Michael White, a Wisconsin native, began his award-winning culinary career at Chicago's renowned Spiaggia and Ristorante San Domenico in Imola, Italy. After eight years in Italy he moved to New York City and partnered with Ahmass Fakahany to form the Altamarea Group, which currently owns seven restaurants, including Marea in New York City (which holds two Michelin stars and won the 2009 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant and membership in Relais & Chateaux) and Al Molo in Hong Kong. Additional locations include the Michelin one-starred Ai Fiori, Osteria Morini in SoHo and Washington,
D.C., Due Mari and Osteria Morini in New Jersey, and Nicoletta Pizzeria. The group will open three additional New York City locations in 2013. White and his recipes and restaurants are featured regularly, everywhere from
The New York Times to
Esquire to the
Today show
. Michael White lives in New York with his wife and daughter.
Andrew Friedman has collaborated on more than twenty cookbooks with some of America's finest and most well-known chefs, including Alfred Portale, Michelle Bernstein, Laurent Tourondel, and former White House chef Walter Scheib, and co-authored (with American tennis player James Blake) the
New York Times bestselling memoir
Breaking Back. Friedman is a two-time winner of the IACP Award for Best Chef or Restaurant Cookbook, and co-editor of the popular anthology
Don't Try This at Home. He is also the author of
Knives at Dawn, about the famous Bocuse d'Or culinary competition. He is founder and chief contributor to the chef-focused website
Toqueland.com. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
