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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the American celebrity chef who is known to have raised the roof on the Manhattan school of Italian cooking with restaurants like Scarpetta?

He was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on Feb. 19, 1971. Growing  up in an Italian-American household, his early love of cooking led him to take cooking classes at the age of 11. At 15, he enrolled at the WF Kaynor Technical High School for Culinary Arts, and then attended the Culinary Institute of America.

While at the CIA, he interned at the famous New York City restaurant San Domenico, an experience that had a decisive impact on the young chef.  

After graduation, he spent a year in Munich, Germany mastering the art of pastry at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. He returned to the US and San Domenico, working as a sous chef and helping the restaurant garner three stars from the New York Times.

In 1995, Cesare Casella selected him to be the chef de cuisine at Il Toscanaccio, an Upper East Side Tuscan style restaurant.  A year later, he went on to revamp two institutions: Barolo in SoHo and Chianti on the Upper East Side.  

With these restos, his modern take on Italian cuisine got the attention of New Yorkers, earning him a loyal following and a glowing two-star review from the New York Times in 2000.

In 2001, he traveled to Italy for an extensive tour where he worked with some of the country’s most celebrated chefs to further master his craft, and reconnected with his mother’s family in Benevento. Truly inspired,  he returned to the US with a menu that seamlessly fused the classic dishes of his childhood with his own interpretations of Italian cuisine.

A year later, his signature pastas appeared on the cover of Food & Wine, and the magazine went on to name him one of America’s Best New Chefs in 2004.  L’Impero received top honors from the James Beard Foundation in 2003, including the Best New Restaurant in the US and Outstanding Restaurant Design.

Following L’Impero, he went on to open Alto, “a sophisticated Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan that offered his interpretation of Northern Italian cuisine.”

In 2008, he opened a new restaurant, Scarpetta in Chelsea, Manhattan. An Italian expression that means “little shoe” or the shape that bread takes when used to soak up a dish, Scarpetta represents the pure pleasure of savoring every part of a meal to its last bite.  It is this philosophy that follows him wherever he goes, including the McCarran International Airport’s American Express Centurion Lounge in Las Vegas, which opened in 2013.

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Last week’s question:  Who is the Dutch architect, interior and product designer who the ‘New York Times’ called the Lady Gaga of Design because of his iconic products like the Knotted Chair?

Answer: Marcel Wanders

Winner: Florence Sim of Dagupan City