Chefs Collaborative

The second annual Chefs Collaborative National Summit, Redefining our Culinary Traditions, will bring together chefs and members of the food community from around the country to share expertise and ideas, while inspiring action towards a more sustainable food system!  We expect 300 chefs, culinary professionals, and members of the food media to join us at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, October 3-5, 2010, for this educational and community-building conference focused on the theme of integrating sustainable principles into regional culinary and agricultural heritage.

$250 for non-members
$200 for members
**A limited number of scholarships for culinary students are available.  Please call our office for details at 617-236-5200.

**Please check back soon for more detailed information on workshops and general sessions!

Featured speakers include:
Award winning chefs…

Chef Sam Hayward
Sam Hayward is a chef and partner at the award winning Fore Street restaurant in Portland, ME.  Hayward, who won the James Beard award as the Northeast’s best chef in 2004, describes his cooking style as “…unembellishment.” Hayward says he’s often skeptical about new cooking innovations. “But I’m never skeptical about a beautiful artisanal cheese or a perfect head of Maine lettuce.” He works hard to support Maine producers as exclusively as he can.

Chef Ana Sortun
Chef Ana Sortun opened the acclaimed Oleana restaurant in 2001.  A long-time champion of local, sustainable foods, Ana was one of the founders of the original Boston chapter of Chefs Collaborative.  Ana won the coveted James Beard Best Chef Award in 2005 and authored the best-selling cookbook “SPICE: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean” in 2006.  Ana was recently a contestant on Bravo TV’s Top Chef Masters… (more)

Chef Jasper White
James Beard Award winning chef and restaurateur Jasper White is regarded as a pioneer in building Boston as a culinary destination.  Jasper’s extensive research into the historical and cultural aspects of New England foodways, as well as his more than 30 years of cooking experience, have made him a trusted authority on New England foods, especially seafood… (more)

Plus thought provoking conversations with acclaimed food writers…

Jane Black
Jane Black is a food writer at The Washington Post where she covers food politics, trends and sustainability issues. Her reporting has taken me from Immokalee, Florida, where she wrote about tomato pickers’ struggle for better working conditions to Monterey Bay, where she attended a “secret meeting” of the Sardinistas, a group of environmentalists who advocate culinary joys of small, sustainable fish. Jane started off my career as a business and political reporter. In 2003, she switched directions and attended culinary school in London. Before moving to Washington, she served as food editor at Boston Magazine. Jane’s writing has received many awards including two James Beards for the Washington Post Food section. Her work has also been featured in the collections of Best Food Writing in 2008 and 2009.

Corby Kummer
Corby Kummer’s work in The Atlantic has established him as one of the most widely read, authoritative, and creative food writers in the United States. The San Francisco Examiner pronounced him “a dean among food writers in America.” Julia Child once said, “I think he’s a very good food writer. He really does his homework. As a reporter and a writer he takes his work very seriously.” His book, The Joy of Coffee, based on his Atlantic series, was heralded by The New York Times as “the most definitive and engagingly written book on the subject to date.” The Pleasures of Slow Food celebrates local artisans who raise and prepare the foods of their regions with the love and expertise that come only with generations of practice. Kummer was restaurant critic of New York Magazine in 1995 and 1996 and since 1997 has served as restaurant critic for Boston Magazine. He is also a frequent food commentator on television and radio. He is the recipient of five James Beard Journalism Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award.

Kim Severson
Kim Severson has been a staff writer for The New York Times since 2004. Previously, she spent six years writing about cooking and the culture of food for the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that, she had a seven-year stint as an editor and reporter at The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska. She has also covered crime, education, social services and government for daily newspapers on the West Coast.

She has won several regional and national awards for news and feature writing, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for her work on childhood obesity in 2002 and four James Beard awards for food writing.

Her memoir, “Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life,” will be published by Riverhead in April 2010. She has also written “The New Alaska Cookbook” and “The Trans Fat Solution: Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat from Your Diet.”

She’s a Midwesterner by birth. And although she’s extremely fond of the West Coast, she is learning to love the East. She plays softball, cooks, reads, watches bad TV and tries to get into nature as much as possible. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and her young daughter.

*If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the 2010 Chefs Collaborative National Summit, please contact Melissa Kogut, Executive Director, at 617-236-5286 or melissa@chefscollaborative.org.