Michael Anthony is the executive chef-partner of Gramercy Tavern in New York City, and received the James Beard Award for Best Chef: NYC. He has cooked in Japan, in some of the finest French restaurants (Jacques Cagna, Michel Guérard, L'Arpège, L'Astrance), and at Daniel in New York. His book, The Gramercy Tavern Cookbook , was published in October 2013 Heston Blumenthal is considered by many to be the most progressive chef of his generation. In 2004 he won the coveted three Michelin stars in near-record time for his restaurant, The Fat Duck, which has twice been voted the Best Restaurant in the World by an international panel of 500 experts. In 2006 he was awarded an OBE. Blumenthal is the author of a number of cookbooks, most recently Heston Blumenthal at Home . Alexandre Bourdas was the chef de cuisine and director of Michel Bras's Michelin 3-star restaurant in Japan. He then opened the renowned Sa.

Qua.Na in Normandy, France. David Kinch , a champion of contemporary California cuisine, has won the Best Chef in America award for the Pacific region from the James Beard Foundation. His restaurant, Manresa in Los Gatos, California, has been awarded two Michelin stars for five consecutive years. Kinch's cookbook, Manresa, came out last year. Virgilio Martinez is the chef-owner of Central in Lima, Peru and is known for applying modern cooking techniques to indigenous Peruvian ingredients. Nobu Matsuhisa was born in Japan and classically trained in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo before he headed to Peru. In 1987, he opened Matsuhisa in Los Angeles, followed by Nobu New York City seven years later.

Since then, he has launched 29 more restaurants around the world. Kodansha published two previous books with Nobu: his first cookbook in 2001 and Nobu Miami: The Party Cookbook in 2008. Yoshiro Murata is the third generation owner-chef of the famed Kikunoi restaurant in Kyoto and the author of Kaiseki and Japanese Home Cooking with Master Chef Murata , both published by Kodansha. Chef Murata is the chairman of The Japanese Culinary Academy and plays an integral role in the Japanese food industry. He was instrumental in the campaign to add traditional Japanese cuisine to UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage Assets. Pedro Miguel Schiaffino is the chef-proprietor of Malabar in Lima, Peru. Known as the "jungle chef," he has worked to highlight the foods of the Amazon jungle and Amazonian cuisine.