• DREIM WILL NOT BE ON FF TEAM THIS THANKSGIVING •

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-It's official.

With the 2012 Feast Fest Official Roll Call of Chefs complete, Stephen Dreim will not be a member of the squad, and a virulent anti-Dreim movement among chefs could quell talks for a 2013 rehiring during the offseason.

Scouters fired off four separate deals Monday, the amounts of which were not publicly released, but Anna Milk, a scooter working on the Dreim case, said that the first two were 4-year deals, the third was a 5-year deal, and the fourth was a 6-year deal, and that one was staggered. Dreim rejected the first two deals, "contemplated" and then rejected the third, and was in the middle of "contemplating" a fourth when the roll call commenced and time ran out.

"We are extremely disappointed about the way negotiations with Mr. Dreim have gone, and we hope we will be able to come to a deal when the offseason recommences come December," so said Head Scouter Jim Dall. Dall added, "[Rehiring Dreim] will be the first task on our agenda when the next offseason begins."

But not if the chefs have their way. Chefs failed to get scouters to agree to a pact requiring Dreim to be placed on the barred list and threatening mass resignations and salary raise requests should this not occur. They can forget about the pact for the time being, as the chefs have scored a hollow-chocolate victory with the deadline passing and voiding negotiations, but the chefs will have to come back to the bargaining table with the scouters if they don't want negotiations with Dreim to rejuice themselves in 2013. "This is only half the battle," said Peter Dumas, who co-wrote the pact accusing Dreim of being rude, conceited, and threatening to his colleagues in his four years on the Feast Fest floor. 44 of the 65 chefs signed the pact.

A few of Dreim's allies on the Feast Fest squad were disappointed by the deadline passing. "Steve was a terrific chef and a great colleague who I loved working with on the Feast Fest floor, and it beats me where these totally unfounded accusations of threats and haughtiness are coming from," said one chef who declined to give his game for fear of being "chewed out" by the large anti-Dreim majority.

"While we support continued unemployment of Dreim in terms of Feast Fest," said Dumas, "we understand that a minority does exist in support of Dreim, and we must cooperate with and continue forging our positive relationships with those who do support Dreim in order to avoid a harmful splintering into factions and/or a polarization among our glorious body of Feast Fest chefs."

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Merrsff to Receive "Lifetime Achievement Award" from NCA at Feast Fest

-Setauket, N.Y.
-Lindbergh Merrssff will receive a special "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the NCA as part of Feast Fest opening ceremonies, Manager William Vanderbilt announced late Sunday. Merrssff claimed to be "ecstatic" here at his home in Setauket, a Long Island beach town.

Merrssff will be the Guest of Honor for Feast Fest 2012 and will be the recipient of the Ceremonial Turkey. Merrssff has received various accolades from Feast Fest and the NCA in his retirement. In addition, Merrssff was honored with a Feast Fest "Lifetime Achievement Award" during Feast Fest XV (2009), but this is the first time he will be honored with such an award by the significantly larger domain of the NCA.

"Mr. Merrssff is a spectacular and extraordinary chef whose life and whose work has embodied and continues to embody everything we here at the NCA stand for," said NCA President Al Green.

He will be presented with the award as part of Opening Ceremonies for Feast Fest.






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With Two Days Left, Saturday Is Day of Lost Time in Dreim Case

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-You might as well stick a fork in this one and serve it for dinner, because the negotiations with Stephen Dreim and Feast Fest scouters are about to be hunted down by the evil forces of, well, time.

Dreim and FF must reach a deal by midday Monday, when the official 2012 Feast Fest Roll Call will take place. The Roll Call will officially set out the roster for Feast Fest 2012, and once the roll call begins, no further chefs can be signed to the event. (Well, technically, they can be, but they wouldn't be able to serve in Feast Fest until Feast Fest 2013.)

Dreim rejected a $775,000 deal Saturday, making scouters realize they need to focus on time, rather than money, in their next offer, which they filed at $778,500 over three years late Saturday night. Dreim has yet to reply.

"It became clear that one big turnoff for Mr. Dreim in our offers was that they were all temporary, one-year deals, and the possibility of launching right back into intensive negotiations such as these after Feast Fest was clearly unappealing to Mr. Dreim," said Jim Roedde, the scouter heading the team of scouters tasked with working on Dreim's case. "Our newest deal will ensure we won't have to negotiate with Mr. Dreim again until 2015, and we hope this will illicit a better reaction from Mr. Dreim."

Scouters hope to engage in a back-in-forth with Dreim on Sunday, exchanging rapid fire offers and reactions in hopes of getting one to stick to the wall for a deal. However, if Dreim continues to take a long time to make up his mind about each deal, that setup could prove impossible.

Dreim resigned Oct. 18, enraged upon being implicated in a scouter bribery scandal for which he was later exonerated. Scouters set out to rehire Dreim, but ran into complications with a defiant, stubborn Dreim in negotiations and with a chef body who called Dreim haughty and conceited and which filed a pact recently to try to stop the negotiations.






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Crellas Wins Most Diverse

-New York
-The inaugural winner of a brand new NCA yearly award is a Feast Fest chef.

The NCA's new "Most Diverse" honor, created to dole out each year "to the chef who best exemplifies a spirit of global flavor and international incorporation in his/her cooking," was won Saturday night by FFer Laelech Crellas, a Hawaii-based World chef with Hawaiian, Polynesian, German, British, Japanese, Indonesian, and Irish ancestries. "I am ecstatic to receive the very first 'Most Diverse' honor," Crellas said in an email.






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Dreim Rejects $770K Offer, Scouters Offer $775K

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-Feast Fest scouters filed a $770,000, one-year, 2013-option offer for Stephen Dreim early Friday, which the resigned-on-Oct. 18 phenom immediately rejected.

Scouters then filed a $775,000 deal, and are awaiting word from Dreim on that offer.

"If increasing the amounts of the offers don't work, we're going to try increasing their length," said Jim Dall, Head Scouter of Feast Fest. The $775,000 offer is also a one-year deal with a 2013 option.

Dall Friday removed Stefanie McOneguew from the position as head of the team of scouters negotiating with Dreim. This is because Dall felt McOneguew was siding with the interests of the FF chefs, who do not want Dreim to return, and that she thus was purposely "failing to push the negotiations to their fullest possible extent." Dall said, "Ms. McOneguew does not understand that this is not about the chefs. Once Dreim resigned, I issued an ultimatum to my scouters: We need Dreim. Get him back. Disregard any and all other potential factors. Ms. McOneguew was failing to meet that ultimatum." Dall announced midday Friday that Jim Roedde, a former Head Scouter in 2009 who stepped down to become a regular scouter in 2010, had been designated as the official head of the team working with Dreim.

Chefs, who call Dreim "haughty, conceited, and barbarous" and "an absolute displeasure to have collaborated with" are on their way to victory: if Dreim has not been rehired by the Monday roll call of chefs for Feast Fest 2012, the official deadline to hire chefs for that very year, negotiations will automatically be voided.

"Time is running out," Dall said. "We need to make moves, serious, well-thought-out moves that emphasize the demands of the chef, and we need to make them now."






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Dreim Rejects $764K Offer, Scouters Plan to Issue New Offer

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-Only three days remain to re-sign Stephen Dreim to an FF contract for 2012, and unravelings on Thursday zapped even more life out of the feasibility of the negotiations.

After eight days of silence on a $764,000 offer issued Tue., Oct. 30, Dreim finally came out and rejected the offer, as was expected. "There's a psychological pattern, where, if people are taking a long time to make a decision, they're more likely to say 'no' to it," said analyst Mike Vilshire. "Because if they like the offer, they'll usually say 'yes' enthusiastically and quickly." Dreim set no further request for an offer, which is both good and bad for the scouters. It's good in that it gives them more freedom to post their own amount in the next offer, not one dictated by Dreim, but the lack of an offer request, which Dreim has usually issued upon previous rejections, deprives the scouters of guidance in the form of a ballpark figure.

Head Scouter Jim Dall said he and his scouters had not yet figured an amount to offer Dreim, but he said that it "will not exceed $800,000." The offer will be formally issued on Friday. "Our battle plan is to see this offer off and away Friday, hopefully we get a response awfully quickly, and then we hope, if Mr. Dreim is responding quickly, to engage in a rapid-fire tennis-style back-and-forth of offers and responses over Saturday and Sunday until either we reach an agreement or until the Monday deadline passes. Hopefully, the former of those two scenarios will play out."

In other news, chefs met with scouters for five hours on Thursday in an attempt to break off talks between the scouters and Dreim, but with the deadline looming that's not a must-do in order for the chefs' goal of not rehiring Dreim to be achieved. "Time is on our side," said chef Peter Dumas Thursday.

However, if the chefs could get the scouters to agree to the pact, the pact's terms would involve having the scouting department place Dreim on the barred list. If the chefs drop the pact matter and just let the deadline pass, Dreim could still be negotiated with in the next offseason. While most chefs agreed that letting Monday come and go would be a victory for their cause, a few disagreed. "We must settle this matter now and get the scouters to agree with this pact," so said chef Alizone Jahschweich. "I don't know about the other chefs, but I can say that I don't want to be refighting this come December, January, February, 2013, 2014, 2015, ever. I want to get Dreim on the barred list. And I never want to have to refight that."

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Scouters, Chefs Break Off Talks Without Progress, Plan to Reconvene Thursday; Still No Word From Dreim

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-Feast Fest Head Scouter Jim Dall, Event Manager William Vanderbilt, and 19 other scouters met Wednesday with 27 of the 44 chefs who signed a pact threatening raise demands and walk-away should Stephen Dreim be rehired.

Entering the eighth day without word from Dreim on a $764,000 offer (he said on Tue., Oct. 30 that he was "contemplating" it and he hasn't issued a new statement to the public since), the two sides were unable to reach an agreement and the scouters were unable to shift the position of the chefs.

This is more of a problem for the scouters than it is for the chefs. Even if no ground is gained in the discussions between the two sides, the chefs will still come out on top if Monday, when the official roll call for Feast Fest XVIIII takes place (and after which no more chefs can be added or removed for that year's event), comes and goes without a deal betwixt Dreim and Dall.

"We're fast approaching a deadline," said Stefanie McOneguew, the scouter heading Dreim's case. "We're willing to move, we're willing to make some more concessions to Mr. Dreim, but we need a response from him before we can go forward."

Although he has indicated interest in rejoining, Dreim, who resigned Oct. 18, infuriated at false implication in a bribery scandal and who at that time said he would NOT seek reemployment with Feast Fest if he was found innocent (which he was hours later), could be using silence as a method of saying he never really wanted to rejoin in the first place.

"It's possible Dreim wants FF out of his life," says Mike Vilshire, an analyst. "He very well could have entered into rehiring negotiations with the event just because they badgered him so much about it, and now he's using his silence on the latest offer to let Monday come and go and to let the deal void. That, of course, is assuming he doesn't want to go through with it."

Lyle Lilbridge, an agent for Dreim, said Wednesday that Dreim had hoped for a $1,000,000 offer but that he knew such an offer had "slim to none" chances. Still, he acknowledged that his client was trying to get Feast Fest "to run up the numbers on the contract offer, in the thought process that when they refused to go higher, if Mr. Dreim still doesn't think he's being offered enough, he could issue a pocket veto of sorts...for lack of a better term."

The chefs and scouters will reconvene Thursday, but with every day passing without deals on any sides of this now three-sided series of negotiations, it's looking less and less likely that Dreim will be rehired for 2012--which is exactly what the chefs want.

"He was very belligerent, very rude," an unidentified chef said of Dreim. "I'd prefer not to have to work with Dreim again if I can possibly help it."

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Purists of Organization Senate Complete Successful Filibuster of '14 Expansion Measure

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-A group of four purists on Feast Fest's Organization Senate Wednesday again filibustered a 2014 expansion measure that, if passed, would have put two Feast Fests on Thanksgiving Day and which would have given chefs a 17-hour workday on Thanksgiving and which would have had the official score announcement coming at Midnight.

Although the proposal was projected to be defeated by a slim margin, the four OS members who conducted the filibuster didn't think it was safe enough to let a vote go through. And, because the OS broke session Wednesday and won't reconvene until after Feast Fest, the band of antiexpansion purists can now take a huge breather.

"We were elated when the gavel was struck today indicating adjournment," Lois Jenks, one of the filibustering members, said. "We now can approach this from a new angle when we reconvene and we can figure out how to halt such ludicrous expansion proposals before they even get to a vote."

The Organization Senate will not reconvene until Feb. 4.






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Time Running Out for Dreim: Scouters, Chefs to Meet Weds. to Set Terms for Rejoining

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-As the time for rehiring Stephen Dreim to Feast Fest 2012 continues to run out, Feast Fest and 27 chefs will meet on Wednesday to discuss the terms of a pact the chefs signed opposing and threatening raise requests and possible cases of resignation and walk-away in the event the flashy, yet haughty, former chef who resigned in October due to being false implication in a bribery scandal, is re-signed.

According to Feast Fest rules, if a chef is not signed to the event by the roll call at the beginning of the week-and-a-half-long convention period preceding Feast Fest--in this case, by Monday--the chef will have to wait until the following year to be signed.

"The roll call is the official rundown of all of the chefs for a particular year," said Scouter Jon Maguw. "Once it has been held, everything is concrete: nope, sorry, too late, try again next year. That's what we're trying to avoid."

The chefs take on a completely separate position. Andrew Cgrewnyr, a representative for the 44 chefs who signed the pact, said, "The strategy here is to take the juice out of the movement to sign Dreim until and through Monday. I represent chefs who believe Dreim has personally aggrieved them and who believe that a rehiring of Dreim has the potential to dramatically and drastically alter the atmosphere on the Feast Fest floor towards the worse. And we know this is an ugly fight. This is precisely why we want to keep the scouters' negotiations with Dreim stifled until Monday. Doing so will guarantee that Dreim will NOT be a member of this event in 2012, and it guarantees that we will have the entire offseason to hash this battle out in 2013. To work against the clock is stressful and is unfair to everybody involved, especially the chef body I represent."

The chefs' goal is to convince the scouters to drop negotiations until the offseason sometime tomorrow or Thursday, so that they won't be left holding their breath until Monday.

Dreim himself has indirectly helped the chefs' cause. His indecisiveness, wherein he has been "contemplating" a $764,000 offer for over a week with no word back, is delaying the negotiations significantly. Some believe that's a quiet way of saying "no". Mike Vilshire, an analyst, says that "I believe that Dreim wants to scare the scouters into upping the offer, but he doesn't want to alienate or turn off the scouters by coming out and saying that sharply and directly. That, I believe, is why we're seeing Dreim lingering. He's waiting for the scouters to give him a new offer. And they may soon as time is running out."

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Kelley Courted by FF

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-Another in a stream of former chefs looking to rejoin Feast Fest has popped up with positive preliminary negotiations with FF for 2013, Scouter Roderick Auld-Asmee said Monday.

John Kelley, an All-American culinary master from Denver, was a member of the Feast Fest team from 1999 to 2004, and resigned in front of Feast Fest 2005 when contract negotiations failed. Kelley also negotiated with FF in July 2006 and February 2010, but nothing could materialize.

The mixture in the bowl finally was right, though, as Auld-Asmee said his team of scouters "could come to an agreement with Mr. Kelley as early as Friday."

Currently, it is rumored that the deal will be for Kelley to sign for 2013 on a seventh-line-of-power slot for $303,455, though those figures could change before an official announcement is made.

"Wicked excited about the potential to be a part of the Feast Fest team yet again, starting Thanksgiving 2013," Kelley wrote in an email.

Negotiations with Kelley will break Tuesday but will resume Wednesday.






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Vanderbilt-Dall-Ayeiy Trip Finally Ends

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-They're home.

After a whirlwind, 12-day, 30-city world tour, Feast Fest's Executive Manager William Vanderbilt, Executive Assistant Arthur Ayeiy and Head Scouter Jim Dall have returned to Feast Fest headquarters in Los Angeles, finishing off the trip with stops in Phoenix and San Francisco before coasting home to Southern California.

The tour was scheduled to end Sunday, but was extended by a day when stops in Philadelphia and Washington were rescheduled. The threesome was unable to visit those two cities on the originally scheduled Oct. 30 due to Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy.






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OS Successful in Filibuster of 2014 Expansion Measure, But Easy Breathing Not Guaranteed

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-The Feast Fest Organization Senate was unable to pass a proposal to expand to a two-Feast Fest, 14-hour Thanksgiving event in 2014 on Monday as purists successfully filibustered the event.

Pete Wilco, Lois Jenks, Dana Rethaulia, and Mike Leary discussed Tuesday's Obama-Romney election, California Proposition 30, turkey recipes, baseball, reality television, weather, fishing trips with Leary's sons, the Christmas cards Jim McAllister sends to all the OS members, and other such irrelevant topics in the successful all-day attempt.

But they might have to do it all over again Tuesday and Wednesday.

Jana Vaarhas, head of the movement in favor of the expansion proposal, said he would attempt to bring the proposal back to the floor Tuesday, and, if unsuccessful, Wednesday. On Wednesday, the OS will adjourn and will not reconvene until Feb. 4.

"We're glad we got this filibuster slammed down today," Leary said, "but by no means are we totally out of the woods quite yet."






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OS Members Plan to Filibuster Another Expansion Measure

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-They just won't go away, will they?

Yet another in a string of ridiculous, logistically unwieldy proposals to add a second Feast Fest event to Thanksgiving Day, making for a Thanksgiving for FF chefs that would have them cooking for nearly fourteen consecutive hours and which would approximately have the official score come at midnight, is planned to be filibustered by event purists when it comes to a vote Monday.

Mike Leary, Lois Jenks, Pete Wilco, and Dana Retheaulia will spearhead the filibustering efforts. Jenks was part of a filibuster effort for an extremely similar proposal in November 2011, which was successful. That proposal would have had the change made in 2013; if this one passes, the expansion will come in 2014.

Although recent polling showed opposition to the proposal to be holding a slight lead, that's not enough for the purists filibustering it. "This is too close of a call," Wilco said. "We can't risk it going to a vote. We must take action now.". Wilco, however, seemed to be ignoring the fact that even should it pass the 50-member, Organization Senate, it would then have to clear the 10-member Executive Board, and while support is more or less split among the Organization Senate, the EB is much more likely than the OS to vote against the proposal.

"We need to send a message," Wilco said. "A strong message saying we need to get rid of these sorts of proposals."






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Wholehreh Wins NCA's Best All-American

-New York
-Keith Wholehreh has won his first NCA's Best All-Americsn Award.

Wholehreh claimed first with 23% of the vote. Fellow Feast Fest chef Johnny Stevenson, who has a long record with this honor, having won it six times, including in 2011, was relegated to third. But he wasn't holding any grudges: "Knowing and working with Keith, I am ecstatic to see the torch of this award passed down to him," Stevenson said.

In 2011, the two chefs' placements were reversed: Stevenson won, with Wholehreh at third. Wholehreh placed fourth in 2010 and did not podium in 2009.

Wholehreh's win Saturday was an upset. It was predicted that Stevenson would win his seventh, with Wholehreh being the runner-up at second.

Stevenson got 12% of the vote.






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Mansfield, Avi Have Power

-New York
-As the recovery efforts from Superstorm Sandy continued, two Big Apple-based FF chefs had power restored Saturday. Michelle Mansfield, FF chef since 2008, had power restored to her Tribeca eatery Saturday, as did Feast Fest tigress Lynn Avi to her Lower East Side restaurant.

"We just want to get back on our feet, get back to making good food," Avi said. "The best way to heal will be to return to our normal returns.

Avi plans to reopen her restaurant Sunday; Mansfield's is slated to reopen Monday.






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Moore Wins Flashiest

-New York
-FF chef Ashton Moore has cradled his fourth NCA Flashiest Award.

Moore won this honor in 2005, 2008, and 2011. "I feel absolutely thrilled to have won 'Flashiest' for a third time," Moore said in an email.

Another Feast Fest chef podiumed: Lynn Avi came in third.






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Executive Board Passes Resolution for 2013 to Have Chefs Prepare Ham

-Marina del Rey, Ca.
-"It would be exclusive to not have America's secondary Thanksgiving entree at Feast Fest."

So read the concurrent opinion passed by the Feast Fest Executive Board Friday in approving a measure to have the chefs prepare a ham, widely considered to be the second most-consumed meat-based food on Thanksgiving.

Beginning in 2013, one ham will be prepared. Feast Fest guests will have an option to bid to be served the ham; if nobody bids, as is possible, the ham will go to a local homeless shelter. The ham will be a symbolic FF food and will not be NCA scored.







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