The Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, a new professional school for culinary arts in the U.S. and internationally, officially launched with a reception at the Alliance Francaise de Chicago, which was hosted by Paul Ryan, president of the Hoffman Estates and the Illinois-based Triumph Higher Education Group (Triumph HEG).

“The Foundation is dedicated to preserving the legacy of my great-grandfather as the ‘chef of kings and king of chefs,’” Michel Escoffier, Auguste Escoffier’s great-grandson and president of the Auguste Escoffier, Foundation and Museum of Villeneuve-Loubet, France, said at the launch. “What better way to extend Escoffier’s legacy and advance the profession than by providing innovative training that cultivates our future culinary leaders?”

STOCKHOLM — Scuba divers recently emerged from the Baltic Sea with some unexpected loot — a bottle of champagne that’s more than 200 years old, reports the Associated Press.  

The near-ancient bubbly, that head diver Christian Ekstrom called “sweet” with hints of “oak and tobacco,” is believed to be from the 1780s and was likely part of a cargo ship bound for Russia.
"We brought up the bottle to be able to establish how old the wreck was," Ekstrom told AP. "We didn't know it would be champagne. We thought it was wine or something."
The bottles were discovered last week in the Aland Islands, between Sweden and Finland. The delighted divers are sending their catch — about 30 bottles worth — to France to be tested for authenticity.

ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX, France — At the core, the restaurant and hospitality business is really about service, and with that in mind, the France-based foodservice giant Sodexo upped the ante, recently announcing that more than 39,000 employees in 28 countries took part in its annual Servathon to fight hunger and malnutrition this spring.

The Canadian arm of the initiative was launched in 2000 to engage employees in hunger relief efforts in their local communities by serving food, fundraising, organizing food drives and holding free nutrition and food-safety workshops at hunger relief organizations.

MADRID — Acclaimed Spanish chef Ferran Adria has announced the opening of a new Barcelona restaurant with his pastry chef brother, according to the AFP.

"There will be a place to eat by Ferran and Albert Adria in Barcelona," he originally told the TV3 channel in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region recently.