Though Florent got all the attention this weekend, another restaurant closed too: Cesare Casella’s Maremma. The Italian restaurant lasted only three years, but it had its fans, among them a disproportionate number of chefs, food writers, and Italian nationals. Representatives from all three groups showed up to close the restaurant on Saturday. In tribute to Casella’s trademark bouquet of rosemary, a lot of the men, and even a few of the women, tore branches off the restaurant’s rosemary plant and put them in their breast pockets. Casella was his usually merry self, if a little subdued, but the guest list was surely gratifying: Del Posto’s Mark Ladner, Centro Vinoteca’s Anne Burrell, Cesca’s Kevin Garcia, Fiamma’s Fabio Trabocchi, and a dozen other peers and friends.

The James Beard Awards were good to New York last night, which always means one thing – great after-parties. To no one's surprise, David Chang won Outstanding Chef–New York, but our city conquered three of the major national awards too, with Gramercy Tavern taking Outstanding Restaurant; Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali named Outstanding Restaurateur; and Gavin Kaysen of Café Boulud deemed Rising Star Chef. (Hopes for a fourth were dashed when Anthos lost to D.C.'s Central Michel Richard for Best New Restaurant.) The glee was in the air at the gala afterward, but even more so at the three after-parties we attended: a jam-packed affair at Bar Boulud, home of the largest bottle of Champagne we've ever seen; an after-after-party at Eleven Madison Park with everyone from Thomas Keller to Tuscan party animal Cesare Casella; and an after-after-after-party at Gramercy Tavern, where the normally sedate staff poured cocktails like there was no tomorrow. Which, in a sense, there wasn't. That heavy medallion with the bald man was a pass to vindication and euphoria for the New York restaurant community, at least for a night.

There’s been a lot of action in the Cesare Casella camp lately. The chef gives us an update. To wit:

• Maremma is for sale. “It’s on the market,” Casella says. “I’m waiting for a better offer than the one I have, though. If I don’t get it, I’ll renovate it and make it a little different.”

• Casella’s new restaurant will be called Salumeria Rosi, but it isn’t really a restaurant, per se: “It’s a grocery, that has a very small restaurant area of about 35 seats. It’s very casual — some antipasti, panini, a few pastas.”

• The Tuscan Tocque also tells us that he’s in negotiations to do a big, upscale restaurant in a luxe hotel being built in midtown. “We haven’t signed the contract yet, but it will be a very nice restaurant, and a kind of cooking I haven’t done before in New York.”

• Bean bar, Casella’s planned fast-food operation in Grand Central Station, is likewise on hold. Casella probably has ten other things going on that he's not talking about; but we'll settle for these. They're more than enough.

Related: Cesare Casella the Latest Chef Onboard the UWS Bandwagon

The restaurant explosion on the Upper West side has reached mushroom-cloud proportions. How else can you explain the previously unimaginable Taste of the Upper West Side, a big tasting event scheduled for May 31? Numerous chefs are involved, ranging from new arrivals like John Fraser and Ed Brown, of Dovetail and Eighty One, to name chefs like Zak Pelaccio and Cesare Casella who have jumped on the UWS bandwagon. Point of interest: Casella’s restaurant is cited as “Salumeria,” — the first glimpse of the venture’s until-now nebulous identity. Admission is two-tiered: It’s $100 in advance for the tasting event and $250 if you also want to attend the VIP cocktail hour preceding it.

New Taste of the Upper West Side [Official site]

Related: Cesare Casella the Latest Chef Onboard the UWS Bandwagon

The Upper West Side — flush with Dovetail's success; the boffo business at Kefi , Cesca , and Ouest ; and with Fatty Crab II on the way — seems to be — of all places — the hot restaurant neighborhood du jour. And the next chef heading northwest? Tuscan toque Cesare Casella, who has a lease on a 1000-square-foot space on West 73rd Street. The Maremma chef, who leads the Italian program at the French Culinary Institute, is also seeking to acquire an adjacent storefront. “If we can do that, we will have an Italian restaurant, but not a Tuscan cowboy one,” Casella says. “I have to represent all of Italy, the way I teach at FCI. If we stay with the small space, it will be Bean Bar or something like it.” Bean Bar is the Tuscan takeout bean operation Casella has wanted to open at Grand Central since last May. His new space won't be ready till fall or next winter at the earliest.

Related: Cesare Casella Jumps to Launch Bean Bar in Grand Central

So you think you know spaghetti carbonara? You don’t know spaghetti carbonara. That is the theme of the Italian chef coalition ITChefs – GVCI’s current campaign to educate New Yorkers about the classic dish. TChefs – GVCI’, which stands for Virtual Group of Italian Chefs, is charging four of the city’s top Italian chefs to make it exactly according to the “authentic” recipe for one night. On Thursday, Cesare Casella of Maremma, Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Kevin Garcia of Accademia de Vino, and Ivan Beacco of Borgo Antico, will make the dish according to the master recipe approved by ITChefs – GVCI. Or will they? Like every traditional recipe in every cuisine, "authentic" carbonara changes with every chef that makes it.

We just got our copy of the Gourmet Institute calendar, and though we expected it to be pretty good (the pictures are by My Last Supper author Melanie Dunea), it turns out to be almost surreal. Dunea really gets the absurdity of chef glamour shots, but rather than try to tone down the portraits, she folds her insight back into the photograph. The pictures are so high-concept that they transcend their original food-porn purposes. Brilliant! The calendar, which helps to support City Meals on Wheels, features twelve big-shot chefs in her signature style, and includes such awesome shots as Maremma's Cesare Casella in a cowboy suit, looking like a tough Tuscan sheriff of the plains; Esca's David Pasternack, looking totally looped, pouring liquor into the mouth of his fish companion; and Barbuto's Jonathan Waxman, throwing what we hope is flour around in a gleeful, Tony Montana–like spree.

The Chefs of the Gourmet Institute 2008 Calendar
Related: Eating the Last Supper

The Russian Tea Room has found itself a new chef: former Beppe boss Marc Taxiera. Only in his first few weeks there, Taxiera is already revamping the menu, which has been in a state of suspended animation since former chef Gary Robins got the mitten in February. Taxiera has flown under the radar a little but is actually one of the more talented young chefs in town: Despite having no experience other than an ICE externship at Felidia and a job on the line at Baldoria, he did so well at Beppe that he was promoted from within when chef Cesare Casella left the restaurant to concentrate his energies on Maremma. Even though it's on what is usually thought of as a cursed street, Beppe continued to flourish, owing largely to Taxiera’s smart, muscular menu. Whether all that translates into Russian is another story, but it’s a smart move for the embattled Russian Tea Room.

Related: Russian Tea Room Fires Gary Robins, and Robins Fires Back

Cesare Casella of Maremma is known for his way with livestock (we’ve written of his specialty breed of pigs and his much-prized Chianina cattle herd). However the Tuscan-cooking guru made his first big product splash with his Republic of Beans import company, and he’s now looking to get back into the beans business. Casella is in negotiations to open Bean Bar, a carryout shop in Grand Central Station that will sell some of his signature Tuscan bean dishes as well as uncooked beans and possibly other Italian products. “The main idea is to have cooked beans,” Casella tells us. “They’re great and so healthy, but for many people, they are a pain in the ass to cook. I want them to be able to take home beans when they go home on the train.” Families around the tri-state area will definitely be thanking Casella for that.

The James Beard Awards after-parties presented special challenges which could only be solved by the liberal use of an open bar. The place to go was the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, whose bikini-clad waitresses and go-go dancers, serving at the behest of chef David Burke, provided a welcome dose of vulgarity after the high-class Beard gala. But the truly hot ticket was the Momofuku party bus, which, if David Chang & Co. were to be believed, was a chartered party vehicle where the most intense celebrating would be done. Regretfully, though, it was closed to press. “Sorry, dude,” David Chang told us, dazed and blissful and still unbelieving in the wake of his victory.

Just in case you weren't tuned in to WOR this morning, we thought we'd let you know that "Food Talk" host Mike Colameco had us on his show and that you can hear our conversation by going here (click on "Food Talk November 28" in the lower-left corner of the page). We covered classic Grub Street topics like Bar-B-Jews, Cesare Casella's zoological experiments, and plans for a bollito misto debauch. So rest your eyes and give it a listen.

A lot of chefs — particularly of the Haute Barnyard breed — advertise their love of farms. But how many actually mastermind a breeding program, and then invite other chefs to the country to see the results? Cesare Casella, the Tuscan cook behind Maremma, has been breeding two types of pigs (and snow-white Chianina cattle) at Stonewall Preserve upstate. On Monday, he invited Mark Ladner of Del Posto, April Bloomfield of the Spotted Pig, Zak Pelaccio of Fatty Crab, Kevin Garcia of 'Cesca, and Mary Ellen Heavner of 5 Ninth to come up and sample the Stonewall pig.

Cesare Casella has always been a hands-on kind of guy. The Maremma chef, a leading light of Tuscan cookery in America, imports his own beans and makes his own sausages. It only follows, then, that sooner or later he'd invent his own pig. Casella is breeding the Large Black, the tastiest breed of swine we've ever eaten, with a Yorkshire-Duroc crossbreed, the most durable and healthy. Their offspring are being mated with Large Blacks, creating a pig that grows fast, lives long, causes little trouble, and tastes better than you can imagine — or at least, that's the idea. The pigs will appear first at Maremma — after the current generation, which is still young, begins producing offspring at the end of this year or in early '07 — and later at other restaurants around town.

Lots of chefs create new pork dishes, but how many create new pigs? (It's almost like Pygmalion. Except Higgins never ate Eliza.)