Mario Batali

Is the cost of your cookware leaving you with no funds for food? Celebrity chefs endorse expensive lines of kitchen tools, but you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment to create a delicious meal. We asked the experts which items warrant a splurge, and which are simply overpriced.

Amid all the chain-store carnage, some smaller merchants are trying to attract shoppers with new concepts, from textbook rentals to made-to-order pants. And many are finding success in a bruising economic environment.

Being a celebrity chef is as much about celebrity -- and good marketing -- as it is about cooking. Sounds like an obvious statement, but a recent SmartMoney article takes the celebrity-chef craze to task for what it considers some sleights of hand that can ruin your appetite as well as your dinner...

Over the past few years, as upscale cuisine has increasingly divorced itself from anything resembling what the average person consumes, an interesting trend has emerged: modest, mainstream foods have often been co-opted by the culinary elites. This has led to a strange reversal, wherein peasant...

Would you like to have lunch with Cameron Diaz? How would you like a meal that was prepared by chef Mario Batali? Does a balogna sandwich with Gwyneth Paltrow interest you? Well, I can't help you get any of those great privileges, but I can set you on track to what just might be the next best...