Peru Episode of PBS’s “Food Trip With Todd English” Wins James Beard Award

Celebrity chef Todd English won the award for “Best Television Special” at Sunday night’s 2010 James Beard House Foundation Awards, for the Peru episode of PBS’s Food Trip with Todd English, which featured chef English aboard Aqua Expeditions‘ luxury Amazon cruise and cooking at Inkaterra’s Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel.

The winning hour-long episode of Food Trip, filmed on-location in the Peruvian Amazon, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, highlights the best of Peruvian cuisine.  In the Amazon, chef English was guided by Peruvian star chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino and visited local markets, where he sampled various exotic ingredients.  Amazonian snails and catfish from a local market served as inspiration for a ceviche-cooking segment aboard the luxury vessel MV Aqua, which was topped off with Chef Schiaffino’s special Camu Camu Pisco Sour.

Aqua Expeditions’ public relations representative in the U.S., Nestor Lara-Baeza of WEILL PR, was fortunate enough to have been asked to accept the award for chef English as he had a previous engagement that evening.