Is there a harder working chef out there than Todd Gray? It doesn’t look like it.

Just as DCist reported earlier this month, the brand-spanking-new, New Orleans-style restaurant Acadiana (901 New York Avenue NW) held a benefit today for the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation. The bill of fare included a $25 shrimp or roast beef po’boy with a bag of Route 11 sweet potato chips. We enjoyed the chips but were at first befuddled by the Virginia-based chip company’s inclusion. With sweet potatoes’ prevelence in Creole cooking, the chips added an…

The 2005 RAMMYs aren’t the only culinary awards on the horizon. The nominees for the 2005 James Beard Foundation awards were announced yesterday (.pdf). The awards are separated into three general segments, cookbooks, journalism, and restaurants and chefs. In the journalism segment, Todd Kliman of the City Paper (who most recently “reviewed” Perdu) was nominated for Best Newspaper Column for his weekly “Young and Hungry” feature. Tom Sietsema of the Post has been nominated for…