Kitchen report 2007

Photograph by Cinzia Reale-Castello;
Styling by Courtenay Kendall

You enter a restaurant. You sit down. You order food. You eat. You leave. Most nights while dining out, you’re probably not thinking about how your meal got made (despite our celebrity-chef-obsessed culture); you’re thinking about whether the two block walk from the subway justifies dessert. Yet you probably should wonder more. Because who knows what’s going on behind the kitchen door?

Click here to read the rest of the introduction.

• New York chefs speak: Drugs, drinking and all the drama: We asked 40 top chefs (we can’t tell you who, but believe us, you’d know their names) to feed us the truth—served raw.
• Chefs' survey by the numbers: Learn the number of meals an average chef prepares, and how many are getting toasted in the process.
• More survey dish: Our chefs offered so many choice quotes, we couldn't fit them all in print. Read the rest here and guess who said what.
• Plate tectonics: We followed three meals from farm to feast. If you are what you eat, we hope you like being a helpless, bloody, eviscerated steer!
  • Steak at BLT
  • Lobster at Blue Water Grill
  • Gazpacho at Café Boulud
• Tender rubbing fare: What really goes on in a barbecue kitchen? Our Eat Out editor infiltrated Hill Country’s smoky pits to find out.
• Dupe du jour: We go beyond the hype to reveal which restaurant myths are true and which have been overcooked.
• Love that dirty water: Many of our top chefs chose street dogs as their favorite guilty pleasure. Here’s what they—and you—are actually eating. Includes online bonus content.
• Kitchen counter: How does thy restaurant serve you? Our reporter, behind the scenes in an NYC hot spot, breaks down the stats of food preparation.