This week: The real story behind the Winchester Mystery House, a historic artist’s studio-turned-artwork, a gifted local teenage violinist, and entrepreneurial high schoolers. Plus, hiking via public transit, the Presidio’s native plants, all things ube, and tasty holiday latkes.

Trail lines and transit stakes

Content creator Bike Curious hiked the De La Veaga Trail in Orinda to draw attention to looming transit budget cuts while demonstrating how residents can reach Bay Area trails without a car.

The moderate route sits on municipal land, with permits available online, and was found through Hiking by Transit’s public database. — Bike Curious

Restoring the dunes

About 100 volunteers gathered at the Presidio’s Sunset Scrub near Lincoln Boulevard last weekend to plant native species as part of an ongoing habitat restoration effort. The Presidio Trust planted roughly 2,000 natives, including coastal buckwheat and dune tansy, to help rebuild sections of the city’s historic dunescape.

The work supports insects, birds, lizards, and rare plants such as San Francisco lessingia and spineflower. The newly restored area now connects Sunset Scrub with the north dunes, creating a continuous habitat corridor between Washington and Lincoln boulevards. — KPIX

Blue conversation

Artist Catherine Wagner’s Blue Reverie at 500 Capp Street fills the late conceptual artist David Ireland’s iconic Mission District home with layers of blue. Ireland spent decades transforming the house itself into a sculptural work, altering floors, walls, and objects to explore space and domestic life as art.

Wagner builds on that legacy, adding photography, projections, and subtle installations that play with light, color, and architecture while keeping a conversation with Ireland’s ideas alive. Hidden blue moons, filtered windows, and glowing furniture turn corners of the home into unexpected moments of discovery. Blue Reverie runs through January 10 at 500 Capp Street, with a catalogue launch on December 16. — 48 Hills

Labyrinth of memory

The Winchester Mystery House has long been surrounded by salacious ghost stories, but most of them were urban legends created by locals and later promoters, not Sarah Winchester herself. These tales helped turn her eccentric home into a tourist draw, which in turn preserved it from demolition.

Beyond the myths, the house is a rare glimpse into late-19th-century San Jose architecture, built in popular Queen Anne Victorian styles and shaped further by the 1906 earthquake. — Bay Area News Group

Oven work and open doors

At Miramonte High School in Orinda, special education students are running a small dog treat business as part of their school day. In Asia Pavicich’s essential skills class, students research what’s safe for dogs, design the packaging, bake pumpkin–peanut butter treats, and sell them under the name Matadogs.

Pavicich started the project to give younger students real, on-campus work experience, beyond practice exercises. It’s also created easy points of contact between the students and the rest of the school community. — NBC Bay Area

Quiet strings, wide reach

Sausalito violinist Sydney Li-Jenkins, 15, has been named a winner of the 2026 YoungArts Competition, which recognizes young artists across visual, literary, and performing fields.

A sophomore at the Branson School in Ross, Li-Jenkins joins a national group of artists whose work reflects a rare level of focus and ambition at this stage. — Marin Independent Journal

Crispy threads

Delfina chef Craig Stoll has put a lighter, gluten-free spin on the holiday latke, balancing crisp potato strands with just the right touch of onion and potato starch. His careful prep — starting the potatoes the night before and pressing out every drop of moisture — keeps each patty tender inside and golden outside.

The latkes are perfect for the Festival of Lights, which kicks off December 14, bringing a fresh take to Hanukkah tables. For those skipping the kitchen, the restaurant offers a to-go option with a dozen flash-frozen latkes, plus add-ons like apple-quince conserva, crème fraîche, or Gingrass smoked steelhead lox. — 7 x 7

Purple by way of Alameda

Alameda baker Henry Awayan has leaned fully into ube, the Filipino purple yam he grew up with and now builds an entire cookbook around. Known for custom cakes at Whisk Cake Creations, Awayan’s The Ube Baking Book gathers more than 50 recipes — from classic halaya to ube focaccia, chiffon cakes, and breakfast pastries — tracing both flavor and family history shaped by his Filipino upbringing and years running a bakery a block from his childhood home.

Awayan plans to teach classes from the book at Whisk in 2026, with details to be announced through the bakery’s website and Instagram. — The Oaklandside

Top image: Winchester Mystery House

Previously: Field Notes: The Cockettes’ Tahara, Christmas Bar, and SCRAP Jewelry Pop-Up

Chef Daniel Patterson (Coi, Haven, Plum) can be seen in this video ordering from the drive-thru at Wendy's and later picking out his favorite bulk Halloween candy at CVS. Heh. No, not really. But it's fun to jest, isn't it? In fact, the following videos show the local chef foraging in the forest and then preparing a Prather Ranch beef dish. It's all in anticipation for his new book, Coi: Stories and Recipes.

Patterson turns beautifully Ratatouille on the viewer, declaring, "I think that everyone is always deeply influenced by the tastes and smells of their childhood." He also talks ingredients. "Our dishes are often very simple, only two or three ingredients, and if anything's wrong with the cooking or ingredients, it stands out," he says.

Also, as Eater and Inside Scoop point out, he also has much to say about lichen, that smashed petal-like fungus you find blanketing tree branches and twigs. Patterson describes its taste as "earthy, mushroom-y" with "a tinge of bitterness but on the aftertaste kind of sweet." Discussing the first time he used it in a dish, he says, "I had been thinking about a new dish, so I thought, well what if I turned it in to a powder? We cooked it, dehydrated it, ground it into a powder, and it was amazing."

And there you have it. Pre-order his book here; check out both videos below:

In this semi-regular feature, SFist Associate Editor Andrew Dalton attempts to combine figure skating lore and self-improvement by cooking his way through Brian Boitano's delightfully self-aware new cookbook: What Would Brian Boitano Make? This week, three courses plus a cocktail. What could possibly go wrong?

With one recipe down and 82 more to go in this project, it is pretty obvious that I'm going to have to pick up the pace if I want to finish it before the next Winter Olympics. (Not that I really set any sort of timeframe for this thing, but let's be honest, there are only so many Boitano jokes one can make.) Luckily, the "what would Brian Boitano do?" mantra never fails and Brian has a plan for that.

In the back of WWBBM? the titular chef/figure skating champion has helpfully drawn up a few pre-set menus, pairing a couple dishes together to make a homey three-course meal. Add in one of the cocktail recipes from the beverages section and I figured I could knock out four recipes in one night. One of the "Elegant Comfort"-themed menus seemed classy enough for a dinner party without being showy or a complete pain in the ass to cook. I went with a menu of: White bean, caramelized onion, and artichoke bruschetta to start, a main course of shrimp and polenta, with a chocolate almond panna cotta for dessert.

What could possibly go wrong while making a meal that basically consists of: toast, shrimp grits and pudding? A lot, probably. So, I invited 10 or so friends over to an incredibly gracious friend's 1-bedroom junior apartment to find out. (Thanks, Maggie!)

Cocktail Pairing: The Marky DV
Listed under the "Superchic Cocktails" section, the Marky DV is a Manhattan-y kind of thing with bourbon and pear brandy instead of sweet vermouth. If you're wondering where one of the most beloved celebrity athletes of the mid-80s likes to get cocktails, it's the Top of the Mark in the Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill; a bar that boasts a 100-martini cocktail list, truckloads of history, one hell of a view of the city, and a stunning cross section of middle America.

The Marky DV has nothing to do with the Top of the Mark though — I'm told it is named for a bartender at Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem on Mission Street. A bar that is known for: A) buffalo wings that you have to sign a waiver to eat and B) being named after a character from the Muppets. Not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to find pear brandy really*, and it turns out pear brandy is pain in the ass to find. Our local, well-curated grocery store only had apple brandy, so we went with that instead. Which actually worked out well because a raid of our eternally kind hostess' home bar turned up a bottle of apple bitters.

In honor of said hostess, I'm renaming the cocktail the "Maggie EG" and it is now made with Bulleit bourbon**, apple brandy and apple bitters. If you're the sort of person who needs exact measurements to make a cocktail, then I'm guessing you are pretty obsessive about cocktails and you can figure those out on your own. For everyone else, make this cocktail by pouring a healthy slug of bourbon into a cocktail shaker (a pint glass with ice in it will do in a pinch), slightly less than half that amount of apple brandy and a little shake of the bitters. If it sucks, add in some simple syrup and you'll have what is basically a juicebox for bourbon drinkers. Stir and strain into whatever fancy glassware is available, because this is a dinner party, dammit.

Starter: White Bean, Caramelized Onion, and Artichoke Bruschetta
This recipe comes from the "Tempting Tapas" section of the book, because Brian Boitano lives in a world where small plates will never go out of style. "Classic bruschetta," he says "is an Italian favorite dating back centuries." I'm not going to bother trying to verify the origins of bruschetta, it could date all the way back to the founding of Olive Garden for all I know, but Brian's recipe turns all that on its head by being completely unrecognizable as what most would call bruschetta. It's really more like a pita chip with some hummus. In that way it only dates back to the last time you were feeling peckish at a wine bar.

Your author decided a "chips and dip" presentation would better suit Brian's take on bruschetta. (Photo: Wes Rowe)

Not that it was bad. It was pretty good, actually. It could maybe use a kick of Sriracha or something to spice it up, but it works better as a dip rather than a passed app. All you have to do is toast pita slices coated with olive oil on a cookie sheet and throw some canned artichoke hearts in the food processor (also, heads up: you're gonna need a food processor) with a can of cannellini beans, some lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and let it rip. Save a little bit of the beans and artichoke hearts to top the pita chips (so your guests know what they're eating? I guess?) and then make a cute little pile to dip into. If you're older than 25 you should probably know how make a homemade dip by this point in your life.

Lazy people will note that pita chips also come pre-made and in relatively hassle-free packaging, but if you truly appreciate the company of your guests, then you will suffer for your pita chips. (And by suffer, I mean, keep obsessively checking the oven to make sure you haven't burned them yet.)

Main Course: Shrimp and Polenta
In the Seafood section, this recipe is filed under (sic) "Marvelish Shellfish." Hopefully you started peeling the shrimp around the same time you started making the bruschetta, because holy shit is peeling shrimp a pain in the ass. Peel a bunch by yourself until one of your dinner guests grows concerned that dinner is going to take longer than you said it would. At that point sit them down with a glass of wine and make them go to town on shelling and de-veining shrimp.

This is important because nowhere in the recipe does Brian mention that deveining shrimp actually involves you scooping shrimp shit out of two pounds of shrimp. (Four pounds in this case, since it was a double recipe.) This is a necessary evil and you can't just get pre-shelled shrimp because you need to boil the shells in 12 cups of water to make shrimp stock that will leave your apartment undoubtedly smelling like seafood for days.

Once the shrimp water has simmered for 10 minutes or so, it will get a wharf-scented, pink seafoam floating on top. Strain out the shells, boil the shrimp water again and add three cups of polenta while whisking constantly. Start on your second cocktail because you're pretty sure you could be doing this drunk at this point.

While you're waiting for the polenta to thicken up, use the hand that is not holding your cocktail to cook half a pound of diced bacon. (In this case, Brian's recipe calls for pancetta again, but after last week's sweatlodge smell, I opted for the smokier bacon.) Remove the bacon and cook the now shell-free two pounds of shrimp until they get a little crispy on the edges. Take out the shrimp and sauté two chopped onions. Panic for a moment as you wonder what you're supposed to be doing with the polenta and then take a sip of your cocktail and remember it is time to add a cup of cream to the mixture, because cream is proof that God loves us and wants us to enjoy dairy.

(Photo: Wes Rowe)

In the sauté pan: add garlic, red pepper, a cup of dry white wine and two pints of sliced grape tomatoes to the onions. Cook everything until the tomatoes start to get that shriveled look, but don't quite look gross yet. Add in parsley, four tablespoons of butter, the shrimp and the bacon and mix until everything is heated. Just put everything in one big bowl and let your guests go to town on the polenta and shrimp mixtures, family-style.

(Photo: Wes Rowe)

Dessert: Chocolate Almond Panna Cotta
Roughly five hours prior to serving the main course, you should be making dessert. Such is the paradox of the home-cooked dessert. You have to inception yourself hours ahead of time to get everything timed right.

In this case, five hours seemed like plenty of time to make glorified chocolate pudding out of heavy cream-based chocolate milk. The whole recipe is just: heavy cream, almond milk, sugar, a huge bag of Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips, amaretto and vanilla extract, all mixed with powdered gelatin and stuck in the fridge to set. What you really need to know for this recipe, besides the various forms of animal cruelty involved in it, is that it is: A) already a tiny bit alcoholic, thanks to the amaretto and vanilla extract and B) It will not set. Like ever. So you should probably just do what we did and drink your dessert instead.

Fast forward five hours to the end of dinner, when all guests are stuffed on shrimp and tippled on bourbon cocktails and glasses of wine. The Panna Cotta, poured cutely into teacups, is still in its liquid form and taking up far too much space in the fridge. Your guests are demanding something sweet to counteract all the smokey shrimpiness of the polenta. Do what any reasonable human being would do and use the rest of the bottle of Amaretto to make chocolate-almond panna cotta shots. A "panna shotta," if you will. Drink as many of these as your lactose sensitivity will allow while drunkenly trying to clean up your friend's kitchen and apologizing for shrimpy smell.

The "panna shotta," a much more efficient dessert than actual panna cotta. (Photo: Wes Rowe)

As it turns out, cooking a dinner that involves more than one pan takes a lot more discipline, timing and precision than I can muster on a random Monday. There's a great deal of pressure to not only perform technically well, by which I mean make food that doesn't suck, but also to entertain your audience. Thankfully, my spectators were not only supportive, but immensely helpful. "I would like to personally thank everyone who peeled shrimp for helping me get to where I am today," I would tell Scott Hamilton after leaving the ice. Of course, it doesn't hurt if your audience is easily entertained by an overabundance of alcohol.

Next time: A Brian Boitano-themed Pride Weekend panini pop-up. There will be sausages and grilled sandwiches. Stay tuned for details.

Previously: Boitano Meets World: One Man's Quest To Cook His Way Through Brian Boitano's Cookbook (Spaghetti Carbonara)

Footnotes:
*I always assumed the decor inside Mayhem was a sort of post-Bowie Glam Rock kind of thing, but now that I think about it, those could outfits could easily be figure skating costumes.

**Bulleit also seemed appropriate here because one time I was scheduled to do a lunch interview with Tom Bulleit of the Kentucky Bulleits at the Top of the Mark. (Tie-in!) When I showed up, he was being interviewed by another freelancer. A contributor to one of those little booklet magazines they used to put in the back of cabs. Tom Bulleit's handler told me to have a seat, order some lunch and, of course, a Bulleit cocktail. I ordered one on the rocks and a charcuterie plate. By the time Tom got there, I was on my third bourbon. We talked and drank for an hour while I tried to scribble things in a notebook and then Tom Bulleit left to go to Whiskeys of the World and stuck me with the tab. Anyway, that's my Tom Bulleit story.

"I really like entertaining," writes 1988 Olympic men's figure skating gold medalist Brian Boitano in the introduction to his new cookbook, What Would Brian Boitano Make? "Maybe that's why I was attracted to both my passions, cooking and skating." Personally, I'm a less than graceful on the ice and mediocre at best in the kitchen. But that won't stop me from going full Julie & Julia on Boitano and his new book.

My talents lie in observational humor and cute animal photos. However, as Brian writes continues in the introduction, "there's a certain type of thrill and deep satisfaction in developing new skills and constantly improving." Which is why I'm cooking my way through all 83 recipes in his delightfully self-aware cookbook based on Brian Boitano's Food Network show of the same name. In the immortal words of that South Park musical number: you've got to make a plan and follow though. (That's what Brian Boitano'd do.)

We begin this week with something any jerk could make with a pot and a frying pan: Spaghetti Carbonara.

What really sets Brian's cookbook (which we'll now be referring to as "WWBBM?") apart from other celebrity cookbooks is that this one is written by Brian Boitano. Each section of the book (Starters, Beverages, Pasta, Meat, etc) is introduced the way you might introduce yourself at a cocktail party: with a winning smile and a personal anecdote. As a multi-talented, showy and well-traveled person with a multiple "...on Ice" movies to his credit, Brian is basically the ideal cocktail party guest. (He has an Emmy for figure skating in Carmen On Ice, for chrissakes.) All his stories begin with something like, "There I was, cooking dinner for a charity auction at Dick Button's house..." or "So, I was skating on a temporary rink set up inside St. Peter's Basilica..."

In the case of "A Winter-Warming Plate of Pasta," Brian's story is a sweet yet hilarious piece about the time, while preparing to film Carmen, he discovered the life-affirming qualities of a nice, warm bowl of carbs. He also discovered his choreographer's husband:

"[Choreographer] Sandra and I worked every night alone on the ice, usually finishing around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. [...]

After long hours on the ice, I was totally stiff and fatigued, and I just wanted a warm meal and a comfortable place to relax. Enter Sandra's then husband, Dino. [...]

The only thing that kept me awake as Sandra and I drove home was the thought of Dino's cooking."

On a cold and foggy San Francisco evening, Spaghetti Carbonara seemed like a simple enough recipe: half a pound of pasta, eggs, loads of parmesan cheese, a quarter pound of pancetta and some parsley. This recipe could be considered the upscale version of buttered noodles, which has long been a part of my home cooking repertoire. Unfortunately, Brian did not recommend a wine pairing, so I went with my gut and bought the cheapest bottle of red they had at the Falleti Foods on Broderick Street — a nine dollar California cabernet. Real gold-medal stuff.

Before getting started, I consulted Brian's advice on setting up your kitchen, which includes notes like "have lots of knives" and "stock your pantry with canned tomatoes." I'm not exactly a world-class figure skater doing the Stars on Ice tour; I'm just a guy who writes some things on the Internet for a living. So, my kitchen setup mostly included cleaning up after my roommate:

(Photo: Andrew Dalton/SFist)

First step was to boil a large pot of "well-salted water." I don't know how to tell a pot of water is "well-salted" so I just put about three handfuls of Morton's iodized in there, which seemed to do the trick. Alas, my pot size was somewhat inadequate and the uncooked pasta was left sticking out the side. If my grandmother taught me anything about cooking it is to never break your spaghetti. Leaving it unbroken allows for long, luxurious twirls of the fork... not unlike the opening moments of Carmen on Ice:

While the pasta boils, the pancetta gets browned in a skillet. Let the record show that I am generally pro-pancetta, but unlike bacon, which always smells delicious, cooking pancetta smells like climbing into a sauna with bacon's fat, sweaty Italian cousin. It is sort of repulsive, but intriguing and foreign and makes you wonder if maybe Americans have just been doing bacon wrong all along. When cooked, the pork is removed from the heat and transfered to a plate lined with a paper towel. (I think people who dab the grease off their pizza have some deep-seated issues to work out, but in this case I will make an exception because of pancetta perspiration.)

With Brian as my copilot, the garlic gets roasted and tossed with the pasta in the skillet. The crucial step is to add the eggs, which have been whisked with Parmesan cheese, plus a half a cup of the starchy pasta water to the pasta and cook everything slowly so the eggs don't get scrambled. You really have to nail this big moment, or the whole routine falls apart. It's all about timing here.

As if attempting to land a quadruple toe loop, I got a little too ambitious and came up about a quarter turn short. I overcompensated on the recovery by adding more pasta water until I ended up with something that looked more like making an omelet in the middle of a pasta pileup. Instead of the creamy and light mixture picture, I ended up with a bowl of slightly greasy pasta with chunks of omelet and pancetta in it. It tasted delicious, sure, but won't win any points for showmanship. Slightly discouraged, I'm begin to think that Brian makes this look too easy. But I'm also drunk on cheap cabernet at this point.

(Photo: Andrew Dalton/SFist)

Other lessons:

• Setting a kitchen timer is apparently the only thing Siri is actually good for.
  
• Trying to take notes while cooking means my keyboard smells like garlic.
  
• Parsley is sold by the bunch, which is a bullshit quantity that means you will never use all the parsley you buy.
  
• Likewise, no matter how much pasta you make, that was too much pasta.

Next time: a three-course meal for ten, with bruschetta, shrimp polenta and panna cotta. Plus cocktail pairings. There will be hangovers.

New York Times opinion columnist and New York Times Magazine lead food writer, Mark Bittman has been celebrated for his straightforward and unpretentious approach to cooking pretty much everything. Despite no formal training in the culinary arts (besides all those years of eating and writing about food, of course), his encyclopedia-like How to Cook Everything has been something of a Foodie bible since its debut.

With an updated edition of How to Cook Everything: The Basics hitting bookshelves and his own show coming up on the Cooking Channel, Bittman will take the stage tonight at the Herbst Theatre to discuss important topics like cooking for all us normal people.

Bittman will appear in conversation with fellow food writer Jessica Battiliana as part of the City Arts & Lectures series. Although City Arts says the event is sold out, there are still tickets available from City Box Office. The event starts promptly at 7:30 p.m.

Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Ave at McAllister
7:30 p.m.

[Tickets]
[SFBG]

Marion Cunningham, a woman who championed home cooking in America, succumbed to complications from Alzheimer's Disease this morning at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. She was 90. Some of her most noteworthy tomes, Learning to Cook and the humorous Fannie Farmer Cookbook, are (and should be) staples of any home.

Kind words from noted food ilk poured forth after news of her death.

"More than anyone else, she gave legitimacy to home cooking," Michael Bauer told the New York Times. "She took what many people would say was housewife food and really gave it respect by force of her own personality."

“She was the glue that held the nascent food movement together,” former Times critic Ruth Reichl said, adding, "the touchstone, the person you checked in with to find out who was doing what all over the country."

Cunningham also discovered a little known cook named Alice Waters after brining James Beard to her Berkeley joint back in the 1970s. She apparently brought Beard to the restaurant in 1974, which prompted him to "put it on the culinary map," thus sparking the California cuisine and the organic movement. (Kim Severson, now at NYT, penned this excellent piece for the Chronicle in 2001 regarding Cunningham and Waters' close friendship.)

Of all the stories we've read today regarding Cunningham (e.g., her conquered agorophobia, her humor, her finger on the pulse, her suggestions for opening coconuts), this is our favorite takeaway, via the New York Times:

Mrs. Cunningham bought a Jaguar with her first royalty check from The Breakfast Book, one of her most enduring cookbooks. The Jaguar became identified with her, and she would drive it to a different Bay Area restaurant every night, sometimes logging 2,500 miles a month.

Top Chef will hit its tenth season this year, and they are looking for San Francisco-based gastronomic talent for the big one-zero. Might you be the next cheftestant? While Bravo's food competition show shows slight signs of age — let's face it, it's no RuPaul's Drag Race; a show on par creatively and critically as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and even Bad Girls Club, it is the most important thing on TV right now — they still showcase major cooking prowess and drama, something the Bay Area has in spades.

An open casting call for Top Chef contestants will happen on Monday, February 27, in SOMA's Kitchit at 848 Folsom (at Fourth Street) from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. No knives necessary for the open calls, but bring your completed application, photo, resume, video, a sample menu, and "a disc or jump drive with photos of your food."

Additional casting dates and can be found at Bravo's website.

For anyone who's ever shopped there -- be it noon on a Tuesday or 6 p.m. on payday -- Berkeley Bowl has pretty much always been a shitshow. Bulk granola-buying hippies elbow aside gourmet grannies in the ultra-narrow aisles, and hundreds of shopping carts squeak by one another in the endless stock exchange of Asian pears and celeriac. And forget about Thanksgiving week. Well now, Berkeley denizens will have yet another gourmet grocery to fight over (to add to four Andronico's, a Whole Foods and a Wild Oats soon-to-be Trader Joe's) as Berkeley Bowl opens a second store, Berkeley Bowl West, about 15 blocks west of the current store on Ashby Ave (map).

In any other place in the country, building a much needed expansion of a well-loved grocery store in the middle of a semi-industrial neighborhood several blocks from a freeway would probably be a pretty easy feat. But naturally, because it's Berkeley, the seven-year planning and construction process for the store came with a truckload of obstacles, including a group of NIMBYs who hired their own traffic consultant to contest the findings of the city's traffic study. But yes, come June 4th, chefs of the East Bay can finally rejoice in the dream of reasonably priced porcini mushrooms without losing their minds finding parking.

by Tiffany Maleshefski

Having your local teenager cook dinner might evoke images of macaroni and cheese and pot brownies, but at the Art Institute of California's annual Best Teen Chef Competition, high-school aged kids whip up dishes that put mom's meatloaf to shame.

Sponsored by International Culinary School at The Art Institute of California, the competition draws teen chefs from across the U.S. and Canada to flambé, sauté, and chiffonade their way to victory. More than 30 participating Art Institute locations (including our very own San Francisco campus) host a cook-off portion of the competition on March 14, 2009. The local winners advance to the National Best Teen Chef Final Round Competition, held on Saturday, May 9, 2009 at The Art Institute of Charlotte.

The big winner walks away with a full-tuition scholarship, the title of Best Teen Chef, and oh! my! god! the national first place winner, in partnership with Food Network, will be an "Intern for a Day" at Food Network Kitchens in New York City. AHHHHHHH!!! If only we looked 16 to 18 years old! The winner will also receive a tour of Food Network's studios, dinner for two at a Food Network chef's restaurant, and a library of Food Network Kitchens cookbooks.

If we could turn back time…

Follow the jump for more details.

James Brown impersonator killing it at Saturday's 27th Annual Black Cuisine Cooking Contest & Street Festival.