For most D.C.-area food nerds, any mention of Eric Ziebold brings the sound of excited titters. As the executive chef of CityZen, Ziebold brings to our area the thoughtful, service-oriented cooking of the world-renowned French Laundry, where he was the restaurant’s first-ever sous chef. He also spent time in the kitchens of Spago and Vidalia, and staged in France. In 2005, he was named one of the country’s best new chefs by Food & Wine Magazine.

The lore of Chef Ziebold has spread further through this rather amazing account of his taking extreme charge of the line during his tenure at The French Laundry, which he is decidedly modest about – chalking it up to the “dance” of the kitchen and knowing its layout.

This year Chef Ziebold is nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic Region. He took some time to sit down with DCist and talk, at length, about what influences his cooking.

You’ve traveled extensively through Europe and many parts of Asia. How has this influenced you?

You don’t need to travel to learn new things, but I’ve had many eye-opening experiences. At Spago in 1992 we were doing the salad everyone was doing with the spinach, bleu cheese, candied walnuts, and sliced pears. The candied walnuts, sometimes I got right and sometimes I didn’t. I went to Hong Kong for the first time in 2001 or 2002. They were making the candied walnuts, and you saw them at every Chinese restaurant. And they were always perfect. So I asked this guy who spoke about 15 words of English – and I don’t speak any Chinese – but I got it. They come out perfect 10 times out of 10.

Photo courtesy of the Mandarin Oriental