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Lee Wolen much prefers the heat of the kitchen to a dining room filled with strangers. So when the chef and partner at Boka in Chicago stepped before a crowd of 54 hungry judges at the fourth annual Robb Report Culinary Masters Competition, he was clearly nervous.
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The first course in his competition dinner was being placed before them: a plate of roasted fermented broccoli arranged over dabs of thick Greek yogurt, smoked pork loin, and P…

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Barbara Lynch salutes Patrick Campbell’s refreshing way with the bounty of New England and the tenets of fine dining. 

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Barbara Lynch—a largely self-taught cook from the South Boston projects who went on to become the city’s doyenne of fine dining—stepped to the podium at the St. Regis New York. She clearly savored the moment, but the focus of the evening was on a chef other than herself: her Robb Report Culinary Masters Competition…

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For Christopher Kostow, the creative collaboration between Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan takes the Western spirit east.

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In 2011, Christopher Kostow seemingly came out of nowhere to earn three Michelin stars at the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, Calif., where the then 34-year-old chef’s impressive tasting menu incorporated modern techniques and pristine hyper-local ingredients to create a highly personal expression of Napa Valley’…

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Norman Van Aken, who influenced a generation of chefs in Miami, singles out Phillip Bryant as the talent who points the way toward the future. 

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When Phillip Bryant assembled his kitchen team for the Culinary Masters Competition, he did not have to look far. His sous chefs were Veronica Valdivia—his girlfriend and the director of operations at their Coral Gables restaurant, the Local: Craft Food and Drink—and Michael Bryant, his old…

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For John Besh, the rich legacy of New Orleans cuisine is at home in the talented hands of Justin Devillier. 

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Merle Haggard tunes were pouring out of the radio and sticks of fragrant, funky andouille—smoked just days before in LaPlace, La.—were in need of chopping. Justin Devillier picked up his knife, a burl-handled beauty made by the South Carolina bladesmith Quintin Middleton, and got to work. Beverly Hills traffic may have been …

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Michael White, New York’s maestro of Italian cuisine, appreciates the freewheeling creativity of John Becker.  

When John Becker flew to New York City for his Culinary Masters Competition dinner, he packed four big boxes with California ingredients: Fuyu persimmons, matsutake mushrooms, Brussels sprouts from Half Moon Bay, Mendocino nori, and turnips still clumped with Santa Cruz soil. As the chef de cuisine at the Progress in San Francisco, Becker is particula…

Originally published in the December issue of Robb Report Collection as “A Beatle’s Life”

When a couple is married for nearly 35 years, they tend to accumulate a little too much stuff, and maybe they decide to hoe out the attic and the basement. But when Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach are the couple doing the housecleaning, their “stuff” is bound to attract more attention than the normal yard-sale inventory. Consolidating from residences in Monaco, London, and Beverly Hills, the Beatle and the Bond girl will offer more than 1,200 items in two December sales. The first wi…

De Grisogono’s Fawaz Gruosi has made a career out of challenging Swiss watchmaking norms.

It was not the first time Fawaz Gruosi had been called crazy, nor would it be the last. A decade ago, while returning home from an international business trip, Gruosi decided to make a mechanical wristwatch with a digital display like the electronic timetables in airports. When he described his idea to the watchmakers in his Geneva atelier, they deemed it impossible. When he insisted that they build it anyway, they thr…

Charles Heidsieck—the intrepid founder of Champagne Charles Heidsieck—cultivated the U.S. market for bubbly in the 1800s on four long, revel-filled trips during which he garnered the nickname Champagne Charlie. He surely would have appreciated the limited-edition travel tote that the Champagne house has created in his honor. The Bon Voyage bag ($6,000, charlesheidsieck.com) is crafted from full-grain Italian leather with an interior of Alcantara suede. It arrives packed with a tasting notebook and hand-embosse…

Dining en route to a destination tends to be a cheerless matter of relieving hunger or boredom. Michael C. Fina aims to make those meals a more memorable part of the journey with a new line of tableware for yachts and private jets. The Hemisphere Marine Blue Collection ($78 to $312 per piece, michaelcfina.com) is thinner and lighter than most porcelain, with a larger foot for increased stability and generous rims to catch sloshes. Hemisphere, a classic pattern made by the French porcelain house Jean-Louis…