Filmmaking Confidential

JAMES OSELAND travels extensively in search of the world’s best restaurants, street food stalls, markets, and home cooks. Long before he was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the pre–Silicon Valley, California, suburbs, yearning for a taste of something wild. His remarkable memoir Jimmy Neurosis captures the quest that led him from the mosh pits of San Francisco to the pop world of Andy Warhol’s Manhattan.

He is most recently the author and editor of World Food: Mexico City and World Food: Paris, part of World Food, a new book series from Ten Speed Press. He was the editor-in-chief for nine years of Saveur, America’s most acclaimed food magazine, where his work garnered many accolades, including seven James Beard Awards and three awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors. His cookbook Cradle of Flavor was named one of the best books of 2006 by the New York Times and Good Morning America. Additionally, James’s writing has appeared in Gourmet, Vogue, Food and Wine, and the Wall Street Journal, where he writes the “Cook’s Playbook” column. He has appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, the Today Show, Iron Chef America, and was a permanent judge on all five seasons of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters. James is a popular cooking teacher and has taught at the Institute for Culinary Education, the New School, and New York City’s Natural Gourmet. He has lectured at culinary institutes and food societies around the world; in 2011, he delivered the keynote speech for the International Food Bloggers Conference. In 2013, he starred as himself in a series of Wendy’s commercials. He has lived in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and India, and now calls Mexico City home.