Henry Moso is a semifinalist for Best Chef: South in the 2023 James Beard Foundation Awards. Photo via Kabooki Sushi

The James Beard Foundation has announced the semi-finalists for its 2023 restaurant and chef awards. In what has become a near annual equivalent of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, some Central Floridians are on the list.

Brothers Johnny and Jimmy Tung, who built the Bento empire, are on the long list for Outstanding Restaurateur, a national category. They are up against 19 other semifinalists, including Mohamed Ali Alkassar and Niven Patel of Alpareno Restaurant Group (Ghee Indian Kitchen, Orno, and Mamey) in Miami. Besides the Bento Asian Kitchen + Sushi restaurants, the Tungs also have Doshi and Camille, the latter a popup restaurant that will move to a permanent location this year.

Henry Moso, chef/owner of Orlando’s Kabooki Sushi, has again been nominated in the Best Chef category for the South region. Although in years past the semifinalist list often included multiple chefs from Central Florida among the 20 names, Moso is the sole nominee from the area. There are other Florida chef nominees, but most are from South Florida. You can see the list of all semifinalists in each category here.

SeaWorld Orlando’s annual Seven Seas Food Festival kicks off this weekend and continues Thursdays through Sundays until May 7. That’s enough time for you to sample all seven seas.

SeaWorld’s promoters are billing the event as “Orlando’s largest theme park food festival,” an apparent smackdown to Epcot and its yearlong rotation of festivals de food. The official press release also claims that the festival is “bringing ALL-NEW flavors to the theme park,” citing such wild and imaginative items as parmesan truffle fries; ropa vieja; classic Reuben; and strawberry shortcake a la mode. Maybe they mean these things have never been served inside SeaWorld. I’m also curious: Which of the seven seas does strawberry shortcake represent?

When Mikael Audebert founded Art In Voyage, in 2011, he meant for it to be a conventional travel agency – putting together vacations, booking flights and securing hotels – albeit an agency that specialized in upscale experiences and luxury properties.

AIV still does that, and business has been so good that the company now has headquarters in Orlando and Cape Town, South Africa, which Audebert calls home base.

But over the last several years, Art In Voyage has expanded to feature curated journeys that focus on food and wine as major components of the destination.

“Everybody loves to eat and everybody loves to discover what other people eat.” said Audebert. “No matter what theme journey we do there’s always a way to bring a culinary element to it.”

Local Flavor is a montly collaboration between Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide and The Community Paper.

I keep a list of recipes I refer to as my graduate student dishes because they’re quick, easy, often use shortcuts and are generally inexpensive to make. This particular recipe I collected shortly after grad school when I was in my first professional job as a communications media specialist. I worked for a small hospital in Illinois doing videography and photography of the sort best not discussed in a food column.

When I mentioned to one of my co-workers — think Flo, the waitress from the TV show “Alice,” but as a medical transcriptionist — that I wanted to cook more meals at home but didn’t know where to begin, she recommended that I start with this recipe, which she recited to me by memory.

It was just right for a novice, sort of like cooking with training wheels.

It’s also a good dish for anyone who needs to whip up something fast, simple and, for the most part, budget-friendly. And it’s an almost-one-dish recipe. In fact, if you want, you can mix the cream of chicken soup and water in the baking dish before you add the rice and eliminate the mixing bowl — you have my permission.

To save time, you can buy the chicken precut, or you can get a whole fryer and chop it up yourself, which you’ll find is cheaper. You can use the chicken wings — or not — but leave the back out of the dish and save it to make chicken stock. That’s a doctoral candidate-level recipe. See the recipe at The Community Paper.

Rome at sunset.

I’m once again partnering with Art In Voyage, the Orlando and Cape Town travel agency that specializes in food and wine journeys, to host several trips later this year and in 2024.

Some of the trips have already been decided – and I’ll share details about those soon – but we’d like your help in narrowing down the choices for future trips.

Below you’ll find a poll with several options. There are four curated journeys but each has a different date option. You may vote for any or all that fancy you. (You’re not committing to anything; no one will contact you for a down payment. We just want to gauge interest.)