Vikas Khanna is New York’s Hottest Chef
Ah, foodies! When we’re not eating or cooking or fantasizing about food, we’re shopping for eats, obscure and exotic spices, and the latest cooking contraptions. And when we are not doing all of that, we’re watching cooking shows on The Food Network or salivating over cooking blogs on the Internet. And forget about casting our votes for the president, we can now actually have a say in who becomes America’s hottest chef! Now that’s powerful – and universe changing!
Eater, the popular foodie website, has anointed Vikas Khanna of Junoon the Hottest Chef in New York, based on voting by its readers. That’s really a delicious choice because Vikas is a creative chef with some wonderful dishes to his credit.
Now he’s in the battle for Hottest Chef in America against contenders from other states. According to Eater, after weeks of voting on the seven Eater city sites, they’ve officially crowned the hottest chef in their respective cities. The winners:
· Chicago: Merlin Verrier, exec chef of Graham Elliot
· Los Angeles: Jen Green, chef of the NomNom Truck
· Austin: Taff Mayberry, pastry chef at Olivia
· Miami: Ana Quincoces, cookbook author
· New York: Vikas Khanna, executive chef at Junoon
· San Francisco: David Bazirgan, executive chef at Fifth Floor
· Portland: Wes Hannah, chef at Blossoming Lotus
Writes Eater about Vikas: “The polls are closed, the ballots have been counted, and New York has its newest hottest chef: Junoon’s Vikas Khanna. This dark, handsome, tall drink of water beat out runner up Paul Corsentino of The National and 28 other chefs for the title. He’ll now go on to face the other chef hotties from San Francisco, LA, Portland, Miami, Austin and Chicago for the title of Hottest Chef in the Country. We can’t lose this one, New York. Imagine the shame of losing to Austin. Voting will commence on Eater National today.”
So Vikas-obsessed foodies, this is a call to arms! Get to your computers and flex your tip-tapping fingers and show your keyboard prowess. For all of Vikas’ fans and fans of the hot new restaurant Junoon, there’s a chance to make him the Hottest Chef in America by voting at the link below till Friday morning. Now how hot is that?
This will probably be the first time an Indian chef is getting this degree of hotness so Vikas-o-philes and Indophiles can make this happen by clicking on the link below – and possibly make Vikas the hottest chef in America! Jai Ho Indian food!
(In a few weeks we’ll share a more detailed interview with Vikas Khanna and a tour of Junoon.)
http://eater.com/archives/2011/02/16/vote-in-eaters-hottest-chef-in-america-2011-competition.php
Update: Who’s America’s Hottest chef?
The Official Results
1. San Francisco: David Bazirgan
2. Miami: Ana Quincoces
3. New York: Vikas Khanna
4. Los Angeles: Jen Green
5. Chicago: Merlin Verrier
6. Portland: Wes Hannah
7. Austin: Taff Mayberry
4 Comments
Simi, looks like a real fan club is developing over here! The chef was beautiful – but how were the appetizers?
Thanks Kriti for your comments. Everyone whom I speak with seems to have this opinion of Vikas.
I love his new restaurant. Only went for drinks and later went to the kitchen window to say hello to Vikas. He is drop dead beautiful. He took off his gloves and shook hands with all of us. None of my friends minded that his hands were wet. He is really a gentleman and when we congratulated him about how we are proud of him and how hot he is, he really blushed and said that he will send some appetizers for us at the bar. (I think he just wanted to get away from a bunch of drunk desi girls)
Though the bartender had an attitude, nothing mattered at that point. He is a genius.
Vikas is fantastic – apart from being just an extremely talented chef, he’s an amazing human being – thanks for this!