deep dish

Rejoice! Fabio Trabocchi, off the chef galaxy radar since the shuttering of Fiamma, is back in the cucina. Last month, owners Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder lassoed the 35 year old Trabocchi to replace the late Christian Albin as exec chef at The Four Seasons restaurant.

birth announcements

NEW YORK CITY—As a former operating partner at The Little Owl and Market Table (where he is now just a partner), Gabriel Stulman is well versed in creating diminutive restaurants celebrated for their excellent food, drink, and service.

whisk around the world

MEXICO AND THE CARIBBEAN—Marco Bustamante is the exec chef at Capella Pedregal, opened in mid-July on a secluded cliffside setting where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortez in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The hotel, set on 24 beachfront acres, has 66 guest accommodations, each with private plunge pool and direct ocean views.

tasting notes

THE MAGNIFICENT WINE COMPANY Steak House Columbia Valley 2007

This Cabernet Sauvignon leaves little to the imagination when it comes to food pairing, its big fruit brimming with black cherry and black berry. Toasty oak and earthy aromas are followed by a smooth palate of fleshy fruit laced with ripe tannins with a medium finish.

Score: 89   Cost: $100   Cases: 5,000

bar biz

Fred and Ginger danced their first jig here and Ava Gardner trashed her room in a drunken rage, but Rio de Janeiro's most glamorous hotel has entered a new era of celebrity-and some pretty tony ghosts are fronting as cocktails.

views from the summit

The top chefs and hotel executives sipping boozy milk punches one morning last spring at The Culinary Institute of America's Napa Valley campus in St. Helena, California, might have looked like they were trying to drown their sorrows. While for some businesses it has indeed been an annus horibilis, these four dozen industry leaders were tasting opportunity.

cheese teams U.S.A.

After a decade of "search and nibble" book research for his recently published American Cheeses: The Best Regional, Artisan, and Farmhouse Cheeses, Who Makes Them, and Where to Find Them, restaurant/hotel consultant and menu Svengali Clark Wolf, ever at one with the tastes and tenor of the times, suggests three American regional matchups that could be turned into one-time promotions or year-round menus.

hits & flops

There's no accounting for taste. Four chefs ponder the mysteries of customers going wild for some dishes while roundly rejecting others.