Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken (/ˈhoʊboʊkən/ho-bo-ken;Lenape: Hupokàn ) is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region. Hoboken is also the location of the first recorded baseball game in the United States and of the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the oldest technological universities in the United States.
Hoboken was first settled as part of the Pavonia, New Netherland colony in the 17th century. During the early 19th century the city was developed by Colonel John Stevens, first as a resort and later as a residential neighborhood. It became a township in 1849 and was incorporated as a city in 1855. Its waterfront was an integral part of the Port of New York and New Jersey and home to major industries for most of the 20th century. The character of the city has changed from a blue collar town to one of upscale shops and condominiums. Hoboken is part of the New Jersey Gold Coast.
Oxford
Oxford i/ˈɒksfəd/ is a city in central southern England, the home of the University of Oxford. The city is the county town of Oxfordshire, and forms a district within the county. It has a population of just under 165,000, of whom 153,900 live within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames (also sometimes known as the Isis locally) run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre.
Oxford has a diverse economic base. Its industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing and a large number of information technology and science-based businesses.
Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example of every English architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, including the iconic, mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Auguste Escoffier
Georges Auguste Escoffier (pronounced [ʒɔʁʒ ɔɡyst ɛskɔfje]; 28 October 1846, Villeneuve-Loubet, Alpes-Maritimes – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a legendary figure among chefs and gourmets, and was one of the most important leaders in the development of modern French cuisine. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine, but Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernize Carême's elaborate and ornate style. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings"—though this had also been previously said of Carême), Escoffier was France's pre-eminent chef in the early part of the 20th century.
Alongside the recipes he recorded and invented, another of Escoffier's contributions to cooking was to elevate it to the status of a respected profession by introducing organized discipline to his kitchens. He organized his kitchens by the brigade de cuisine system, with each section run by a chef de partie.
Marie-Antoine Carême
Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême (pronounced: [maʁi ɑ̃twan kaʁɛm]) (8 June 1784–12 January 1833), known as the "King of Chefs, and the Chef of Kings" was an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as haute cuisine, the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery favored by both international royalty and by the newly rich of Paris. Carême is often considered as one of the first internationally renowned celebrity chefs.
Abandoned by his parents in Paris in 1794 at the height of the French Revolution, he worked as a kitchen boy at a cheap Parisian chophouse in exchange for room and board. In 1798, he was formally apprenticed to Sylvain Bailly, a famous pâtissier with a shop near the Palais-Royal. The post-revolutionary Palais Royal was a high profile, fashionable neighborhood filled with vibrant life and bustling crowds. Bailly recognized his talent and ambition. By the time he was prepared to leave Bailly, he could stipulate that he should be free to leave his new employer when a better offer came along. He opened his shop, the Pâtisserie de la rue de la Paix, which he maintained until 1813.
Randy Caparoso
Randy Caparoso (born August 5, 1956) is a Hawaiian career wine professional known for his work as a sommelier/restaurateur, wine journalist (newspaper, magazine and online), wine producer, and wine judge.
After studying Western Philosophy at the University of Hawai`i between 1974 and 1978, Caparoso took his first sommelier position in a traditional French style restaurant in Honolulu called the Cavalier (shuttered in 1988).
In 1988 Caparoso met Chef Roy Yamaguchi, who had previously forged a high profile career in Los Angeles, fusing Asian ingredients and seasonings of his childhood up with the classical, sauce oriented, French cuisine with which he was trained (at that time Yamaguchi described this approach to cooking as Euro-Asian, which he later changed to Hawaiian Fusion). Yamaguchi established his first Roy's restaurant in Honolulu in 1988, bringing on Caparoso as a partner, manager, and wine director. Yamaguchi, Caparoso and other partners went on to open more than thirty other Roy's restaurants from Tokyo to New York, garnering such distinctions as a James Beard Foundation Award, a Gault Millau "Top 50 In the U.S." ranking, and enshrinement in Nation's Restaurant News "Fine Dining Hall of Fame."
Théodule Ribot
Théodule-Augustin Ribot (August 8, 1823 – September 11, 1891) was a French realist painter.
He was born in Saint-Nicolas-d'Attez, and studied at the École des Arts et Métiers de Châlons before moving to Paris in 1845. There he found work decorating gilded frames for a mirror manufacturer; he also studied in the studio of Auguste-Barthélémy Glaize. After a trip to Algeria around 1848, he returned in 1851 to Paris, where he continued to make his living as an artisan. In the late 1850s, working at night by lamplight, he began to paint seriously, depicting everyday subjects in a realistic style.
He made his Salon debut in 1861 with four paintings of kitchen subjects. Collectors purchased the works, and his paintings in the Salons of 1864 and 1865 were awarded medals.
Ribot painted domestic genre works, still-lifes, portraits, as well as religious scenes, such as his Salon success St. Sebastian, Martyr (1865). His preference was for painting directly from nature, emphasizing the contrasts of light and dark. His use of chiaroscuro to suggest psychological states grew from his admiration for Spanish and Dutch baroque masters such as Ribera and Rembrandt, an enthusiasm shared by his contemporaries Courbet and Bonvin. Members of Ribot's family are the likely models for many of his figure compositions, in which the subjects engage in humble activities, such as preparing meals or gathering in groups to read to each other. The light draws attention to faces and hands, which emerge sharply from dimly lit surroundings.