Show 37, August 3, 2013: Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas

Life is Beautiful FestivalLas Vegas, a spot known for excess on a grand scale, has never seen anything quite like this before and it’s a really big one!

It’s the Life is Beautiful festival set for some 18 blocks of Downtown Las Vegas (including the grounds of a large casino hotel) from October 25th through Sunday, October 27th. It’s an impressive line-up of world class music, food, art and learning. Tickets are already on sale.

With more than 60 prominent chefs and restaurants, 24 wineries and 24 breweries participating in the culinary part of the festival alone, L.I.B presents the attendees with a full-scale food festival experience. The elite Culinary Advisory Board is headed by Chef Bruce Bromberg of the Blue Ribbon restaurants in New York. (His Las Vegas flagship is Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill at The Cosmopolitan.)

“The food experiences of L.I.B. were carefully designed to be interactive, innovative and unexpected,” says Jolene Mannina, Head of Culinary Arts for the festival. “Working with the vision of our Culinary Advisory Board of 12 world-renowned chefs, we’ve created an approach that we feel will set us apart from other food festivals, giving both our patrons and chefs a chance to enjoy something new, fresh and, of course, delicious.”

Jolene is a local celebrity in her own right in the Las Vegas culinary community. Food critic and former ABC Radio correspondent Al Mancini (creator of the popular Eating Las Vegas guidebook series) calls her the “Queen of The Scene”. She originated a much-talked-about late night chefs’ completion series, the Back of the House Brawl.

Show 25, April 13, 2013: George Motz, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, author, journalist and burger expert

George MotzGeorge’s (a Brooklyn resident) burger epiphany started in Los Angeles some ten years ago at The Apple Pan so he’s tops in our book right from the start. He obviously has good taste.

His new series for Travel Channel, “Burger Land” debuts on Monday evening, April 15th. Appropriately enough the first city profiled is Los Angeles. What’s great about the series is that it’s as much about the stories of the owners of these iconic restaurants as it is about the incredible burgers. If we take Los Angeles as an example you’re going to hear fun stories that have previously been pretty much been untold.

Hamburger America” was George’s second documentary film which was completed in Spring of 2005. The success of that led to the publication of the state-by-state guidebook, Hamburger America. A revised edition of Hamburger America is now in print. It belongs in every burger lovers’ library.