A FOODIE UPSET: When Long Islander Foodies Peter Sloggatt and Leah Weinstein participated in the competition in the Simon Super Chefs Live! Cook-off at Walt Whitman Mall recently, the junior Foodie showed the old-timer a thing or two about winning.

Sloggatt and Weinstein worked as sous chefs alongside two of the hottest chefs on Long Island while four-time Emmy award-winner and TV host, Bill Boggs, hosted the competition.

Tom Schaudel, who recently opened Jedediah Hawkins Inn in Jamesport and added to his restaurant empire Aqua Underwater Grill & Wine Bar and Gabrielle’s Brasserie & Wine Bar, both in Rockville Centre, is a veteran of the Super Chefs cookoff. He’s won for the past 3 years. With Sloggatt as his sous chef, Schaudel fell for the first time in cook-off history to Zane Smith, chef/owner of Wild Honey in Oyster Bay who had Weinstein assisting as his sous chef.

The audience chose Smith as the winner of the first round with his quick culinary skills, preparing a three-course meal in just 15 minutes from a bag of a few key ingredients. The audience chose Smith’s braised pork chop in a wine reduction and sautéed vegetables over Schaudel’s stir fry preparation.

Smith was on his own – sans sous chef – in the next round when he faced Ari Nieminen of Pine Hollow Country Club in East Norwich who had beaten Mirabelle’s Guy Reuge to reach the finals. The chefs were challenged to create a dish, or an array of dishes from the ingredients of lobster, chick peas, anchovies, pineapple. Based on audience applause – and the producers asked several times – it was a tie.

A FOODIE FIRST: Jonathan Gold, a food writer for an alternative weekly in Los Angeles, has brought in a Pulitzer Prize – the first ever awarded to a restaurant critic. The Pulitzer board praised Gold for his “zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater.” A true Foodie, Gold is known for prowling LA’s neighborhoods to find out of the way ethnic eats, from corner stand tacos to an astronomically expensive Kyushu rib eye. Gold, who cut his teeth exploring the city’s off-beat cultural scene, “can write captivatingly about almost anything,” wrote the paper’s executive editor. “His gift to us is that he chose food.” Congratulations to a fellow foodie – guess it’s up to us to bring one in for the East Coast.

BEDLAM’S LITERARY GEMS: A Pulitzer for food criticism is one thing, but what we’d really like to see is an award for menu writing. So many chefs who dazzle us with their magic in the kitchen leave us wanting when it comes to describing their own work. Not so Chef Jonathan Passman of Bedlam Fish and Clam (55 Main St., Cold Spring Harbor 631-367-5655) whose wordsmithing skills deserve as much praise as his cooking. He avoids clichés and must have a well-worn Foodie Thesaurus on hand for composing such menu gems as his Grilled Red Tuna with cumin scented lentil pilaf, shoe string vegetables in a curried sweet pepper nage (nage – that’s a fancy word for sauce). Southwestern style skirt steak with chipotle spice sweet potatoes and sautéed spinach in a bourbon mango barbecue glaze – that’s meat and potatoes to the rest of us.

NORTH FORK ATTRACTION: Mother’s Day Brunch gave the Foodies an excuse to head east and visit Long Island super-chef Tom Schaudel’s Jedediah Hawkin’s Inn (400 So. Jamesport Ave., Jamesport 631-722-2900), which opened to strong reviews last year. The inn/restaurant occupies a circa 1863 mansion that was boarded up and abandoned for 20 or so years before extensive renovations restored its high-ceiling rooms and adapted it for use as an inn and restaurant. The result is a new destination on the North Fork that combines the experience of old world architecture with contemporary cuisine from one of the region’s top chefs. The menu highlights locally grown and harvested produce and seafood, and the blueberries in the Bellinis at the start of the meal would set the tone for what was to come. The menu was simple, elegant, and always with a surprise touch. We enjoyed a sweet East End lobster roll; crispy skinned grilled salmon; mahi-mahi with mangoes; prime rib and a gnocchi selection; and followed up with chocolate mousses all around. Mmmm. Jedediah’s is the jewel in Schaudel’s crowded crown. When you go, tell him the Foodies sent you.

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