James Beard Hopefuls Lobby on FacebookIt’s time again for Beard nominations, and the whole kerfuffle over Jason Neroni last year isn’t stopping the shameless shilling. A Grub Street reader alerted us to the Facebook group “Vote Evan Rich for the James Beard Rising Star Chef Award,” created by a friend of Rich, chef at Sumile Sushi. Rich is in a good spot if the group’s twelve current members are any indicator. Nice of the moderator to invite them all to Sumile! Let’s hope for the sake of propriety that there won’t be any comped green-tea ice cream.
Vote Evan Rich for the James Beard Rising Star Chef Award [Facebook]
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Famous Rock Writer Delivers a Sushi SummaNick Tosches, a writer best known for his books about the tormented inner lives of Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, and Sonny Liston, seems on the surface to be a weird choice to write about Tokyo’s Tsukiji seafood market and the world sushi trade. But Tosches’s article in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair should be required reading for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject. From its portrait of the market, which handles literally 4,000 times the amount of fish as the New Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx, to the elevation of bluefin tuna from its once-lowly status as an uncommercial “garbage fish,” to Tosches’s own twisted desire to eat the weirdest-looking thing he can find, the piece is wildly informative and has that slightly bent Tosches touch too.