Ronnie Woo is the chef and owner of The Delicious Cook, an LA-based private chef company that specializes in four-star dining experiences. He is an accomplished professional chef and culinary personality celebrated by his fans and peers alike for his infectious personality and creative “Cali-Asian” cuisine, which combines fresh California flavors with Asian influences. Woo’s extensive travel around the world has helped him acquire new techniques and recipe inspiration, drawing from both his personal experiences and the chefs with whom he’s worked. He is a regular guest on various shows, including The Today Show, Rachael Ray, Food Network, The Kitchen, Pickler & Ben, Beat Bobby Flay, Hollywood Today Live, FABLife, Home & Family, and Home Made Simple on the OWN Network. Woo just launched his YouTube channel, starting with his first original series titled Craving Jetlag, which follows him as he travels the world tasting new cuisines, visits unique hotels, and experiences the local adventures and experiences.
In 1978, Ina Garten found herself working in the White House on nuclear energy policy and thinking, "There's got to be more to life than this!" She saw an ad for a small food store for sale in a place she'd never been: the Hamptons at the end of Long Island. She and her husband drove up to investigate and made the owner an offer on the spot. Two months later she found herself the owner of Barefoot Contessa, a 400-sq. ft. specialty food store.Twenty years later, Barefoot Contessa grew to a 3,000-square-foot food emporium where twenty cooks and bakers prepared the food. Twenty-five more employees worked in the store helping thousands of customers to choose breads, salads, dinners and baked goods to take home. In 1996, Ina sold the store to her employees. In 2003, the new owners of Barefoot Contessa decided to close their doors and go on to new adventures.In 1999, Ina wrote her first book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which was one of the best-selling cookbooks of the year. The book invites readers into her specialty food store and shares the recipes that made it such a success. In 2001, Ina followed with best-selling Barefoot Contessa Parties! in which she invites readers into her home and shares her ideas and recipes for having parties that are fun for all — including the host. Her follow-up cookbooks, Barefoot Contessa Family Style (2002), Barefoot in Paris (2004), Barefoot Contessa at Home (2006), Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics (2008), Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That? (2010) Barefoot Contessa Foolproof (2012), Make It Ahead (2014) and Cooking for Jeffrey (2016) all continue her style of cooking with easy, delicious, and foolproof recipes that you can make at home.In 2006, Ina and her business partner Frank Newbold started a successful line of Barefoot Contessa Pantry products, comprised of baking mixes and sauces developed from recipes in her cookbooks.Ina has been a columnist for Martha Stewart Living magazine, O, the Oprah magazine and House Beautiful magazine.Ina lives in East Hampton, N.Y., and Southport, Conn., with her husband Jeffrey, who is a professor at the Yale School of Management.Ina currently hosts Barefoot Contessa on Food Network.
Growing up around expert and traditional cooks in Tijuana, Mexico, Marcela was raised to be passionate about food, and she jumped straight into a culinary life with her first job working at her aunt’s cooking school in Baja, Mexico. Marcela realized she, too, wanted to pursue this growing love for food full time and enrolled in the Los Angeles Culinary Institute. She then went to the Ritz Escoffier Cooking School in Paris to become trained as a classical French pastry chef. Marcela later returned home to run a catering company and teach children about the culinary arts in Tijuana, all while collecting recipes and applying her knowledge and skills of her family’s cooking traditions to map out her dreams. She successfully translated her culinary knowledge and passion to the small screen as the host of her own Food Network series, Mexican Made Easy, which premiered in 2010. Wanting to share her expertise on great Mexican food that combines freshness and flavor with kitchen ease, Marcela published Fresh Mexico: 100 Simple Recipes for True Mexican Flavor” (Clarkson Potter) in 2009, Mexican Made Easy (Clarkson Potter) in 2011 and Casa Marcela: Recipes and Food Stories of My Life in the Californias (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) in 2017. Marcela lives in San Diego with her family.
Marcela is a judge on Best Baker in America.
Duff eats his way through some of the best desserts the bold city of Dallas has to offer: from a delicious Coconut Pie made by an old-timer at a legendary diner, to Tableside S'mores made from scratch at an updated roadhouse, to a Peppermint Red Velvet Whoopee Pie, a Texas-style version of the Amish pastry. When a dish is called a dessert in these parts, you can bet your sweet tooth there's no sugarcoating going on.