Veggie U Food and Wine Celebration

Johnny Iuzzini, award winning pastry chef, hails from the Catskills in upstate New York. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America with twenty years of kitchen experience since the age of 15, he boasts a heavy list of experience at highly lauded dining locations such as The River Café in Brooklyn, NY, Daniel, Payard and Café Boulud in New York City. His enrichment continued during a journey around the world in 1998 as well as to study pastry at some of the finest patisseries in France including LaDuree under Pierre Herme. Chef Iuzzini was deemed “Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year” by the James Beard Foundation in 2006, followed by accolades such as “10 Most Influential Pastry Chefs in America” by Forbes Magazine, “Best New Pastry Chef” by New York Magazine, and named one of the “Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America” two years in a row by Pastry Arts and Design Magazine. Entwined in these rankings are several appearances on major network television shows including Martha Stewart, Paula Dean and Tony Danza, as well as being seen on Top Chef Chicago, The Today Show and Good Morning America. During the nine and a half years that Chef Iuzzini was the Executive Pastry Chef at Restaurant Jean-Georges, the restaurant had received four stars from the New York Times, as well as three Michelin stars, and was considered to one of the world’s 50 greatest restaurants. Iuzzini is the head judge of Bravo’s culinary competition series “Top Chef Just Desserts” and the author of Dessert Fourplay: Sweet Quartets From A Four-Star Pastry Chef.