If you've eaten at Salt of the Earth in Garfield, you might agree that Chef Kevin Sousa is a pretty darn good cook. His growing restaurant empire also includes Union Pig & Chicken, Station Street Hot Dogs and Harvard & Highland in East Liberty, plus the much-anticipated Magarac in Braddock.  

You don't get two James Beard nominations as he did (Best New Restaurant in 2011, and Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2012) without some talent. 

Now it's time for us everyday diners to weigh in on Chef Sousa's food, which marries local ingredients with modern flavors using a mix of cutting-edge and classical techniques.

Food & Wine Magazine has picked its field of 100 nominees from 10 regions across the U.S. for The People's Best New Chef program, and the McKees Rocks native has made the cut. 

Team USA: From left, Chefs Corey Siegel, Gavin Kaysen and Richard Rosendale in Lyon, France.

A half-million-dollar bankroll couldn’t get Team USA onto the podium at the famed international chef competition, the Bocuse d'Or, held in Lyon, France.

Yesterday, Uniontown native Richard Rosendale, executive chef at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and his “commis” (assistant), Corey Siegel, took seventh place.

They’d been hoping for gold, but at least they improved upon Team USA’s 10th-place finish in 2011. The highest a U.S. team has ever placed is sixth.

Twenty-four two-man teams from around the world filled enormous silver platters with meats and swanky side dishes for judging by 14 chefs. Here’s what Mr. Rosendale and Mr. Siegel prepared in their allotted five and a half hours:


•    Slowly cooked turbot with Virginia ham and Tennessee black truffles

•    Lobster mousse with butternut squash cooked in cider

•    “Mushroom Explosion”

•    Twice-baked potato and leek cigar

•    Vin jaune emulsion

•    Hickory-grilled beef filet with asparagus and horseradish

•    Fried hollandaise

•    Beef oxtail “Yankee pot roast” with spiced red wine sauce

•    Potato dumplings

•    Bone marrow and thyme infused beef broth with crispy beef filet

•    Slowly roasted carrots



Judges have historically preferred the European teams, and this year was no exception. The “home team” of France took first place and Denmark second. Japan placed third.

Mr. Rosendale and Mr. Siegel trained together for two years, spending 12-hour Mondays and portions of other days in preparation for the noisy competition where a raucous crowd waves flags and cheers on the teams. Sponsors, including kitchenware companies, funded Team USA to try to get its first big win. At The Greenbrier, part of a bunker constructed during the Cold War as a hideout for Congress in the event of nuclear warfare was transformed into an exact replica of the Bocuse d’Or kitchen.

But even with all that time and money, Team USA still came up short. “I’m proud of the effort we put forth,” Mr. Rosendale said, “and while I’m disappointed we didn’t finish higher up, I know that Corey and I gave it our all.”

Oh well, better luck next time for Team USA.

Bocuse d'Or USA photos

Everyone needs a hobby. In most industries, people tend to take up distractions that don't reflect their daily duties on the job. In the food industry, it seems that punching off the clock just opens up more time to hone other food-related crafts.

Since moving to Pittsburgh I've met a handful of cooks who spend their days off cultivating herbs, aging vinegars, home brewing beer, crafting steel knives and foraging for mushrooms and other wild products.

When I did my first pop up in Pittsburgh, I was sent home with a gift from the sous chef of Shadyside's Casbah, Dustin Gardner. It was a beer vinegar that he had started a few weeks earlier. Now, around six local chefs have started their own vinegars out of spawns from Dustin's "mother."

Andrew Hill, a sous chef at Stagioni on the Southside where I have been working, enjoys home brewing and is quite good at it, if I may say so. Recently he had three different brews fermenting away: A lambic made from local cider provided by a farm in Beaver County where he lives, a California common made with foraged Cluster hops, and a hard cider. The crew at Stagioni anxiously awaits the bottling of these shift beers.

During warmer weather, Chad Townsend, the sous chef at Salt of the Earth in Garfield, spends Sundays in the woods foraging chanterelle and bolete mushrooms. He took me to his local spots my second week in town, and his knowledge amazed me, though all the while he exhibited humility by constantly telling me he is an amateur. The 5 pounds of fungus we brought back told a different story.

A cook at Bar Marco, John Heidelmeier, has a workshop in the basement where he continues his grandfather's craft of making knives. He is now supplying a handful of cooks, bartenders, and friends with custom-made steel knives complete with engraving and very sharp edges.

As for myself, I tend to let my business partner, Leigh Hansen, dabble in the extracurriculars in our kitchen, where there are micro-greens being grown for a handful of local restaurants as well as jars upon jars of kombucha fermenting away.

To say that seeing all these people spending free time sharpening new skills is commendable would be an understatement. I wish I still had the energy to follow suit, but alas, on my day off you'll probably find me in a booth with a notepad, a plate of wings and a Jim Beam neat at my favorite bar, Gooski's, writing things like this. 

Post-Gazette photo

Brandon Baltzley is a chef behind Crux, a mobile collaborative currently based in Pittsburgh. His book "Nine Lives: A Chef's Journey from Chaos to Control" will be released in May 2013.

This time of year, piles of holiday catalogues from the likes of Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table invade the mailbox, even if you didn't think you were on their mailing lists. I beg you to squelch the urge, tempting as it may be, to purchase any of the following items as gifts for your friends in the food industry:

Any holiday themed spatulas or dish towels.
Trust me, no cook works better with a spatula shaped like a Frosty the Snowman.

A gift set composed of narrowly themed cookbooks ("365 Cake Pop Recipes to Get You through the Year") in a basket with brightly colored molds and premixed ingredients.
What I'd get from this: You think I can't pull it together to create my own damn cake pop mixture. What's the deal with cake pops anyway, and why do I need to have one for every day of the year?

A neon green "chef's knife."
If it comes already packaged in a plastic pouch, I guarantee the thing would be too dull and too low-quality to even cut its way out of the package it came in.

A piece of kitchen equipment so specialized that I'll spend the entirety of the one day a week I have off to cook at home reading the pamphlet that documents all its esoteric functions.
Yes, I love to cook, that's why I chose to make it my career. A lawyer presumably likes his job, too, but I don't see the latest textbook on bankruptcy law under every lawyer's Christmas tree.

Instead of turning to career appropriate gifts for the cook in your life, consider who we are outside the kitchen when choosing a gift.  

Eric Wallace, former executive chef of Casbah in Shadyside and Lidia's in the Strip District has taken the helm at Up Modern Kitchen.