Food & Wine names 2009 Best New Chefs in America

Food & Wine magazine has announced the winners of its 21st annual Best New Chefs awards. At a celebration at City Winery in New York City, Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin announced the names of the 11 up-and-coming chefs, hailing from restaurants around the country:

• Nate Appleman, A16 and SPQR, San Francisco
• Bryan Caswell, Reef, Houston
• Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook, Animal, Los Angeles
• Kelly English, Restaurant Iris, Memphis
• Mark Fuller, Spring Hill, Seattle
• Linton Hopkins, Restaurant Eugene and Holeman & Finch, Atlanta
• Christopher Kostow, Meadowood, St. Helena, Calif.
• Paul Liebrandt, Corton, New York City
• Barry Maiden, Hungry Mother, Cambridge, Mass.
• Naomi Pomeroy, Beast, Portland, Ore.

The magazine works with restaurant critics, food writers and other experts nationwide to identify outstanding chefs who have been in charge of a kitchen for less than five years. The editors then visit the restaurants in secret to taste the food themselves. The winners will be featured in the July issue of Food & Wine and will travel to Colorado in June for the 27th annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.

Video examines intellectual property for the food & hospitality industry

Who invented hummus: Lebanon or Israel? Who owns a restaurant's recipes: the chef or the restaurateur? Can a bakery be sued for decorating its cupcakes with the same pattern of sprinkles as another bakery who did it first? Intellectual property rights for the food and hospitality industry are surfacing as culinary litigation becomes more common.

As a result, intellectual property law firm Cowen, Liebowitz & Latman released a 30-minute video broken into five 5- to 7-minute segments that examine intellectual property in the foodservice industry pertaining to recipes, names, logos, décor and product packaging.

The video is available here. For more information, visit www.cll.com.