| anne burrell/buffalo story |
anne
Dr D'Amico
I am in Buffalo visiting with my friend Sam, master chef and food junkie, and we speak of the usual, eating, and he lays a recipe on me and then its on to cooking on TV and I ask who he likes and he says: Ive been watching this woman Anne Burrell—do you know her? No. Sam describes: a big blonde, formerly sous chef for Mario Batali and, according to Sam, a gift for cooking but an even greater gift for cooking on TV. She is bright, articulate, funny. Also great looking. He advises me to check her out and that night, on the prowl over at YouTube I do. Here she is, the big blonde with this spiky ‘do and a style I would describe as dynamic. I watch half a dozen videos and am sufficiently charmed by this creature to fill in some of the blanks over at Wikipedia where I find the following info: 1: place of birth: Cazenovia NY, the Southern Tier. 2: education: Canisuis College (Buffalo) 3: Major: English Now if you are me and these particular stats are fed into the 2 plus 2 equals 4 part of the brain what you come up with is: my buddy Jack D'Amico, English prof at Canisuis teaching Shakespeare, a required class for all English majors. So I email Jack: Jack: do you know this woman Anne Burrell English major, graduating in 1990? He says: the name does not ring a bell but let me check my grade books. He emails back: yes—a student and now he remembers her—the erratic attendance kind, but the kind he inclines to forgive if they are fun when they do attend. Also he seems to recall she took a minor in communications. So that’s the story—a cool story but nothing more unless you are from Buffalo, a city of connections, of one thing connecting to another, in this way, that way or the other way, as in for example an amazing woman on The Food Channel who turns out to be a former student of your lifelong friend. |
