- published: 25 Feb 2016
- views: 359
Joseph "Joe" Bastianich (born in Astoria September 17, 1968) is a restaurateur and vineyard owner. He is also a judge on the competitive cooking shows, MasterChef and MasterChef Italia.
The son of Felice and Lidia Bastianich, Joseph Bastianich was born in Astoria, Queens, four years before his parents purchased their first restaurant, the tiny Buonavia, in Forest Hills, Queens. He was eleven years old when they purchased their second restaurant, Villa Seconda, also in Queens, and thirteen when his parents sold the two Queens restaurants and launched their flagship restaurant, Felidia (a contraction of their two first names), on the East Side of Manhattan near the 59th Street Bridge.
Joseph attended Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx that allowed him to skip the eighth grade. He received his B.A. from Boston College. After graduation, he took a job working as a bond trader at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street, but soon after abandoned that career route to join the family's restaurant business.
Graham Elliot Bowles (born January 4, 1977), known professionally as Graham Elliot, is a Chicago, Illinois-based chef.
Elliot was born in Seattle, Washington, as a self-described "Navy brat". He dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and started out in the food business as a dishwasher and bus boy for two years. He attended culinary school at Johnson & Wales University. In the summer of 2010, he changed his name professionally "after a lifetime of confusion and typos", according to his publicist.
Elliot's first position following culinary school was at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, a five diamond/five-star property in Dallas, working under Chef Dean Fearing. He then went to The Jackson House Inn & Restaurant in Woodstock, Vermont. It was there that he was named one of the ten Best New Chefs of 2004 by Food & Wine Magazine. Elliot then moved to Chicago to work under the famed Charlie Trotter and Rick Tramonto at TRU. He later toiled at Avenues at The Peninsula hotel, also in Chicago, where he received numerous accolades. Under Elliot, Avenue earned a four-star rating from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Magazine as well as a AAA Five Diamond Award.
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MasterChef is a television cooking game show franchise created by Franc Roddam, which originated with the UK version of the show in 1990. The same MasterChef logo is used around the world and has become well known in many countries over the years. The show is now produced in more than 35 countries worldwide and airs in at least 200 territories.
The format has appeared in four versions: the main MasterChef series, MasterChef: The Professionals for professional working chefs, Celebrity MasterChef featuring well known celebrities as the contestants and Junior MasterChef, a version created and adapted for young children, which was first developed in 1994 and has also spanned to other countries outside the UK in recent years. In Iceland, Saga Film has also optioned the MasterChef format.
The show has expanded to many versions in other countries, mainly due to the large national and international success of MasterChef Australia, which is the most watched television series in Australia, with the season 2 finale being the 3rd most watched show in Australian television history. MasterChef Australia won the award for 'Most Popular Reality Program' at the 2010 Logie Awards.