Umami is defined as the fifth basic taste and can be described as a savory, fuller flavor that involves all the senses. But to many chefs, the word means so much more.

Kevin Dunn, a chef who teaches the ins and outs of plant-based cuisine in Michigan, defines umami beautifully—and yes, I'm jealous because his palate has clearly isolated the taste:

"Umami is a Japanese term that means a true memory of flavor. One Japanese philosophy relates this to MSG and to a meaty mushroom or seaweed taste. My philosophy is that umami is a memory of flavors created by your experiences. Have you ever driven down the road and been hit with an all-consuming taste for something—say, apple pie—and the feelings are so real that you could taste the apple pie—the cinnamon, the crust, the crispness of the apple? That is umami, and all great chefs possess the ability to bring those flavors into their minds in order to develop keen flavors in their cuisine."

Just a few of the umami-rich foods out there are green tea, tomatoes, soy beans, and mushrooms, such as shiitake and enokitake. Dried shiitake mushrooms have an especially high level of umami, and that's why they are the perfect ingredient to use in chef Dunn's own mock eel recipe.

The super-savory shiitakes make this simple recipe full of flavor. I added sliced carrots and jalapeños into the mock eel recipe, and then served it over brown rice. I have no clue what eel actually tastes like, so I can't say if this is a convincing imitation, but I can say that it was good, and it may be one of the first times I've found umami.

Be sure to check out the recipe for mock eel, and read more about chef Dunn.

I agree with chef Bonnie Tees that stir-fries are one of the most poorly prepared (and, in my opinion, over prepared) vegetarian menu items out there. If I have to eat another bland burrito, stir-fry, or plate of spaghetti with marinara, so help me God…

With that said, it's nice that in today's food world, vegetarian options have finally expanded beyond the three fallback items above. Restaurants around the world are now more willing to take chances with vegetarian dishes—even if that chance is just an updated version of an old classic.

Chef Bonnie, from Bonnys in Montréal, was sweet enough to share this recipe for cannelloni—the classic tube-shaped pasta that is often stuffed with a creamy filling before being covered in tomato sauce and baked.

I opted to add extra sauce to my "cannelloni" (I had to follow Bonnie's advice and use rolled lasagne sheets because I couldn't find cannelloni), which I learned is now acceptable because The New York Times says so. The result was a comforting dish that surprisingly had even more flavor than I had expected from the minimal ingredients.

The chatter will be kept to a minimum in this entry because the recipe itself is quite long. It's not difficult or all that time-consuming—it just needs a lengthy explanation.

On Gourmet magazine's site, I found an interesting recipe by David Chang that pairs sautéed mushrooms with a pistachio purée. I made just a few changes to his recipe—mostly just to make it easier—without greatly altering the main components of the dish. Enjoy.

Just because I'm vegan doesn't mean I'm not mildly obsessed with the Food Network, like many of you out there. Now if only they'd hold a vegan Iron Chef competition, I think my life would be complete.

In the meantime, I can pick and choose which recipes I want to veganize, and today's winner is a rice pudding created by Giada De Laurentiis and featured on the Food Network's vegetarian Christmas menu. (Psst…I'm also featuring another item from the menu in a guest post on Almost Vegetarian sometime before Christmas. I can't tell you which one, but be sure to check it out.)

Rice pudding has long been a traditional holiday dish worldwide. Wikipedia's rice pudding page describes variations of the dish that can be found in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas and gives the history of the dessert. Some of the recipes are already vegan, like the Puerto Rican version, which is made with coconut milk, and the others can be easily veganized.

Giada's recipe is one that fell into the "easily veganized" category, because I only had to substitute the soy milk. Once this creamy pudding started simmering on the stove and the smell of vanilla and orange zest filled the air, I knew that Christmas is almost here—and that I had found the perfect dessert to finish off my holiday meal.

Not sure of the difference between tofu and tempeh? Need to know how to make vegan versions of your family's favorite recipes? Worried about how a vegan diet will affect your health?

Luckily, chef and author Robin Robertson kindly answers questions just like these, right here on VegCooking.com, in the monthly column titled "Ask the Vegan Chef." If you have a question for Robin, browse past questions and answers here, where you can also submit your own questions.

As promised, this is part two of the sneak peek at Robin's answers to your latest questions.

Ask the Vegan Chef, Part 2
Answers by Robin Robertson

Q. I am working on redoing our vegetarian options on our plated menu here at the Hynes Convention Center. I want to start using vegan meats. I have a bunch of recipes for the basic vegan meats, but they all call for veggie beef broth or veggie fish stock, etc. What I can't find is how to make the veggie meat broths. Any info you could give me would be of great help. Thank you.

A. A good rich homemade vegetable stock can be used to add great flavor to recipes—you might try that first and see if you don't agree. If you really want a more "meaty" flavor, you could add one of the following products to your broth (available in natural food stores or online): Vegex Beefy Flavoring, Vogue VegeBase Vegetable Broth Mix, or Vogue Reduced Sodium Instant Vegetarian Chicken Base. Here's one site that sells these products: www.healthy-eating.com.

Q. I've tried to go vegetarian many times but don't seem to have the "intestinal fortitude" for it. Let's just say, all those beans and tofu do not agree with me. How can I become vegetarian without spending the day in the bathroom, popping Tums every hour, and burping every three minutes? Can it happen with a gradual adjustment? Is there a bean out there that's easier to digest? Or a way to cook them that would be easier on my system? I really want to stop eating meat, but it sure makes life uncomfortable! Any input would be appreciated.

A. Here are some things that can help: Soak dried beans in water for eight hours or overnight, and then discard the soaking water before cooking. After soaking, drain the beans and cook them in fresh water. Be sure to cook the beans until they're very soft, because this will make them more digestible. Adding the dried sea vegetable kombu or the herb epazote to a pot of beans is believed to help make them more digestible. Just add 2 teaspoons dried epazote or a 2-inch strip of kombu to the pot before cooking the beans. Begin eating beans just a few times a week until your body gets used to digesting them. Soon, you should be able to eat them more often. Some beans are said to be easier to digest than others. Among the most digestible are adzuki, black-eyed peas, and lentils. If all else fails, use a digestive enzyme product to make beans easier to digest. These products are generally taken as a tablet or sprinkled on cooked beans before eating them.

Q. This Christmas, I was given a Lodge cast-iron Dutch oven to use at my campsite. It came with a cookbook with all sorts of chicken, beef, etc., recipes. My daughter is vegan, and I try to stay as close to her diet as possible. Where can I find vegan recipes for cooking over my campfire?

A. Check out this VegCooking.com feature: "Cooking With Fire". There are also some cookbooks that can help, such as The Vegetarian Grill by Andrea Chesman. You also might enjoy some of the quick-and-easy recipes for cooking with nonperishable food in Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out by Jon Robertson (and for which I wrote the recipes).

This might be the only time in my life when I'll say "I wish I lived in New Jersey." I was reading over the "Chef Spotlight" profile for Joseph Rosolen when this little nugget of information caught my eye: "A few years later, he recognized that busy people needed a fast, convenient way to have delicious, healthy food delivered to them, and in 2006, Online Vegetarian Deli was born."

Yes, that's right—in New Jersey you'll find a delivery service that specializes in healthy vegan and vegetarian meals, with menus updated weekly. This week's offerings include a seitan cutlet sandwich, broccoli rabe over pasta, black-bean and winter squash stew, and vegan mac and cheese, to name just a few items on the all-vegan list. Why don't they have services like this everywhere?

Since I don't live in Jersey, I decided to try out one of the recipes that Joe shared with us here, an Italian potato salad. The key to success with such a simple dish is using the best ingredients available—so if it didn't turn out, I'd only have myself to blame, not Joe. To add just a little more to the salad, I left the skin of the potatoes on and garnished with just a few capers. The result was a simple yet flavorful dish, largely because of the high-quality olive oil I used.

Raw chef Chad Sarno has agreed to do a guest post for us today that features his recipe for beetroot ravioli with cashew-chive bourson cheese, green-garlic oil, and aged balsamic. Yum. Be sure to visit his site, rawchef.com, and the site of his restaurant, Saf: Simple Authentic Food, after reading the post.

This is one of my favorite and easiest versions of raw ravioli. In my Istanbul and Munich restaurants, we offer many small plates, encouraging our guests to share and experience many options off the menu. I have offered this dish on our opening menu, and it was by far the best selling small plate we offered for the winter. It is a great starter or amusé for any Mediterranean-focused meal, really giving the diner that first delicious introduction of what is to follow. The sweetness of the beetroot and the cashew-based cheese is balanced out very nicely with the acid of the balsamic and spiciness of the garlic oil.

Wine Suggestion: 2005 Gruner Veltliner, Wimmer-Czerny, "Alte Reben Weelfel," Wagram, Austria

The natural acidity of the GV grape is rounded out by rich notes of honeysuckle, pear and a hint of mulling spices softening the sweetness of the cashew-bourson while not conflicting with the garlic oil and balsamic.

I think the opposite is clearly a bit closer to the truth if you look at this quotation from chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain:

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."

Don't get me wrong—I like Anthony Bourdain as much as any vegan really can. I read Kitchen Confidential, and I enjoy No Reservations and his bad attitude in general—just not when it's directed at me.

In reaction to ole Tony's disdain for those of us who avoid animal products, a blog appropriately titled Hezbollah Tofu has started up to prove that there's nothing lacking about vegan recipes, even when they're based on Bourdain's own recipes.

But wait! It gets even better. Now we can see how these veganized versions are stacking up against Tony's originals. Endless Simmer lets visitors vote in its regular "Who Cooked It Better?" series, and this time it is Bourdain's French onion soup vs. Hezbollah Tofu's veganized version.

I'm not sure when the polls close, so hurry and vote now!

Thanks go out to Brendan for the tip on this great story.

Vegan bakeries are popping up all over the country. In many cities, vegans can walk right into what appears to be just your normal bakery, only to find that they can order anything on the menu. I'm obviously insanely jealous because the same is not true in Atlanta (why not?!). Sure, we have coffee shops and Cosmo's that offer vegan baked goods from wholesale bakers, but I need a storefront. I need to walk in the door and see glass cases full of cakes, cookies, and brownies so that I can drool over each. Picking up one brownie covered in plastic wrap off a shelf isn't quite the same as seeing endless, beautiful options.

People who live in D.C. are blessed to have seemingly endless, beautiful options because their city is home to the all-vegan Sticky Fingers Bakery. Yeah, I'm jealous of them too. But at least I can read about the bakery this month on VegCooking.com because we are profiling Ben Adams, the pastry chef from Sticky Fingers Bakery, in our Chef Spotlight. After reading about his training, techniques, and ability to whip up Cinnamon Sticky Buns, Chocolate Love Cake, and I Dream of Cheesecake, you'll be jealous too.

You can read about Ben and Sticky Fingers here.

I don't know how I missed this, but on the last episode of Hell's Kitchen, Chef Ramsay asked the remaining contestants to identify the missing ingredient in three dishes: chicken parmesan, beef stew, and sausage ravioli. Not one of the chefs could identify the missing ingredient in any of the dishes—meat.

That's right, Chef Ramsay replaced the chicken and beef with vegetarian Gardein "meats" (available at Whole Foods deli counters and in California and Arizona as the brand It's All Good), and the sausage with Lightlife's soy sausage. Even Ben, who claims that he has "the best palate in the world," couldn't tell that they were faux meats.

If you're a fan of these products or Morningstar Farms Meal Starter Strips, this probably isn't very surprising to you either, since these products taste great and have a convincing texture. As always, I was amused by the show, but definitely not surprised. You can watch the clip here:

Great Chefs Cook Vegan by Linda Long

Charlie Trotter, Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Suzanne Goin—these are just a few of the contributors for the soon-to-be-released cookbook Great Chefs Cook Vegan by Linda Long. And the word "great" in the title is by no means an exaggeration.

The pages of the book are filled with recipes from an impressive group of A-list chefs who have kindly omitted the animal products they usually work with in order to create 100 percent vegan menus.

The recipes in the book are for high-end cuisine that would be a perfect fit for the pages of Gourmet or one of the many books where I've read about these very chefs. Reading about the food world is one of my favorite things, but it is always a bit disappointing because I know that I can't (by choice) experience what is being described. It has always been my dream that vegan food would become a bigger part of these magazines and books, and now Long has helped bring that dream to life by compiling all of these amazing recipes and by including gorgeous photos of each.

You can win your very own copy of the book—which won't be on shelves until August—by commenting here. Leave a short message and tell me something about one of your favorite chefs. No, they don't have to be vegetarian chefs, but please make the comments as veg-friendly as possible (don't say you like the chef at your local barbecue joint because of his tasty ribs—that's not gonna fly!).

The contest ends on August 15, and one winner will be selected and notified by August 22. And just so you know…by leaving a comment, you're acknowledging that you've read and agreed to our privacy policy and our terms and conditions. Good luck!

A few beautiful pictures from the book:

Zucchini Boxes Provencal with Black Mosto Oil, Red Pickled Shallots, and Opal Basil by Daniel Boulud*

Homemade Garlic Tortillas with Tofu Scrambled Eggs, Roasted Seven-Tomato Salsa, and Fresh Guacamole by Josef Huber*

Grilled King Oyster Mushrooms and Avocado Carpaccio with Charred Jalapeno Oil by Jean-Georges Vongerichten*

Caramelized Silken Tofu "Brûlée" with Marinated Strawberries by Alex Stratta*

*Photographs by Linda Long from Great Chefs Cook Vegan. Reprinted with permission by Gibbs Smith.

After a long honeymoon filled with eating food that was far from healthy, I find myself still on a junk-food kick. I decided that I needed to start eating some vegetables again—but that they should be prepared in a way that is still almost sinful. That's how I stumbled upon this recipe for spinach and artichoke dip.

Sure, the name sounds healthy, but when you add a cup of vegan mayo and cheese to any veggies, you certainly cancel out almost all health benefits from the main ingredients. But, that shouldn't scare you away from making this delicious dip every once in a while. It's wonderful—and easy—as an occasional appetizer that can be eaten in small portions.

I visited Savannah on my honeymoon and saw the line formed outside Paula Deen's restaurant—no matter what time it was, night or day—and I'm certain this recipe would make the queen of Southern cuisine proud! Enjoy.

You may remember my raving a few months ago about a new cookbook titled Great Chefs Cook Vegan. Since receiving the book, I've been testing recipe after recipe and I've loved every one of them. My only complaint is that fancy food can be complicated!

To help give you a taste of the book, without making you break a sweat, I've slightly simplified one of my favorites and featured it here. It's the Potato and Leek "Risotto" With Mushrooms recipe, courtesy of Alex Stratta.

I know that when you look at the steps below, you might not believe this is the easier version, but trust me, it is! In Great Chefs Cook Vegan, Stratta's recipe goes into even greater detail and gives you the steps for making your own mushroom stock. He also opts for more expensive mushrooms, like chanterelle and porcini, while I stuck with portobello in order to keep costs down.

My easier, poor man's version below is almost as delicious as the original, but you can see for yourself! You can test the easier version (found here) and check out Great Chefs Cook Vegan to try the original.

As promised in yesterday's interview with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, here is a delicious blueberry cobbler recipe from her book, The Joy of Vegan Baking: The Compassionate Cooks' Traditional Treats and Sinful Sweets. Colleen says, "This could easily be called fruit cobbler [because] it invites the inclusion of any berry or fruit such as apples or peaches. Because I love biscuits and berries so much, this is one of my favorite desserts."

Enjoy!

Many people these days are skipping foods such as meat, cheese, and eggs in favor of healthier, more sustainable foods. Their reason for avoiding animal products isn't because of the cruelty involved but rather for health or environmental reasons, so they might not identify themselves as vegan or even vegetarian. Instead, they're accidentally vegan.

This is exactly how omnivorous chef Devra Gartenstein came to write the popular cookbook The Accidental Vegan. She's not vegan but avoids most animal products in order to keep her cholesterol down. In 2000, she compiled her healthy and diverse recipes—which feature simple instructions and no-fuss ingredients—for the original printing of The Accidental Vegan, but a new and improved edition has just been released.

We are giving away three copies of the new edition of The Accidental Vegan, which features more than 20 new recipes!

Just tell us why you're vegan or vegetarian by commenting (choose a reason from the list below), and three winners will be chosen at random.

a) Ethical reasons
b) Health reasons
c) Environmental reasons
d) All of the above
e) I'm not—but I love reading blogs about delicious vegan food!

The contest ends on March 30, and we'll contact the winners by April 3. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. Good luck!

It's no secret that I'm a Southerner who loves to indulge in soul food. It's often thought of as fried, fatty deliciousness that's nowhere near being good for you. Most of the time this is true, but it doesn't have to be, and Chef Bryant Terry is here to help you enjoy the healthier side of soul food.

Last month, Terry released Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, which features 150 recipes inspired by African-American and Southern cooking (aka "soul food"). Unlike many stereotypical soul-food dishes, the recipes in Vegan Soul Kitchen call for healthy ingredients and use healthy cooking techniques, and they're still loaded with flavor.

Now is your chance to win one of two free copies of this new cookbook! Just leave a short comment below telling me about your favorite soul-food dish, and please keep it vegan-friendly. Two winners will be chosen at random.

The contest ends on April 30, and we'll contact the winners by May 5. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. Good luck!

Reading your entries for last week's cookbook contest has been making my mouth water! I can only read about soul food for so long before I have to make a dash for the kitchen to whip up some for myself. Since Vegan Soul Kitchen was the source of this sudden craving, it's only appropriate that I try out a recipe from Chef Bryant Terry's book.

After rummaging through my pantry, I found a can of black-eyed peas and decided to use them to make Terry's black-eyed pea fritters. I know, I know—his recipe calls for dried beans, and they are better for you and cheaper, but canned black-eyed peas still get the job done.

Black-Eyed Pea Fritters

The recipe is fairly straightforward but includes a couple of unusual items that aren't normally found in fritters. One of them is peanuts. Also, I must admit that I did not use coconut oil and instead opted for plain ol' vegetable oil. Regardless, the fritters were still delicious.

Check out the recipe, which is on Terry's Web site. It comes complete with cute music, art, and book recommendations! And you can enter to win your own copy of the book here.

New York City is known for great restaurants, and vegetarian restaurants are no exception. You could borough-hop for a week and never eat at the same place twice if you didn't want to. And one of the restaurants that you might find yourself revisiting is Chef Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy, where the focus is on vegetables—and where everything on the menu is available as vegan or vegetarian.

I'm happy to announce that Amanda has been named "Chef of the Month" for October and has given us a little insight to her food background and philosophy. Check out our Q&A with Amanda below, and be sure not to miss her recipes at the end of the post.

Chef of the Month: Amanda Cohen

Where did you train to become a chef?
The Natural Gourmet.

What type of cuisine do you focus on?
Well, I've cooked vegetarian, vegan, raw, and meat, but Dirt Candy is where I get to do what I love: vegetarian cooking.

Do you have a favorite cooking method?
My philosophy is: whatever works. Everything at Dirt Candy comes in a vegan and a non-vegan version, and I really like skipping back and forth between vegan and vegetarian cooking. Vegan cooking is challenging in a way that's a lot of fun. It wakes your brain up. And I actually think that the Orange Tofu we serve is better vegan (we use coconut milk in the sauce instead of butter).

What are your favorite ingredients to work with?
Right now, what I'm really into are potatoes. And even though beet season is wrapping up, I'll probably stay obsessed with them until the year's last beet is pulled up out of the dirt.

What are the most important elements in cooking great vegetarian cuisine?
Vegetarian food should be about what you can eat, not what you can't. Aping the "protein, sauce, side of veg" format of the standard meat dish just reminds omnivorous diners of what they're not eating, and it doesn't do justice to vegetables, fruits, grains, and all the other fun stuff we get to play with. To me, breaking the "meat replacement" mold is the most important element in cooking great vegetarian food.

What is the key to getting meat-eaters to enjoy vegetarian food?
One of the things I'm most proud of is how many committed carnivores have been dragged into Dirt Candy against their will by friends or significant others and have come up to me afterwards and said how much they loved it. I think the key is that you have to have fun, but you also have to take it seriously. You have to have fun because that's what eating out is about. The more fun you have in the kitchen, the more fun your customers are going to have. On the other hand, you have to take what you do seriously. You have to be able to cook as well as any classically trained French chef, and you have to be willing to have your food compared to restaurants that "cheat" by putting bacon on everything.

What, in your opinion, does the future of plant-based cuisine hold?
I think the challenge to all of us is that we have to be better. Vegetarian chefs are like the Ginger Rogers to the omnivore chef's Fred Astaire: Our job is harder because we have to do everything they do, only backwards and in high heels. We have to work twice as hard for half the respect. Despite this, we desperately need to engage with the mainstream food world, because it's not enough to preach to the choir anymore. Chefs and owners, myself included, need to step up our game. We need to become the 4.0 GPA overachievers of food.

And there is a huge opportunity here. Most omnivore chefs would rather spend their time playing with pork belly and offal because that's the kind of "rock and roll" cooking the food press currently celebrates. Vegetables are considered unworthy of their attention. Which means that young, hungry chefs who want to make a mark and who are really passionate about vegetables have a wide-open field in which to play. Vegetables are like the Wild West of cooking right now—there are no rules. Every day in my kitchen I feel like I'm on the best downhill plunge of the coolest roller coaster ever built.

In your opinion, what vegetarian dish or type of food is most frequently prepared poorly and why?
I think dishes with some kind of meat replacement like seitan or tempeh or mock meat usually wind up tasting pretty boring because they often use a mishmash of techniques and unpleasant-to-work-with products. And that's really too bad. Mock meats come out of the Chinese temple cooking tradition, and when you have Chinese vegetarian food done right it's mind-blowingly good.

If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only eat one kind of ethnic food, what would it be?
Indian. It has the world's oldest and best vegetarian food tradition, and it's one of the world's greatest cuisines to boot—and to my shame I know too little about it.

Can you give us one great cooking tip for aspiring vegetarian chefs?
If you're aspiring to work in a professional kitchen, work on your technique. Find the toughest, busiest restaurant you can and get a job on their line. Show up for work every day. Stay for at least a year. By the time your year is up, you'll either realize that working in a professional kitchen isn't for you and you'll move on to something that makes you happier, or you'll be on your way to having an indestructible technique that'll make you a ninja master in the kitchen.

For the home cook: fearless experimentation. Find the ethnic grocery stores in your neighborhood and buy copies of Linda Bladholm's The Asian Grocery Store Demystified. She's got one for Asian grocery stores, one for Indian grocery stores, and one for Mexican grocery stores. Take the books with you when you shop. Buy things you've never tried. There are so many awesome vegetarian traditions around the world that you can steal from, you'll never get bored. Then get one good knife (and learn how to sharpen it), one good pan, and the world will be your oyster (mushroom).

What are some ingredients that you recommend vegetarians and vegans have in their kitchens to cook with?
Splurge on good oils. Truffle oil, almond oil, hazelnut oil, or pistachio oil are all really nice ways to finish off a dish. You can drizzle them over just about anything, cooked or raw, and they add an extra, savory dimension.

Recipes

•Sweet Carrot Risotto

•Carrot Dumplings

•Carrot Ribbons

Flipping through the pages of a classic by M.F.K. Fisher or James Beard—or even a recent issue of Gourmet—might be an upsetting experience for some vegans. It can be easy to feel left out if you focus more on what you won't eat than what you will—but I don't have that problem.

Immersing myself in the gourmet food world, regardless of whether I'd eat the items mentioned, is always enjoyable, and that's partly because I'm holding out hope that plant-based cuisine will one day be a bigger part of that world. I think that day is finally here.

For the first time ever, a vegan chef will cook an animal-free meal at the James Beard House in New York City.

The James Beard Award
Picasa/Creative Commons

Chef Rich Landau, co-owner and chef of Horizons, a vegan restaurant in Philadelphia, has the honor of creating the first cruelty-free meal at the James Beard House on November 3. Tickets are available to the public and can be ordered online.

James Beard was known for turning American food into a cohesive and gourmet cuisine. Finally, vegan recipes will be recognized as a significant part of it when Chef Landau takes advantage of this prestigious opportunity.

Landau says, "It has always been my mission to create interesting and delicious food that just so happens to be vegan," and I can't wait to see what he cooks up at the culinary mecca. If you are lucky enough to attend the event, please let me know what you think!