Back of the House

Who Will Win the Golden Clog?

Put it on the mantelpiece, next to that pile of money.
Put it on the mantelpiece, next to that pile of money.haha Photo: Ruhlman.com

Culinary writer and BFF to the stars Michael Ruhlman has announced the Golden Clog awards, a new unofficial contest, with multiple chef categories. The winners will be announced, no doubt with much facetious fanfare, at this year’s South Beach Food & Wine Festival. The categories are as follows:

FERGUS AWARD — for best achievement in offal.

ALTON AWARD — for the food personality who can actually cook.

MARIO AWARD — for the chef-restaurateur who best multitasked, merchandised, multiplatformed and generally whored himself yet still continued to make significant and valuable contributions to the restaurant landscape.

ROCCO AWARD — for worst career move by a talented chef.

CHEF’S CHEF AWARD — for the least heralded yet most deserving working chef.

We have to say, these are pretty good categories. And it goes without saying that we have our own nominations. How could we not?

FERGUS: Michael Whites’s sweetbreads at L’Impero make a solid case, but how can you deny a chef like Chris Consentino, whose whole career is based on organ meats?

ALTON: Tom Colicchio. His restaurants are lifting him higher than his Top Chef stardom, which is a happy circumstance all the way around.

MARIO: Since the Mario can’t go to Mario, who would collect it every year like Wayne Gretzky picking up Hart trophies in the eighties, we’ll say Thomas Keller, for his frozen foods, burger plans, new comfort-food restaurant, and role in helping create Remy’s dish in Ratatouille.

ROCCO: Again, hard not to give this to Rocco for his Bertolli shilling, but we’ll say Yuji Wakiya, for launching an eponymous restaurant in New York and then choosing to go there one week a month. If you’re looking to get a bagel handed to you from Adam Platt, that’s the way to do it.

CHEF’S CHEF: Eric Ripert: one restaurant, one kitchen, one chef on premise every night.

What are your nominations? Send them in! The best one for each category will be published here on Grub Street. And any reader who nails all five gets a special food prize of our choosing.

The Golden Clog [Ruhlman]

Who Will Win the Golden Clog?