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It was all going Spike Mendelsohn‘s way.

The former Clearwater Beach resident was one of the last five “cheftestants” on the Bravo TV show “Top Chef.” He had just won the Quickfire Challenge by fileting a tomahawk steak to perfection at Chicago restaurateur Rick Tramonto‘s steak restaurant. He won a three-minute head start to pick his ingredients for the Elimination Challenge that would send the remaining four competitors to the finals in Puerto Rico. (The first part of the two-episode finale airs tonight at 10 p.m. on Bravo.)

Then Mendelsohn picked scallops.

Not realizing that the bag of seafood was frozen and not fresh, Mendelsohn set out to make a scallop dish he devised the night before. Only after setting out to cook them did he realize the problem.

The mistake cost him a chance at the title.

The dish, and his elimination as a result of it, has been the talk of food blogs all week over what the Eater LA blog dubbed as “Scallopgate.”

Rick Tramonto, the chef at whose Chicago restaurant the competitors cooked, says he doesn’t buy frozen scallops and that show producers planted them in his cooler. “Top Chef” head judge Tom Colicchio then blogged that the scallops came from Allen Brothers, which provided food for the cooks to use.

I talked with Mendelsohn last week after the episode aired that featured his elimination. He was in Washington D.C. at the time trying to open his Good Stuff Eatery, a new hamburger restaurant.

“I’m in D.C.,” he says. “I’m loving the weather and getting the project underway.”

Mendelsohn says the exposure for him was tremendous, despite the drunken groupie who climbed up the side of his apartment building one night. (He says he put her in a cab and sent her home.)

His pick to win? Richard Blais.

“Experience puts him in that position,” he says. “He’s 35 years old. He’s well-trained. He’s well-traveled. I’m 27. Eight more years is a huge amount of experience.”

Tell me about that last episode.

Oh, man. You watched it?

Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah. It was a rough one for me. It was, like, I had this huge high at the beginning of the day and then a huge low at the end. It was a test of my emotions that day.

Did you know how to butcher that cut?

No, I had never done it before. Ever. They totally played up the whole background with butchers [in my family] and stuff, but I had never butchered a piece of meat like that. I just kinda treated it like a lamb rack, really, to tell you the truth. I don’t know what got into me. I surprised myself that day. I did a pretty amazing job on it, if I say so myself. I was impressed.

Was there any pressure with Tramonto looking over your shoulder at all?

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Rick Tramonto is a great chef, he’s really well-known in that area and the tomahawk is one of the signature dishes at his steakhouse. I assumed he definitely knew what he was looking for in the fabrication. So it was really nice to hear that I had perfected it. Totally rewarding.

It’s been interesting to go around the blogs and read in the wake of the show’s airing. Everyone’s lit up about this episode.

Really? What’s going on?

Well, the whole discussion about the scallops.

Yeah, the frozen scallops…

At one point there were allegations that Bravo planted the scallops and that they wouldn’t be in Tramonto’s kitchen...

Right.

…And Bravo obviously says they didn’t do anything like that. Tramonto says they may have come in with another provider…

That’s B.S. I think we all know that.

Listen, Rick Tramonto does not cook frozen scallops. There’s no possible way that he has them in his walk-in. It would never happen. I mean, he knows what frozen scallops are and I know what frozen scallops are.

The misconception people got on the show is that I took scallops, looked at them and said, “Frozen scallops. Oh, my God, this is what I want to cook.” Which is not the way it went.

My advantage from the Quickfire was that I had a three-minute head start over everybody.to pick my proteins, which I really don’t think they show. Everyone was in the walk-in rummaging through things, but I really got to voice what I wanted first.

I had conceptualized in my head a scallop dish the night before. I heard, “Scallops. There’s scallops.” I told the producers, “I’m taking scallops.”

This is where my mistake was: I didn’t take the time to look at them, inspect them and see what I was getting. I just took it for granted that the scallops in this walk-in … last episode, everything’s going to be top-notch, they’re not really gonna screw with us. That’s where I bit it. From that point on, I knew that I had scallops and I had to use them. So, you see me talking myself into the dish. I was, like, yeah, “Frozen scallops, no problem.”

People get the misconception that I saw it was frozen scallops and I had no problem with that, which was totally not the case at all.

You were trying to make the best of a bad situation.

I was trying to make the best of a bad situation. It took an hour of my time. We had three hours to prepare and those scallops took an hour out of that time, draining the water out of them, trying to handle them with care because they were already torn up to begin with. It was a huge ordeal for me. I spent so much time trying to save those scallops that I didn’t put much effort into textures or flavors or the techniques for how I wanted to make the dish. I look back on the situation and I should have sat down for 10 minutes and thought about what to do. “Okay, I just got screwed. What am I going to do?”

But you know what? You have the competition setting, you have the emotions, and it was a long, hard competition. At that point, I was just got flustered. At the same time, I was really disappointed. I thought it was a slap in the face to get a product like that. At the end of the day, if I would have had amazing scallops, I would have cooked them perfectly and the chefs would have respected the way I cooked them. Then, if the garnish didn’t hold up to the flavor, they would have overlooked that. But that wasn’t the case. I didn’t have anything to work with.

On Colicchio’s blog, he speculated that it came in with the Allen Brothers steaks.

Oh, yeah. The Allen Brothers have been dealing in meats for the past 60, 65 years. I’m sure they carried frozen scallops into the walk-in.

[laughs] I just love it because everyone online is calling it “Scallopgate.”

I read Tom’s blog, also. I was like, “Tom, you’re shooting yourself in the foot, kind of.” Why would they come in with Allen? They’re a meat purveyor. They haven’t dealt with seafood since the day they were born. Know what I mean? That was out of nowhere. Yeah, Allen Brothers decided to drop off a bag of frozen scallops that day.

So your bottom line is that you think the scallops came in with another purveyor?

My bottom line is that … listen, this happened a long time ago. I’ve moved on. I’m looking forward. I’m not the kind who looks back. I don’t want to bad-mouth Bravo or the producers. They’ve done so much for me. The whole experience and now my Good Stuff eatery and the launching of my new place, they’re throwing my name out there. But, you know, if I have to this one time, I will. Listen, it’s the top 5. Give us the best ingredients. Why the hell were those scallops in there? I don’t know how they ended up in there or why. I definitely don’t think they want to screw anyone intentionally, but that’s pretty much what they did. That’s not good stuff.

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Saw this commercial the other night on TV:

This was so much funnier when it was organic and actors weren’t the ones throwing down the rhymes:

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University of Florida journalism professor William McKeen has a new biography of journalist Hunter S. Thompson coming out this summer, ”Outlaw Journalist; The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson.”

In the book there is a chapter about the difficulties Thompson experienced while writing his book “The Curse of Lono.” It offers a fascinating glimpse at, of all things, the great author’s dining habits:

Ralph [artist and collaborator Ralph Steadman] kept sending illustrations and Hunter kept struggling to write, in Woody Creek and in Fairhope, Alabama. Tom Corcoran had retreated there from Key West, convinced that the island city was becoming too expensive and too dangerous a place to raise a child. [Author] Tom McGuane had successfully given up drink and drugs after leaving Key West and settling down in homes in Montana and Point Clear, Alabama. Hunter and Laila [Hunter’s then-girlfriend, Laila Nabulsi] thought Fairhope sounded like a good locale to finally put the Lono manuscript to rest.

Hunter and Corcoran had a standing appointment for a late breakfast every day at Julwin’s Southern Country Barbecue Restaurant. Hunter spread out his new Lono fragments over the table and ask Corcoran to help organize what he had. Corcoran read the latest material, while Hunter consumed his standard breakfast:

One pot of coffee
One Wild Turkey in a tumbler with only two ice cubes
Two bloody marys
Two large glasses of orange juice
Two Heinekens
Four pieces of toast
Four whole grapefruit
Six eggs
Eight sausage links

Hunter always said he liked the “highs” in his writing, the two or three paragraphs that had rhythm and music. The stuff in between just had to do the job of connecting the highs. A sustained piece of writing was okay, but he preferred the occasional brilliance that was worth waiting for, something that really stood out.

“The Curse of Lono” was a bunch of scenes in need of connection, but Hunter couldn’t find the narrative tissue and needed Laila and Tom Corcoran to help him assemble the book, which he had grown to dislike while he was working on it.

“I was outlining it for him,” Corcoran said of their spectacular breakfasts. “He’d written most of these scenes but they weren’t in any order.”

Hunter began to begrudge Ralph, feeling that his part of Lono had been easier, which allowed him to finish his work on the book well before Hunter. He also resented Ralph getting an equal byline on the book. With his apocalyptical, insane drawings, Ralph could lay claim to half of the genetic material of Gonzo, but around the time of Lono, Ralph began to feel that Hunter did not appreciate him professionally, while remaining his friend.

After reading that, I wondered if there was any significance to that particular menu.

“No,” McKeen told me by e-mail, “but I’ll ... put you in touch with the guy who sat across the table.”

That would be Tom Corcoran.

A novelist, songwriter (he penned the hit song ”Fins” with singer Jimmy Buffett, as well as such novels as ”The Mango Opera,” ”Gumbo Limbo,” ”Bone Island Mambo,” and the forthcoming “Hawk Channel Chase") and a collaborator with Thompson on an unproduced screenplay, he was a catalyst for the author while “Lono” was being written, McKeen says. Corcoran had moved to Fairhope, Ala. (from Key West, where he worked with Buffett and Thompson), and the author used to go visit him.

“He had a lot of trouble writing that book and Tom helped a lot with the organization,” McKeen says.

Reached by e-mail, I asked Corcoran about the significance of HST’s voracious breakfast consumption.

He replied:

Jeff:

As with much Hunter did when out in public, these breakfasts were part sustenance, part theater.

Julwin’s Restaurant was, perhaps, 30 yards from the central intersection in downtown Fairhope. Passers-by in the morning could look inside the huge front windows and see groups of local business owners and farmers in hitch-up overalls sipping coffee and passing time. The servers were not servers then, but waitresses - middle-aged veterans who’d seen it all. They were understandibly bemused by this tall man with the TarGard cigarette filters (Julwin’s didn’t ban smoking until 2006), the Hawaii 5-0 ballcap and the black Cigarette Racing Team jacket.

We must not ignore the fact that Hunter had borrowed a condo in Mobile — 40 minutes away — for a few weeks, plus the condo owner’s Cadillac.

So his arrival, most mornings, began with angle-parking a mile-long Sedan de Ville in front of the plate glass windows.

Hunter was drawn equally to Julwin’s good food and their liquor license.

He was an expert at ingratiating himself - always aware that he presented a spectacle of sorts.

So, part of placing such a huge breakfast order was for impact - to draw attention to himself. Part was to run up a huge tab so the owners appreciated his business and might better tolerate his presence. (While Fairhope was not a redneck town, this was the South where manners and attitude made a difference. Hunter’s manners, when required, could be impeccable. He was, after all, a Southerner.)

Part was because his breakfasts - anywhere - were celebrations, perhaps to salute his survival to a new day, or his ability to pay the tab. (Room service personnel at hotels always were amazed to find that the mass of food on the cart was for only one or two people.)

Anyway, HST quickly became a “regular” in Julwin’s - and the waitresses were quite charmed by his antics. They even gave him a Julwin’s - The Family Restaurant ballcap - essentially made him an honorary local.

As to the order of consumption, I don’t recall. Presumably hot stuff went first. The pacing was important, and the consumption spaced out over an hour or two. Not to forget - HST was a news junkie. In addition to all this food on the table, there was a morning paper (or two, or three) spread about.

On the opposite side of the table - I gently cajoled him into making decisions about our projects. Our project during his Mobile / Fairhope stay was “The Curse of Lono,” published first by Bantam in, I think, 1983. Later republished in the form it truly deserved by Taschen in 2005.

I ate a normal breakfast or, if I’d already eaten my first meal at home, something simple like a BLT. Maybe one beer or a bloody mary, but I’d never enjoyed drinking at mid-day.

Part of the reason he and I got along well was because I never tried to be a mirror-image of him. He never was comfortable with people who tried to “out-consume” him or instigate madness. He was a master procrastinator and one of my tasks was to nudge him toward deadline.

Hope all this helps.

Tom

I shared this e-mail conversation with McKeen, who then replied:

Apparently, Hunter would arrive with some of his liquor supply. That’s the story I got from Tom’s son, Sebastian, when I was talking to him about another matter last week.

Tom has a lot of brilliant and unseen photos of Hunter and seven will appear in my book. He is a great writer (I’ve read all of his novels and recommend them mightily) and a great photographer. And he also served Jimmy Buffett his first beer when he arrived in Key West as a struggling country singer.

Hunter’s friends mention breakfast as key to his work process. His assistant of 23 years, Deborah Fuller, told me it was the first of his daily rituals. By the time she went to work for him – around 1983 – his breakfast time was around 5 p.m., just after waking.

McKeen’s book comes out in July. He’ll be making a visit to Tampa’s Inkwood Bools during his promotional tour in early August. Keep an eye out for him when he rolls through town. McKeen is a great speaker and an expert on 1960s and 1970s pop culture. You can pre-order the Thompson book on Amazon.

Thompson died in 2005 from a self-inflicted gunshot. To get a whiff of Thompson’s public essence, here’s an interview he did with Charlie Rose. (The audio and video are not synched, so it’s a tad irritating):

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So, a Dunkin’ Donuts ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a scarf has been pulled off the air after protests that the pattern of the scarf too closely resembled a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab man.

As the Associated Press reports:

Fox news columnist Michelle Malkin explains the garment “has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons.” Arab men wore the keffiyeh to protect their heads from the heat.

Dunkin’ Donuts told AP the scarf had a paisley design, and was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot. The company eventually pulled the commercial and made the statement, “In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. . . . Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial,” SFgate.com reported.

In February, several pictures with John McCain’s daughter Meghan wearing a similar scarf circulated in the media. Her mother, Cindy said that it “didn’t occur to her that her daughter shouldn’t be wearing that.”

Personally, I think Miss Thang could use some edge. Embrace it, I say. Turn a negative into a positive. Become a bigger icon by co-opting two brands at once:

Rachael Che, anyone?

Photo illustration for The Stew by David Williams.

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As anyone who has watched the movie “The Princess Bride” can tell you, there are a few classic blunders you can make. The most famous is that you should never get involved in a land war in Asia. Only slightly less well-known is this: Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

A third: Never compete against Jamie Usro in a cooking throw-down when osso buco is the dish.

Urso, a cook for the Tampa Fire Department, defeated Tim Creehan, a chef for California-based Dynamic Cooking Systems during a charity cook-off May 21 at Florida Builder Appliances on Waters Avenue in Tampa. The event was a benefit for Camp Hopetake, a summer camp for burned children.

Urso’s osso buco was served with green olives on a bed of orzo. Creehan served his with a vegetable mirepoix and cheesy polenta. I was lucky to be one of the judges. I have a great job.

To see more photos from the throwdown, click here.

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Tomorrow’s Flavor cover story features an interview with Michael Stern, co-author of the landmark culinary travelogue “Roadfood” with his wife, Jane. The Sterns are celebrating the 30th anniversary of its publishing. I did a Table Conversations podcast interview with him earlier this month.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Q: There’s something about the essence of road food that makes it more appealing than eating it somewhere else. Last year I drove from Tampa to Savannah with my family, and we stopped at a roadside place where they sold boiled peanuts straight out of the boiler. They had homemade honey harvested from the orange groves surrounding the store. Obviously I had eaten boiled peanuts and honey before, but there’s something about eating it there and then and under those circumstances that makes it a more special experience.

A: You’re exactly right. Jane and I often make the point that there might be a terrific Cajun restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa, but that’s not interesting to me.

When I go to Sioux City, Iowa, I want a restaurant I’m going to find only in Sioux City, Iowa. Similarly, when I’m in Cajun Louisiana, I want a Cajun restaurant. I don’t want a New York deli. That’s really the point. It’s not just that the food is authentic. It’s that everything is. The accents of the people you’re sitting with, or the wait staff. The method of presentation. The whole experience of walking out, if you’re in Louisiana, and smelling the swampland.

That’s all part of the experience. Food in a vacuum is not really all that interesting.

As part of the story, we did a list of some of the favorite roadfood spots of Tampa Tribune staff and their friends. To see the list, click on the map below:

Hungry for more? Here’s a video of the Sterns vising the home of the original hamburger, Louis Lunch in New Haven, Conn. (Cool tidbit you’ll see: All of the burgers are cooked vertically):

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We were saddened to hear about the passing of movie director and actor Sidney Pollack last night from cancer.

This scene in the film “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman, (which Pollack directed), is one of our favorite food-related scenes. In it, Pollack plays Hoffman’s agent. The two have an argument about Hoffman’s character Michael Dorsey’s notoriously difficult acting demands. During the argument, they discuss the time Dorsey was cast as a piece of produce in a commercial:

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So, I had big, huge, gaudy, audacious plans to blog the Saturday portion of the Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival from the Don CeSar Resort, but logistics got the better of me and the laptop. Apparently the beach is a lousy environment for anything more technologically advanced than a swizzle stick. I’ve still got sand in my mouse, which sounds dirty, but it isn’t. Just annoying.

Anyway, as I wrote in Flavor this week, it’s safe to say that this year’s festival, held last weekend at the Don, went much smoother than last year’s inaugural event, which suffered from canceled seminars and complicated parking arrangements.

This year’s festival wisely kept the seminars on the beach at or near the Grand Tasting tent, making it easier for attendees to remain close to the food and wine vendors. The shuttle service between the Don and the remote parking lot a half-mile north across from Dolphin Village also worked efficiently, despite heavy weekend beach traffic.

In short, I had a really good time and I could tell others did as well. Several vendors told me they got a good, solid chance to talk with patrons instead of just shoveling food and booze down their gullets. Apparently Tampa Bay food lovers are contemplative and curious. Who knew?

Perhaps my enjoyment of the proceedings didn’t come across as clearly as I’d hoped in previous posts. One festival organizer commented to me by e-mail earlier in the week:

Man, you really hammered the Titanium Chef competition on the blog.

Hmm. I didn’t think I had but perhaps I did. It’s possible. If so, a slam wasn’t intended. It’s just that when you get a room full of affluent foodies drinking and throwing chocolates and playing bagpipes and taking their clothes off while a cooking competition is going on at a giant pink Gulf-front resort, well, that’s just a big ball of twine to play with from a journalistic standpoint.

Bottom line: The Titanium Chef Challenge was a lot of fun - and a good money raiser for the Abilities Foundation. I had so much fun that I was willing to overlook having wine spilled on me by numerous enthusiastic onlookiers. In my line of work, such things are the cost of doing bidness.

Other highlights included:

* Watching as last season’s “Next Food Network Star” finalist Joshua Adam Garcia (better known by his nickname “JAG” ) heckled a spike-haired festivalgoer who appeared to be unofficially impersonating Food Network star Guy Fieri (check it out for yourself in the photo at right). JAG, who competed against New Zealand chef Jason Roberts in the Titanium Chef Challenge competition Friday night, went so far as to call Fieri on his cellphone to tell him the guy was signing autographs. The doppelganger quickly fled.

I liked JAG a lot. (He’s cooking in the Carolinas, by the way.) I talked to him for a bit on Saturday and found him to be a very nice guy. Same goes for Roberts. I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear from them again in a big way.

Robert Masson, executive chef at 717 South in Tampa, helped propel Roberts to Titanium victory as his sous chef for the night with a chocolate and red wine reduction that was crazy delicious.

* Seeing actress Lorraine Bracco, formerly of “The Sopranos,” working the table for her Bracco Wines at the Grand Tasting.

* Slurping the lobster bisque (pictured above) served by Chef de Cuisine Greg Howe of the restaurant Vernona at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota. The bisque was served with popcorn, which, when added to the soup, gave it a great texture that was similar to lobster. Howe told me that the Ritz is the first in the hotel chain to serve only locally grown, organic food.

* Sampling the 2003 Wyndham Estate Hunter Valley Black Cluster Shiraz. Only about 400 six-pack cases were imported to the United States, so it’s next to impossible to find. The Graffigna 2007 Pinot Grigio was a close second, followed by Graffigna’s Malbec. The mojito made with the ginger-flavored Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur was a nice surprise, too.

* Chatting with Joshua Butler, executive chef at the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. Butler, who was showcasing wild Florida pink shrimp for the Department of Agriculture, disclosed that Gov. Charlie Crist isn’t a big eater — he sometimes sticks to one meal a day — and that he tends to go for salads.

* Sipping a perfect daiquiri made by mixologist Francesco Lafranconi of Southern Wine and Spirits and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, who joined to do a great session on tiki drinks. Berry even dropped a few mentions of tiki bars that had flourished in the Tampa Bay area in the late 1960s and 1970s. Jeff officially has the best nickname that should really be two words.

To see all the photos from the weekend, click here.

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So the end of Friday night’s festivities at the Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival included what they call the Titanium Chef Challenge (Because the words “Iron Chef” are, you know, copyrighted.)

The combatants: Joshua Adam Garcia, better known by his self-appointed nickname of “JAG” versus “culinary rocker/celebrity chef” Johnny Ciao.

Only, they weren’t. JAG, who is best known for losing last years “Next Food Network Star” competition after inflating his resume just a tad, (Gee, that seems to be a theme on Food Network lately. But I digress.) had to go up against New Zealand chef Jason Roberts. Why? Because Ciao suffered some sort of horrific hand injury at Thursday night’s Party for the Senses at the Mahaffey Theater in downtown St. Petersburg. Something about Sergio Mendes makes people go a little wobbly, I guess.

The secret ingredient for the night’s cooking competition? (Apparently secret ingredients aren’t a trademarked feature of such things.): Chocolate. And Mahi Mahi.

Ooooookay.

Anyway, Ciao participated as a guest judge. And so did Lorraine Bracco, an actress formerly known as Dr. Melfi of “The Sopranos.” The last judge’s chair, which was auctioned off for charity went for $17,000. No word on where invited judge Chris Sherman of the St. Petersburg Times was.

Headache yet?

Well, JAG and Jason, who was called in at the last moment, did their level best to make something edible. Jag had Justin Timineri, an executive chef for the Florida Department of Agriculture who had done a teriffic red snapper demo earlier in the day, as his sous chef. (Or “soose” as master of ceremonies Tim Wilkins unironically called him.) Roberts had the talented Robert Masson of 717 South restaurant in Tampa.

The grand prize? Being knighted by toastmaster and Scottish comedian Jeremy Bell

How’s that headache? Need some Advil?

All went well, or as well as these kinds of things can go. The food really was secondary here, as the Culinary Sherpas can attest. It was more of a cougar cocktail rodeo than a culinary demonstration.

At one point, I got all giddy because a lightbulb perched above one of Roberts’ dishes shattered and fell into the food. Roberts and Masson fished out what they could find and showed some genuine concern.

I, however, caught it on video (footage to come later), and and began thinking, “I’m going to get the last footage of Lorraine Bracco before she dies from eating glass. This is her final meal. I have her death dish on tape. She eats with the fishes, then sleeps with the fishes. I’m going to be rich.”

Bottom line: by the end of it, Roberts was named the victor, I had to spit out a mouth of undercooked chocolate risotto that I tasted off one of JAG’s plates, and the Scottish dude annoyed the hell out of the room by playing bagpipes before tapping the Donnie Wahlberg lookalike on the shoulders with a sabre and wrapping him in a kilt. God, I hate the Scottish.

For photos of all this hot mess, go to my Flickr gallery. Lots of pics of the shirtless dude in the kilt and his, um, gluteal cleavage. I did not shoot those. Michelle Baker did. I swear. (Be sure to check out the liveblogging that the Sherpas are doing at the festival throughout the day.) Tampa Bay’s 10 covered it last night, too, in case you want to watch video.

Jaden Hair drives up for today’s festivities. She’ll be blogging on her site, too.

Note to self: Text Jaden to bring a Costco-sized bottle of Advil.

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One of the chefs doing demos at the TBW&FF grand tasting tent was Joshua Butler, executive chef for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

Butler said he’s has been cooking for Florida’s chief executive for about 10 years, cooking first for Lawton Chiles, then for two-term former Gov. Jeb Bush and his family.

Butler was sauteeing wild Florida pink shrimp in a mixture of tomato sauce, lime juice and mango puree. Pretty damn tasty. He was doing a demo on behalf of the Florida agriculture department and the Ocean Conservancy.

Crist, who is single, is a very different food consumer than the Bush clan was. Charlie sometime eats only once a day - not the best idea from a dietary standpoint. (The Lakeland Ledger reported in 2006 that he “eats only one meal a day, subsisting on Red Bull and occasional handfuls of pork rinds or other snacks with a light beer or two at night.")

“He eats a lot of salads,” Butler says.

According to a bio I found online at the Great American Seafood Cook-off:

Butler was born on December 8, 1976 in St. Petersburg, Florida. As a child, his fascination with cooking grew from watching his family in the kitchen. His natural talent with cooking lead him to chose the culinary arts as a career.

In 1994, Chef Butler began his career as a prep cook at an upscale American restaurant. On his first day, his experience of the high paced restaurant kitchen assured his choice of becoming a chef. From 1994 until 1998, Chef Butler’s culinary experience ranged from cafes to fine dining, which enabled him to learn the many facets of cuisine.

Hands-on learning has proven Chef Butler’s most effective method of education. As a self-taught chef, he feels, “To become a better chef one must always read and keep up to date with the food industry and to truly experience cuisine one must be hands-on physically working with food”.

In 1998, while working at the Governor’s club, he was given the opportunity to interview for the position of Executive Chef at the Governor’s Mansion. After a series of interviews he was chosen to be the next Chef for the Governor of Florida. He has since served three Governors and many dignitaries of the state. Chef Butler currently creates inventive and exciting cuisine for Florida’s First Family, Jeb and Columba Bush. At the mansion he has the creative freedom to experiment with many ingredients and different styles of cuisine. He does not limit himself to one way of cooking, and often explores exotic spices and unusual techniques.

For some Florida pink shrimp recipes, click over to www.fl-seafood.com and WildFloridaShrimp.com.

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Sad news out of Napa Valley today:

BERKELEY, Calif. — Robert Mondavi, the pioneering vintner who helped put California wine country on the map, died at his Napa Valley home Friday. He was 94. Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, Robert Mondavi Winery spokeswoman Mia Malm said.

He was 52 and a winemaking veteran in 1966, when he opened the winery that would help turn the Napa Valley into a world center of the industry. Clashes with a brother that included a fistfight led him to break from the family business to carry out his ambitious plans with borrowed money.

At the time, California was still primarily known for cheap jug wines. But he set out to change that, championing use of cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels, all commonplace in the industry today. He introduced blind tastings in Napa Valley, putting his wines up against French vintages, a bold move.

Always convinced that California wines could compete with the European greats, Mondavi engaged in the first French-American wine venture when he formed a limited partnership with the legendary French vintner Baron Philippe de Rothschild to grow and make the ultra-premium Opus One at Oakville. The venture’s first vintage was in 1979.

The success of the Mondavi winery allowed him to donate tens of millions of dollars to charity, but a wine glut and intense competition gradually cost his family control of the business. In 2004, the company accepted a buyout worth $1.3 billion from Fairport, N.Y.-based Constellation Brands.

Mondavi was an enthusiastic ambassador for wine — especially California wine — and traveled the world into his 90s promoting the health, cultural and social benefits of its moderate consumption.

A hush came over the crowd this afternoon after his death was announced at the Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival. That’s how great the respect for his legacy is.

Tampa Tribune wine writer Kurt Loft did a great profile in 2006 that included an interview with Mondavi’s wife, Margrit:

Few challenge Mondavi’s status as the elder statesman or ignore what he did for a once-humble California grape, says his wife, Margrit. Mondavi is too frail to offer interviews.

“My husband is a very focused person that had a dream,” she says by telephone from their home in Oakville, in Napa Valley. “His dream was to make wines from his soil. And with his knowledge and his travels, he wanted to make wines that equal the best wines in the world. His dream came true.”

What isn’t always appreciated about his success is what got him there: a grass-roots effort to demystify wine and bring quality to the common table. Mondavi combined shrewd marketing with technical achievements and was among the first to insist that good California wines abandon generic labeling for specific grape varieties.

“He worked 18 hours a day, and his success had a lot to do with being generous and to have no secrets,” his wife says. “He believed in wine, and he exuded it with his enormous enthusiasm.”

When Mondavi founded his winery in 1966, he chose a 12-acre site in a vineyard known as To Kalon, Greek for “the beautiful.” His aim was to create wines particularly cabernet sauvignon with pedigrees on par with the revered vintages of France. Margit believes he succeeded.

“But I’m his wife,” she says, “and I’m prejudiced.”

It’s incredible to think how far American wines have come in less than 50 years. Here’s a history of Mondavi winery, which was established in 1966.

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So, the turnout for trade day at the Grand Tasting is decent, but not crazy busy. This despite perfect weather [:::doing my best Jerve::: “It’s freaking perfect out there today."]. Temps are in the 80s. There’s just enough brrze to keep the palm fronds moving and the beach less than crazy hot.

I was here for all of 10 minutes before Michael Rugers of Southern Wine & Spirits shepherded me to his favorite wines at the tasting:

Say hello to the 2003 Wyndham Estate Hunter Valley Black Cluster Shiraz. Only 200 6-pack cases were shipped to the U.S. this year. I got a glass of it. Full-bodied with great, spicy finish, it was a great start to the day. Phenomenal adult beverage. If you come this weekend, I highly suggest you sample.

Next!

The 2007 Pinot Grigio and 2004 Malbec by Graffigna. Rugers tells me that the pinot sells well to Italian restaurants. It has a much heavier body and fuller flavor than most pinot grigio, so it holds up well to bold Italian flavors.

And the Malbec, well ... it was magnificent. Fruity, subtle, smooth. Everything you want a Malbec to be. Sells for about $12 a bottle. Rugers says it’s the best value on the market right now. Southern sold out of its supply and had to restock, it sold so well.

I’m going back in for more...

In the meantime, you can keep tabs by following along with the Flickr gallery I’ll keep adding to all weekend.

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So, the plan is that we’re going to liveblog the Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival starting tomorrow at the Don CeSar Resort on St. Pete Beach. The weekend of food and wine starts tonight with a Party for the Senses, but we’ve never been much for the musical stylings of Sergio Mendes, so we’re going to take a pass. Ain’t got nuthin’ but love fo ya Serge, but it’s a long drive over the Gandy from Valrico. Know what I’m saying?

That’s the plan, anyway. With the caveat that there’s a ton of food and wine at the food and wine festival. [Who’d have thunk?] And as professional as we like to think we are, all bets are off if we get our lips around a delicious rum or a Cabernet so good that it makes us just a bit weepy. Those kinds of Hallmark moments, welll, you really can’t plan on. Before you know it, you’re in a Jockey with white piping pulling a Ron Burgundy cannonball in the kiddie pool.

By we, I mean me, of course, [I do not, repeat, do NOT respond to the nickname Capt. STEWbing] as well as Tampa Tribune Flavor columnists Jaden Hair of SteamyKitchen.com and Greg and Michelle Baker, the Culinary Sherpas.

Like an Olympic relay team on steroids, we’re going to take turns passing the blog baton baton the next few days to bring you the best that the event has to offer. Or at least the bright shiny objects that obscure our vision and make us turn our collective head like a dog that just heard something weird.

How weird? Consider this scene, which I shot during last year’s grand tasting:

But we digress.

The plan calls for a little text, a lot of photos and some video for good measure.

You have officially been warned. Stay tuned for further updates.

To buy tickets to the various events, parties and seminars, click here. A map of the designated parking area a little bit north of the Don CeSar is here:

View Larger Map

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Following up on the Twitter note I had Friday, Keith Morelli goes into a little more detail today about the story in USA Today last week that listed the Columbia Restaurant as one of the 10 best places in the U.S. to make a meal out of a salad.

A few readers were looking for the recipe so they could make it at home. Here is is from our files. We most recently published it in the Tampa Tribune in 2000:

1905 SALAD
1/2 head iceberg lettuce
2 tomatoes
3 ounces cooked ham, julienned (3 to 4 slices)
3 ounces Swiss cheese, julienned (3 to 4 slices)
1/3 cup pitted olives (black, green or Spanish), sliced
1 to 2 teaspoons Romano or Parmesan cheese
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Chop lettuce. Place in bowl. Dice tomatoes, place on top of lettuce. Cut ham and Swiss cheese into julienne strips. Place on top of lettuce and tomatoes and top with olive slices. Pour dressing on top (recipe below) and add grated Romano or Parmesan cheese and lemon juice.
Toss and serve.

1905 DRESSING
4 cloves garlic (minced)
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
1/8 cup white wine vinegar
Put garlic, oregano, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper in a bowl and beat until smooth with wire whisk or fork.
Add oil gradually.
Finally, add vinegar, beating continuously.

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I’ve written oodles about the food aspects of this year’s presidential campaigns, from the recipe for Obama Pie, to the politics of pie and cookies, to the litmus test of operating a convenience store beverage dispenser.

In the interest of equal time, we should mention our latest favorite food-meets-politics site: Things Younger Than Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain.

McCain was born Aug. 29, 1936. Some of the food items that came after he was born include:

* The grocery shopping cart.

* Cheerios.

* The Cobb Salad.

* The chocolate chip cookie.

* Spam.

* McDonald’s

I knew there had to be more, so I went looking. Didn’t take me long:

* The Reuben Sandwich (1937)

* Canned soda (1938)

* Col. Sanders’ secret fried chicken recipe (1939)

* M&Ms (1941)

* Chicago-style pizza (1943)

* Betty Crocker cake mix (1947)

* The Pilsbury Bake-Off (1949)

* Seedless watermelon (1949)

* Bananas Foster (1951)

* Navy bean soup (1958)

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