GigaChef.com

[GITA]

I’m working (PR) with GigaChef.com, which launched in June – it’s was created by super-chefs, who have been working in kitchens and consulting for all kinds of operations for their entire careers, and they are still cooking! The site is for culinary professionals and offers quite a lot. The idea was that culinarians need the tools and resources that are within the site, but have had to pay for them or have to navigate through the mass clutter of the internet, without being certain that they can trust the information.

So far, it’s a very extensive site that took about 2 years to build before in launched in June. People who have been using it are continuously finding new capabilities and resources that they didn’t know were there.

Some cool components of the site off-hand are:

Professional recipe template, storage, emailing, downloading and sharing

A recipe bank of professional-level recipes to copy to your account and edit if you wish

Professional networking – like a myspace or a facebook, except most of the users are wearing toques and profile questions are mostly about favorite ingredients and cookbooks.

The Pass, which is a blog by professionals for professionals

If you’ve ever seen culinary-industry resumes, you’ll understand that the resume builder in the career section is a great tool – it pulls directly from your profile information and then you can edit and save multiple copies to your account, for the future.

The photography is really beautiful and artistic, the main site photos are by renowned food photographer, Peter Pioppo – there is a visual gallery in The Library section for those who want to browse through gorgeous shots of food – they can be downloaded too.

There’s a free, downloadable culinary spell check for PC’s or Apple computers so you can finally spell hors d’oeuvres correctly.

Oh and there’s a vendor section that will continue to grow – it’s a directory of vendors that can be sorted alphabetically or by region and users can also store their own vendors in this section, creating a virtual rolodex.

[GITA]

Also...Yesterday, GigaChef put up the first “Kitchen Spanish” talking dictionary on their website in their Library section. If it interests you, there were a few interesting reactions:

1) Cunning Linguists: New “Kitchen Dictionary” Helps You Yell At Spanish-Speaking Restaurant Workers:

http://guanabee.com/2008/08/new-kitchen-di...y-helps-y-1.php

2) Dept. of Uncomfortable Conversations: GigaChef’s “Kitchen Spanish” Dictionary

http://www.phoodie.info/2008/08/14/dept-of...ish-dictionary/

[Fat Guy]

I've been enjoying the GigaChef website ever since Gita (a publicist I've dealt with on many clients back to when she was working on the Ducasse account at her old job) invited me to preview it a while back. I just downloaded the culinary add-on spelling dictionary for Microsoft Word. I haven't road tested it much yet, but it seems to have a lot of words in it -- and it's free. The website requires registration but there's no charge for anything. The home-page blog -- "The Pass" -- also has some entertaining entries (you have to register to read that too).

[GITA]

The culinary spell check will also have future versions as they expand the words.

For those who like the blog, The Specials is another editorial area, located in The Library section. Today, there is a small story on Julia Child's role as a spy for the CIA, which was announced recently.