Food-critic Teresa Politano shares Celebrity chef stories at Wharton New Jersey event

On Monday, January 24th, Teresa Politano spoke at the monthly Wharton New Jersey Women's meeting. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University, an award-winning journalist, former news executive, and a restaurant critic for Inside Jersey magazine and The Star-Ledger.

Over a light catered dinner around a conference table at the Hilton in Edison, Teresa talked about her inspiration for authoring her book, "Celebrity Chefs of New Jersey". While sitting at a waterfront restaurant overlooking the Manhattan skyline, Teresa had an epiphany: She was enjoying an exquisite dinner,sitting exactly where she should: across the river from Manhattan. She thought to herself that many great chefs such as 4 times James Beard awardee, Craig Shelton have their roots in New Jersey but are often overshadowed in terms of recognition by celebrity chefs from New York. Had New Jersey been further away, it would have held its own. Being a restaurant critic with intimate knowledge of the greatest culinary masters within the state, Teresa decided to feature the great chefs of New Jersey through her book.

Then, she read from her book, the inspiring story about Donna Tuscana line of Tuscan chocolates and its visionary and master chocolatier, Diane Pinder, who has hand crafted artisan chocolates using a combination of unique and exotic flavors such as sea salt and olive oil with Belgian chocolate. In the book, Teresa has managed to capture not only the cooking styles of chefs but also their backgrounds that have influenced and carved their respective personas. For instance, in case of Diane, her training as a critical care nurse positioned her to work well in her partnership with the legendary Craig Shelton to craft unique confectioneries. Teresa brought in 12 varieties of Diane's Tuscan chocolates, each one unique in its flavor.

Since I run a meetup group of fellow foodies called New Jersey Foodies, I was particularly interested in Teresa's thoughts on a few restaurants that had been on my list to visit and taste-test. They featured on Teresa's list of star players as well including Elements in Princeton, 90 acres in Peapack and Dennis Foy in Lawrenceville, NJ. I am looking forward to trying all these places in the near future as well as the other restaurants by celebrity chefs of New Jersey.

It was good to meet Wharton alumni living in New Jersey. Both my alumni as well as Teresa sampled condiments from my yet to be launched line, HerbNZest and gave positive reviews.