What made you decide to become a chef, and when was that? When I moved back from Florida six years ago I started helping out my dad. ... The main responsibility there was shopping every morning for everything. And the ...

Describe a dish you created: Our version of the muffaletta. We don't have a New Orleans style. We have a different style of muffaletta. It's our best-selling sandwich. It's a big, meaty sandwich with salami, ham, roast beef, mozzarella and ...

What is the Xena Lovelady style? Simple. I think food should taste like what it is. The more you add on your food, you kind of get away from what it was intended to be.

The Presentation Room at L'Ecole Culinaire, Stellar Cellar Wine and Spirits and chef Tom Hughes host a five-course Argentinean wine dinner at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 25. $50; 1245 N. Germantown Pkwy. Call (901) 754-7115.

What was the first thing you ever cooked or baked? A cookbook. It was on top of the toaster oven. I was making breakfast for my mom and burned it up. It was Mother's Day morning.

Italian WinterFest on Sunday at the Racquet Club of Memphis, 5111 Sanderlin, is $35 and includes food from Pete & Sam's, Frank Grisanti's, Coletta's, Folk's Folly, Garibaldi's, Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, The Rendezvous, Holiday Ham & Deli, The Italian Rebel ...

Who or what was your first cooking influence? My great grand maw. She used to own her own restaurant up near Cleveland, Ohio, called Sid's. They did the steak house stuff. ... She taught me how to do fried chicken ...

Chez Philippe in The Peabody hotel starts serving brunch on Sundays, beginning New Year's Day. The Memphis Blues Brunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and includes four courses.

Sous chef Shari Haley, 21, has been working at Interim in East Memphis since she was 16. And once I started working here I was like, "OK, this is definitely what I want to do," she says. "This is what ...

Here's an alphabetical list of restaurants open on Christmas and Christmas Eve.

Who or what was your first cooking influence? My grandmother. She cooked all Italian dishes, lasagnas we feature on the menu here. I used to watch her. Mary Liberto. She passed away last January.

What made you decide to become a chef and when was that? It's the only thing I ever wanted to do, period. Fourteen or 15. The minute I walked into a kitchen, it was over.

Who or what was your first cooking influence? I've always been a sweet tooth fanatic. My dad used to wake me up in the middle of the night and we'd go eat frozen Snickers bars. We never ate actual food. ...

"I truly love what I'm doing," says Robbie Cirillo, executive chef at Bleu restaurant and executive chef at the Westin Memphis Beale Street. "A chef told me one time -- he loved what he did, also -- 'We're the luckiest ...

Now the sous chef at Sweet Grass, Henry Kay says his first professional kitchen job, at The Grove Grill, made him fall in love with cooking in a restaurant. I was just blown away by how the kitchen was run ...