Chefs

A hand-held smoker that looks like a toy pistol, a blender that heats or cools while it whizzes your soup or smoothie, professional immersion blenders, dehydrators, whipping siphons, induction burners, sous-vide machines and vacuum sealers. As mainstream retailers such as Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma introduce tools not so long ago used by only the most adventurous professional chefs, it could be a bonanza holiday for kitchen geeks. Grant Achatz, the chef of Alinea in Chicago who recently was in Los Angeles for an event, points to one of his immersion circulators, a device used for sous-vide ?

All you need in your pocket or purse to find a hot restaurant. Name: Chef's Feed Available for: iPhone, iPod touch and iPad; Android coming soon. What it does: Profiles award-winning chefs and their favorite dishes at specific restaurants in certain cities. From there, you can map the restaurant, add it to your profile and itinerary, rate the dish and tell your friends about it using Twitter or Facebook. Cost: Free. What's hot: This app is becoming a better tool for business travelers.

Who knew chefs see macarons in Christian Louboutin colors? Who knew restaurant plates and saucers are sold like hot dogs and buns, in mismatching quantities? And who would ever expect chefs to be as proficient with a keyboard as they are with a knife? The answer: Anyone who has noticed chefs are suddenly taking to blogging as if it were the foam of 2008. In the last few months some of the bigger names in food across the country have joined the online chattering class, posting their innermost thoughts, with photos and recipes, just as home cooks have been doing for years.

Being surrounded by delicious food all day sounds like a decent way to make a living. And according to Gail Simmons, a judge on Bravo's "Top Chef" and "Top Chef: Just Desserts," it is — but it requires some conscientiousness to not overindulge. Simmons is also a director of special projects for Food & Wine magazine and recently released a memoir, "Talking With My Mouth Full. " The 35-year-old culinary expert explained to us how she manages to stay healthy amid a sea of gourmet delights and with a very hectic schedule.

All you need in your pocket or purse to find a hot restaurant. Name: Chef's Feed Available for: iPhone, iPod touch and iPad; Android coming soon. What it does: Profiles award-winning chefs and their favorite dishes at specific restaurants in certain cities. From there, you can map the restaurant, add it to your profile and itinerary, rate the dish and tell your friends about it using Twitter or Facebook. Cost: Free. What's hot: This app is becoming a better tool for business travelers.

Margaritas made with volcanic ash. Braised oysters with chipotle bearnaise. Foie gras with habanero-spiked guava. There's a revolution afoot in this city's restaurants. The eyebrow reflexively shoots up. The first thought is globalization, that creeping sameness that threatens cultural individuality when tradition fades in favor of pop sensibilities.

There is a certain poetry about the knives crafted by Tokifusa Iizuka, one of the most revered smiths in a land that holds hocho--kitchen knives--sacred. His knives are simple and rustic yet, at the same time, elegant. Light dances upon smooth blades and the delicate, wavelike pattern of steel folded many times within. Wedges of black buffalo horn connect the rounded, unvarnished wood handles to the polished blade in a sensuous mix of textures.

Michael Voltaggio has no idea how many tattoos he has. The question makes him laugh. The wise-cracking 33-year-old chef is pretty well covered. The name of his restaurant, after all, is Ink. Before dinner service on a recent Friday, Voltaggio plays around with an insulated bucket of liquid nitrogen, dipping his hand in it and tossing the residue on the floor where it morphs, CGI-like, into little rolling marbles of chemistry before dissolving into wisps...

Cole Dickinson, the chef de cuisine at Michael Voltaggio's soon-to-open West Hollywood restaurant, Ink, got his culinary education the old-fashioned way: in the kitchen. That might sound obvious, but it makes him something of an anomaly as the number of culinary schools multiplies, drawing legions of novice cooks with the promise of turning them into top chefs. Yet the less-touted, less-glamorized path of working one's way up through the restaurant kitchen ranks is starting to sound more appealing.

They're the food world's equivalent of "made" men and women — instantly recognizable chefs who have their own cooking shows, cookbooks, brands and fan following. Names like Napa Valley's Michael Chiarello. New York City's Marcus Samuelsson and Alex Guarnaschelli. So why they are willing to put it all on the line to compete in Season 4 of "The Next Iron Chef," which debuts Sunday on Food Network? It's a question that confounds even the host, Alton Brown. "These chefs have more to lose than they actually have to gain," Brown said Friday during a telephone interview.

Michael Voltaggio has no idea how many tattoos he has. The question makes him laugh. The wise-cracking 33-year-old chef is pretty well covered. The name of his restaurant, after all, is Ink. Before dinner service on a recent Friday, Voltaggio plays around with an insulated bucket of liquid nitrogen, dipping his hand in it and tossing the residue on the floor where it morphs, CGI-like, into little rolling marbles of chemistry before dissolving into wisps...

The Century, a luxury condominium tower in Century City, will soon house a restaurant operated by high-profile Los Angeles chef David Myers. His yet-to-be-named restaurant will be open to the public and also cater private meals and events for residents of the 41-story tower such as Candy Spelling, who owns the top two floors. The ground-floor restaurant will have a separate driveway and entrance from the residences, said Jeff Blau, president of the Related Cos., the developer of the tower on Avenue of the Stars.

The Century, a luxury condominium tower in Century City, will soon house a restaurant operated by high-profile Los Angeles chef David Myers. His yet-to-be-named restaurant will be open to the public and also cater private meals and events for residents of the 41-story tower such as Candy Spelling, who owns the top two floors. The ground-floor restaurant will have a separate driveway and entrance from the residences, said Jeff Blau, president of the Related Cos., the developer of the tower on Avenue of the Stars.

For me, the egg hunt didn't stop when I became an adult. Some people hunt eggs, but I prefer to eat them. As a kid, I thrilled more to the feast than the hunt - as in the feast of hard-boiled eggs and leftover egg dishes that remained in the wake of annual visits from the bunny. Today, modern chefs are pushing any envelope they can get their hands on to honor the egg. Eggs aren't just for breakfast anymore as evidenced by the dishes I've gathered here, many of which have become some of my favorites.

"No Kitchen Required" is a new show from BBC America in which three chefs from three corners of the English-speaking world travel to remote locations to have their way with the native cuisine, and vice versa. If the words"Top Chef" and"Survivor" were not uttered in the same sentence at some time while this series was being pitched, I will eat my own cooking. All the chefs have appeared on reality TV, but in the 21st century that is just what chefs do. Michelin-starred Michael Psilakis has been on "Iron Chef"; probably not coincidentally, he is an executive producer of this show.

Thomas Keller, Jacques Pepin, Roy Choi and more than 70 other chefs will share cooking techniques, schmooze and even play golf at the fifth Pebble Beach Food & Wine festival in Pebble Beach, Calif. Tickets are expected to sell out for the four-day April event, which has an impressive roster of meals, cooking sessions, wine-tastings and after-hour parties. Organizers offer these tips on navigating what's one of the more exclusive food-and-wine festivals in the state. First-timers might want to watch chef Todd English at an hourlong cooking demonstration to pick up some new techniques and/or enjoy a wine-and-cheese pairing event with cheese expert Laura Werlin ($100 each, unless you buy a pass)

Anthony Bourdain didn't invent the chef memoir, but he revolutionized it. And judging by the latest crop of books, I'd say he has a lot to answer for. In the old days, chef stories followed a pretty staid outline: childhood in sunny France, first job, first great chef, own restaurant, and after many struggles, stardom. Like Horatio Alger stories they were at once almost ritualistic in their progress and thoroughly sanitized, yet oddly comforting in their predictability.

Chefs often work grueling hours in the kitchen under extremely stressful conditions, tasting much of the food they cook. It's not easy to stay slim under such circumstances -- but not necessarily for the reasons you might suspect. True, some chefs are tempted to overindulge at work, but others are so busy feeding other people and so sick of what they serve that they rarely take time to eat full meals during the day.

We all understand what a modernist restaurant is in 2012, from the reverse encapsulations, to the liquid nitrogen, to the skinless chicken breasts as soft as butter. We have been well-versed in the future, even if most of us have never tasted that kind of food. But in California, where the taste of a Cara Cara orange straight from the tree will always eclipse the flashier pleasures made possible by a packet of xanthan gum, the cooking in a contemporary restaurant is often based on something else entirely: seasonal, well-sourced produce presented in a way that lets its virtues shine through undisturbed.

You've heard of farm-to-table dining. Now a tech start-up is serving up chef-to-home dining. Kitchit, which launched September in the Bay Area, enables people to book well-known chefs online. The professional chef works with you to create a customized menu -- “from world-class gastronomic adventures to casual dinner parties” -- buys all the ingredients, cooks the meal in your kitchen, plates and serves the courses, and cleans up at the end. The San Francisco start-up on Tuesday launched its service in Los Angeles, its second market.