FOOD EDITOR AND WRITER
Jordan Wright is one of the leading food writers in Washington, DC. Covering the entire metropolitan area for the tony high-end Georgetowner and hip sister publication the Downtowner, her articles have featured posh restaurant openings, food and wine events, food-oriented film reviews, farmer’s markets, food trends, cookbook launch parties, restaurant reviews, food memories, hot new food products and interviews with the country’s leading chefs from the PBS’s series Made in Spain, Jose Andres, and Bravo’s Top Chef, Carla Hall, to CakeLove’s Warren Brown, to The Good Stuff Eatery’s Spike Mendelsohn and famed chef and restauranteur, Anthony Bourdain and many, many more. She has also interviewed director, Robert Kenner, for an in-depth article about his recent film Food, Inc. (Kenner was the producer of An Inconvenient Truth).
She has blogged for the now-defunct Washington Home and Garden on area food topics and, in her travels, covered statewide events on food and wine. Photographs by Wright accompany many of her articles and NBC News has picked up and used a number of her stories this year.
During this year’s presidential inauguration week she gave interviews to top radio talk show hosts on a number of local, national and satellite radio stations. She discussed the Washington food scene and her own inaugural menu, created using locally farm-sourced ingredients and Virginia wine pairings, with talk show hosts such as AP Award-winning White House correspondent Victoria Jones for Talk Radio News and Guy James for The Guy James Show.
As a chef herself, Ms. Wright brings a singular voice to the food scene in the nation’s capital with her thirty years experience as a former restauranteur, private chef for some of the areas most notable families, caterer and writer who has lived and traveled around the world. Her recipes are often published along with her food-styled articles on entertaining at home and frequently include wine pairing suggestions.
Ms. Wright lives in Old Town Alexandria. Her website www.whiskandquill.com is respected and read weekly by thousands around the country.
by Kiki Obadal LOCAL KICKS
LOCAL LEADERS/Jordan Wright – A home cooked meal, via private chef
On a hot afternoon, in her stylish townhouse on Old Town’s swank south end, private chef Jordan Wright welcomes a sweaty writer into her sitting room and serves a cooling goblet of hyssop-infused, honeyed iced tea.
Then in her soft cultured voice, she begins to hold forth about her favorite subject: cooking. In her case, as quickly becomes clear, we are not really talking about cooking, however: we are in fact talking about cuisine. We are talking about a dying part of life: culture. The fact that Wright is th e granddaughter of Redskins football team founder and thirty-year owner George Preston Marshall, would leave a dyed-in-the-wool fan reeling and begging for tales of reminiscence about the “Hogs”. Even so, her passion for cooking seems to easily outdo her fondness for the team.
Indeed, it is clear that Wright could easily spend her days on the golf course with a very well heeled set; but as a woman of culture and passion for life, she rolls out of bed at a working man’s hour to provide home-cooked meals to a number of local families who comprise her growing clientele. Wright grew up in a home with a full-time French chef, and has analyzed food and culinary traditions across the globe during her travels through Europe and Asia. Wright is self-taught, as many successful chefs seem to be (Food network stars Paula Deen and Rachel Ray spring to mind). She builds her menus around what is fresh in the market—namely, Whole Foods and Balducci’s—eschewing heavy sauces for dishes with a clean finish. Wright’s assurance o f quality stems, she says, from her reliance on organic local ingredients and her eye for balanced nutrition. Wright also swears by fresh herbs, which she says make her dishes “sing to the food heart of my clients.” Off the record, of course, and just between you and me, let’s just mention that one certain presidential candidate’s mother is addicted to Wright’s unique recipe for meatloaf.
Wright’s clients’ palates never become bored, either, thanks to the broad diversity of her menus. They include a repertory of hundreds of dishes from France, the Mediterranean, Asian, and of course American regions. A number of families in the Metro area pay Wright a set fee for visiting their kitchens on a weekly basis. During an average week, Wright visits McLean, Georgetown, Potomac, and Alexandria to cater to the needs of her clients. Unlike some full time chefs, Wright does not travel with her clients, although some have requested that her creations be vacuum sealed and sent via airmail to their vacation hom es.
Contrary to intuition, employing a private chef such as Wright is not an exorbitant expense or even an unnecessary luxury for many families. The pressures of time can make having a private chef a very feasible option for busy people who still understand the value of sitting down as a family to a home cooked meal in the evening. In fact, comments Wright, the quality of ingredients that a private chef will use is higher than what most restaurants use.
In addition to expanding upon her eight years of experience as a private chef, Wright is working on a forthcoming book about food and wine pairings. Readers who wish to employ her services may find contact information in an accompanying advertisement.
Kiki Obadal is an Alexandria-based writer, and is available at kirstenobadal@hotmail.com.
