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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.

Take everything that connotes Midwestern charm: effusive goodwill, love of community, and a killer work ethic, and you will find its embodiment in Chef Chris Pandel. His food is just as appealing—rooted in classic French technique and predominantly local Midwestern ingredients, Pandel’s cooking is rustic, yet refined. Pandel graduated from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, and then spent what he calls “graduate school” in New York City, at Café Boulud under Chef Andrew Carmellini. He soon returned to his roots in Chicago, as well as to a job at TRU, which led to a position as corporate chef at three of Chef Rick Tramonto’s restaurants. Of his mentors, Pandel says Carmellini molded him into a cook, and that under Tramonto, he earned a “sense of self” in the kitchen and the know-how to run a business. In 2008, Pandel opened neighborhood eatery, The Bristol. Located in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood, Pandel’s menu features handmade pastas and charcuterie; farm-fresh, locally sourced produce; and a nose-to-tail approach to cooking. Balena, an ode to Italian influenced simplicity, opened in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in March of 2012. Balena’s menu consists of handmade pastas; pizzas from the wood-fire oven; and locally sourced, farm-fresh meats and produce. Balena was included in Bon Appetit’s list of 25 best new restaurants in 2012, and was nominated for a James Beard “Best New Restaurant” Award. Pandel opened Formento’s on Chicago’s West Loop “Restaurant Row” in January 2015. Formento's is an Italian-American heritage restaurant with warm hospitality and polished service, reminiscent of a 1950's red sauce joint,” featuring classic Italian-American fare grounded in tradition. In October 2015 Pandel, along with Boka Restaurant Group and B. Hospitality Co. opened Swift & Sons, a retro modern steakhouse that celebrates the history of Chicago’s meatpacking district. At Swift & Sons Pandel provides the restaurant with his signature focus on high quality, locally sourced ingredients and classic cooking techniques presenting a menu of reinvented steakhouse classics, “boutique beef,” thoughtful vegetarian dishes and seasonal sides. Most recently, Pandel opened Cold Storage, located adjacent to Swift & Sons, in December 2015. The casual seafood concept offers an approachable menu of fresh seafood, salads, and sandwiches. Chris's Restaurants:Cold Storage (Chicago, IL)Swift & Sons (Chicago, IL)

Vivian Howard, chef-owner of Chef & the Farmer in North Carolina, was a locavore way before it was cool. As a daughter of tobacco- and hog-farming parents, she ate with the ebb and flow of seasons in her hometown, Deep Run, North Carolina. But as an aspiring journalist, her dreams felt too big for butter beans and biscuits: she was plotting an escape to New York. “I just wanted night to sound like car horns and people instead of frogs and crickets,” she writes in her James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, Deep Run Roots.After college, Howard got a job in advertising, but when she found herself hiding on a vacant floor to take naps during her lunch break, she quit and finally gave in to her passion for food. From a server at Greenwich Village’s Voyage, she worked her way up to being a member of the opening team at Jean­-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market. But eventually, Howard's roots called her back home, where she opened Chef & the Farmer to preserve, stew and transform the foods of her childhood into her own cuisine. The intimate relationship between chef, ingredients, and hometown became the subject of “A Chef’s Life,” the Peabody and Daytime Emmy award-winning series that also earned her a James Beard Award for Outstanding Personality/Host in 2016. “The ingredients are characters who shape my life," she writes. "Eastern North Carolina is my Tuscany, my Szechuan, my Provence.” Of course, hints of Italy make themselves known in her crunchy endive salad with Parmesan and pine nuts, while Southeast France peeks through in her spicy fish stew.Like Howard herself, her dishes may start out local, but they succumb to wanderlust. The recipes she’s made for Panna are no exception: BLT Dip, a blissful concoction that reimagines the flavors of an iconic American sandwich, includes a touch of tarragon and anchovy; her glazed pecans—aka "Viv's Addiction"—are tossed in a powerful mix of paprika, cumin, chipotle, and coriander. We can't wait for you to turn Howard's kaleidoscopic Southern dishes into traditions of your own.Vivian's Restaurants:Chef & the Farmer (Kinston, NC)Boiler Room (Kinston, NC)Benny's Big Time (Wilmington, NC)Vivian's Book:Deep Run Roots (2016)