will marry food, wine and dance.

Susanna Foo has signed an agreement of sale on her Center City building, and her signature restaurant is expected to end a 22-year run as a Walnut Street anchor by early August. The restaurant, booked with reservations for Mother's Day and college graduations, is still open and is firing on all burners. The chef, who spoke about her decision reluctantly, has not announced a closing date. "This is very hard for me," said Foo, 65. A Chinese immigrant who became one of the city's first celebrity chefs, Foo gained international recognition as a trailblazer of infusing Chinese cookery with French technique.

There are two foods that are fun to make at home and as satisfying as what you can buy in most stores or restaurants. They are pizza and ice cream. We'll deal with pizza when the weather cools off a bit. When I first started making frozen desserts, there wasn't nearly as much fancy machinery as there is today. In my first restaurant, we made my zabaglione ice cream and blueberry sorbet with nothing more than a "hotel" pan (the long metal pan you see in chafing dishes), a wire whip and a spatula.

SHE WAS SHY and never wanted to be famous. All she really wanted was to work behind the scenes in a kitchen where she could make food, then watch from afar as people enjoyed her creations. Instead, fate stepped in and snatched petite, sweet Giada De Laurentiis for stardom. In the last five years, the former private chef and caterer has become an American culinary darling, scoring three popular shows on Food Network, writing four cookbooks and earning a wide following for her unassuming, friendly and oftentimes sultry approach to making fresh Italian food.

Jean-Marie Lacroix was 19 when he was drafted into the military and assigned to Algeria as a paratrooper during the North African country's war of independence from France. He reluctantly completed 15 ambush missions before someone finally took notice of his real talents. One day he was ordered to report to the captain. As he stood at attention before his commander, he recalled being interrogated about his past. Was it true that he was trained as a chef? "Yes," he responded.

Justin Sanders likes to experiment in the kitchen. He changes things around and does something different each time he cooks. He seldom follows recipes, though he does read them to get the "feel" of fine-food preparation. It's one mark of a natural-born cook and an adventurous palate. And one reason that 13-year-old Justin has hopes of becoming a professional chef one day. "That's good, because we never follow precise recipes," said chef Tony Clark, as he shepherded the aspiring chef from Oaklyn through a one-on-one cooking lesson last week at Tony Clark's, his restaurant at Broad and Sansom Streets.

IF THE GENIUS doesn't spend his Sundays "the French way," filled with smiles and good food and too much wine, there's a chance he wouldn't be a genius at all. "My dad used to have a sign over his door that said only a genius can think and drink," Jacob Soll, holding a glass of 2004 Prieuré Lichine Margaux Bordeaux, says at his table in Bibou, a French restaurant on 8th Street in South Philly. His father is a molecular biologist originally from South Philly. Soll, 42, a history professor at Rutgers-Camden, recently won a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grant.

Jason Varney was working hard to capture the perfect, not-so-perfect photo from Guapos Tacos food truck one day last week. His assistant, Caroline Kavit, sat on a low wall in JFK Plaza, delicately holding a taco. "A little lower," Varney directed. "No, it's not right. " He stepped back. "How would I eat a taco?" Kavit asked. "Ah, more like this," she turned it vertically, and paused for a bite that she'd never take. At least not until Varney got what he wanted. Salsa dripped down her fingers, onto the crumpled parchment paper around the taco.

10 tonight BRAVO The chefs must come up with tasty food for astronauts on space missions. With Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin (right) and guest judges Anthony Bourdain and Food & Wine magazine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin.

Susanna Foo has signed an agreement of sale on her Center City building, and her signature restaurant is expected to end a 22-year run as a Walnut Street anchor by early August. The restaurant, booked with reservations for Mother's Day and college graduations, is still open and is firing on all burners. The chef, who spoke about her decision reluctantly, has not announced a closing date. "This is very hard for me," said Foo, 65. A Chinese immigrant who became one of the city's first celebrity chefs, Foo gained international recognition as a trailblazer of infusing Chinese cookery with French technique.

SHE WAS SHY and never wanted to be famous. All she really wanted was to work behind the scenes in a kitchen where she could make food, then watch from afar as people enjoyed her creations. Instead, fate stepped in and snatched petite, sweet Giada De Laurentiis for stardom. In the last five years, the former private chef and caterer has become an American culinary darling, scoring three popular shows on Food Network, writing four cookbooks and earning a wide following for her unassuming, friendly and oftentimes sultry approach to making fresh Italian food.

Few people outside of the food business get to watch the making of a restaurant - a process that mixes excitement and frustration. But local restaurateurs Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook, owners of Zahav, a new restaurant-to-be, have agreed to allow The Inquirer to follow the progress of their latest venture. Readers of the new blog ( http://go.philly.com/zahav ) can follow Zahav through design and construction, procurement of the liquor license, permitting issues with City Hall, menu selection, and staff hiring - all the way to opening night.

A little past noon a week ago yesterday, Dana Cowin, the birdlike editor of Food & Wine magazine, balanced herself uncertainly atop a chair at Osteria, the northern Italian darling on North Broad. She had some words to eat, she announced: Philadelphia was really not the "boring" food town she'd once thought and, in fact, had once proclaimed at a food conference. She'd actually come down and visited from New York since then. Actually, had a few cocktails, checked out Capogiro's artisan gelato (pictured here)

So it only took the Moore brothers, Greg and David, a mere 15 years to travel from a Camden hooch emporium to a handsome 1840s townhouse bordering Gramercy Park, 100 miles yet several worlds away. The Camden wine adventure, housed in the musty cellar of a half-pint specialty shop, Triangle Liquor, was run by David for five years beginning in 1991. Greg still served as general manager and sommelier at Le Bec-Fin, where David had worked as sommelier at lunch. In 1996, Moore Brothers Wine Co. opened in Pennsauken.

FOR SOME, a life-defining moment might come at a cafe on Paris' Left Bank, or along the surf on Maui's Ho'okipa Beach, or while standing at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. For Alan Richman, though, that moment was when his mother suggested he try pastrami, instead of the corned beef, at the Chuckwagon in Elkins Park. "I so liked the corned beef that I hadn't come up with a compelling reason to gamble on anything else," Richman writes in his just-released food memoir, "Fork It Over" (Harper Collins, $24.95)

Bruschetta, mushroom strudels and sauteed artichoke bottoms heaped with finely diced mushrooms and eggplant awaited the more than 40 guests who gathered at Frank and Nina Pagliaro's home in Kennett Square on a recent blue-sky autumn Sunday. A magnum of Mumm's was on ice, for the toast. Toward the end of the party, a pink and white cake would be shared to cap off the joyous occasion. Meanwhile, the guest of honor, 8-month-old Olivia Julia Pagliaro, slept soundly in the living room, snug in her baby carrier.