Grilled: 2008 James Beard Awards

Thomas Keller, Wylie Dufresne and a ‘Top Chef’ villain pick questions out of our sauce pan

The James Beard Awards are the Oscars of American food, dishing out accolades to both establishment (Meyer, Batali) and upstart (Chang, Psilakis) chefs and restaurateurs in the national dining scene. And a whole bunch of cookbook authors (see recap).

To honor the culinary muscle and mind in attendance, we decided to do what we know best: grill arriving chefs on topics ranging from the sagging economy and James Beard Awards superdelegates to Masaharu Morimoto’s golf handicap. All questions were pulled randomly out of a sauce pan. — Matt Rodbard

Pictured: Lidia Bastianich and David Chang