The Details profile of new Pensiero chef Brandon Baltzley is out now, and it’s a mix between Alan Richman’s superb story on Schwa’s Michael Carlson… and anybody’s story on some wild-ass rocker. There’s definitely a tabloidy air about the piece that is exploiting the chefs-as-rock-stars thing, and it has its moments of excessive hype (Tribute was the most anticipated opening of this year? Next!) Yet it’s well written enough, and the portrait of Baltzley’s runaway braininess about food is compelling enough, that perhaps for the first time you really get why everyone sees so much promise in him. In any case, we wish him living up to it, and living it down, even moreso because of the news mentioned on his Twitter feed a few days ago: he just proposed to girlfriend Emily Belden (who has a supporting role in the piece, mostly staying out of the way of his crazy cooking crew when they’re at their most manic). She tweeted, most sweetly: “My day got better for a lifetime.”
