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Eighteen years ago, Chef Fred Mensinga founded Culinary Trends to offer executive chefs the opportunity to be inspired by each others’ recipes. For the first 18 years, Culinary Trends was a subscription-only magazine mailed to readers all over the world and sold on newsstands. Now, in addition to our worldwide subscribers, we’re offering free subscriptions to executive chefs at fine dining restaurants, hotels, private clubs and high-end caterers in California and Nevada.
Here on the web site, you’ll find select articles on restaurants and chefs from our recent issues. You’ll also find some of our favorite recipes and book reviews we think you might enjoy.
With our new regional focus, we’ll be able to cover more about chefs from the Bay Area to Sacramento and Reno; from Los Angeles to Newport to San Diego to Las Vegas. We’ll be emphasizing fresh, California-grown, raised and produced ingredients; from meats, poultry, produce, seafood and wine to prepared canapés, artisan breads, gourmet soups and spectacular desserts.
We intend to become your sourcebook for high quality, hard-to-find ingredients being advertised by local distributors. As we move forward, you’ll see a lot more of these innovate local companies both in the magazine and on these web pages. It’s their advertising that allows us to build this web site, and it’s our plan that you’ll find the advertising as informative as the articles.
Chefs, send us your recipes! Culinary Trends has always been all about the food. Now it can be about your food. We’ll consider adding your recipes to this Web site. Send them with a picture of the dish and a picture of yourself. Include a brief biography. If you’re a chef who also has a passion for the pen (or should I say the keyboard), consider contributing articles about what you know best in the culinary field. Let us hear about what you’re cooking and where you’re serving it. Write to our editor, Carleigh Connelly. Editor@culinarytrends.net
Culinary Trends Editorial Advisory Board
It’s hard to be a magazine about trends in the culinary world without constant input from great chefs. We are pleased to announce that the following chefs have accepted Chef Fred Mensinga’s invitation to serve on the editorial advisory board for the new Culinary Trends as we begin focusing our pages on the chefs and culinary establishments in California and Nevada.
In alphabetical order:
Pierre Albaladejo, Executive Chef, Four Seasons Aviara, Carlsbad, California. Before Aviara, the French-born Albaladejo spent five years as executive chef at the Four Seasons Wailea on Maui.
Frederic Castan, Executive Chef, St. Regis Monarch Resort, Dana Point. French-born and trained, Castan developed a passion for cooking from his mother in Provence. He was named the 2000 Chef on the Rise in America and the 1994 Chef of the Year of Southern California Les Toques Blanches, and was elected to Maitres Cuisiniers de France.
Azmin Ghahreman, Founding Chef, Sappphire Laguna, Laguna Beach. Before opening Sapphire, Chef Ghahreman held executive chef positions at various five-diamond and five-star Four Seasons Hotels throughout the world.
Josef Lageder, Executive Chef at Balboa Bay Club & Resort, Newport Beach. The Austrian-trained chef’s First Cabin restaurant won the prestigious Star Diamond Award.
Vesa Leppala, Executive Chef, Harrah’s Rincon Casino, San Diego. Leppala oversees six restaurants within the casino. She has served as executive chef and regional executive chef in top hotels and resorts all over the globe, including the Kapalua Bay Hotel in Maui.
Fred Mensinga is the founder of Culinary Trends magazine and the long-time Executive Chef at the Anaheim Hilton, where he has cooked for two sitting U.S. Presidents and oversees both restaurant and banquet kitchens. Chef Mensinga is the former chairman of Les Toques Blanches International.
Bradley Ogden, celebrated chef, author and restaurant consultant, is the culinary genius behind nine California restaurants from San Francisco to San Diego, plus Bradley Ogden at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, which won the Restaurant of the Year award from the James Beard Foundation. The American Culinary Institute named him Chef of the Year for 2000.
Charlie Trotter, world-renowned chef and founder of Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. He was named Outstanding Chef by the James Beard Foundation in 1999 and is the author of 14 cook books and three books on restaurant management.
Roy Yamaguchi, founder of Roy’s, the world’s best known Hawaiian-fusion dining establishments with 33 locations worldwide. He is a James Beard award winner and the author of four cook books.