About Chef Tropepe
Award winning chef Vincent Tropepe is a celebrated culinary personality, chef, author, speaker, restaurant consultant, small business advocate. Born and raised in the Bensonhurst portion of Brooklyn, New York, Vincent is a culinary school graduate from both The New York Restaurant School and the Art Institute of New York City.
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As a child, Vincent always gravitated to food and cooking. His early influences are the women of his family. He preferred spending time in the kitchen to playing sports or watching television. Poor to his formal culinary education and longing to be in the food industry, Vincent obtained jobs shucking clams and oysters at Casa Calamari, a then famous Brooklyn hotspot, followed by a stint at family owned Mama Tury's.
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After his graduation, where he received top honors in the culinary arts from the State of New York. Vincent's first professional job was at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, working under Chef Ducasse. After mastering the art of poaching pears, ( revered signature dessert item on the menu), Vincent continued to work in a variety of top restaurants, expanding his knowledge of various cuisines and furthering his understanding of how expertly use ingredients. Vincent has worked at The Rainbow Room, Chanterelle, The 21 Club, One If By Land Two If By Sea and famed Chinese restaurant Mr. K's.
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While making a name for himself within these acclaimed kitchens in New York City, in 2002 he was asked to be consulting Executive Chef to Madre's in Pasadena, California (the first restaurant owned by actress and singer Jennifer Lopez. Years later, Vincent would go on to consult for Tony May at SD26, Gladys Knight when opening her chain of Chicken & Waffle Houses and Gloria and Emilio Estefan to open Estefan's Kitchen in Miami, Florida.
Throughout his years in the kitchen, Chef Tropepe has cooked for many celebrities including Luciano Pavarotti, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Yankee Hall of Famers Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto, Regis Philbin, Michael Jackson, Dana Carvey, Tony Bennett, Joe Pepitone, Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, Stevie Wonder to only name a few and has cooked for four United States Presidents: George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both while in office as the per diem Executive Chef of domestic flights aboard 14 Air Force One flights and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton post - presidency.
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In 2015, Vincent was asked to write his culinary memoir and cookbook hybrid that was released by Main Entree Publishing. His freshmen work was titled "In My Whites: A Matter of Culinary Perspective" upon its release Vincent embarked on a successful 17 week book tour that had 43 appearances.
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Throughout his culinary career, Vincent has always been a firm believer in giving back and sharing his time and talents whenever he can. Through the years, Vincent has raised over $6 million dollars for a variety of charities he believes in through charitable dinners, appearances, and speaking engagements. He continues to raise money and give back to communities, the underserved, and those people who experience discrimination.
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In August of 2020, Chef Tropepe was appointed Senior Food Writer and Editor in Chief to the food authority website CulinaryNewsWorld.com.
In this position, Tropepe has published delicious user friendly recipes covering a wide variety of cuisines and baking styles, food and product reviews, restaurant reviews and among the most favorite from readership was his food investigative food related stories. From the start of his position, Tropepe had boosted readership more than 400% and totaling more than 15 million reads from his first to last published article on the website.
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During the COVID-19 lockdown, Chef Tropepe used his time wisely and dedicated much time to writing. His second work titled SLAUGHTERED: How Inconsistent Lockdowns Collapsed The Hospitality Industry During COVID-19 is currently the only published work totally dedicated to the hospitality industry and how COVID-19 and questionable leadership making the decisions led to the collapse of the hospitality industry. Receiving numerous publishing offers, Team Tropepe elected to go with the publisher of his first work and in April 2021 SLAUGHTERED was published and became a Barnes and Noble exclusive online retailer of the book.
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In September 2022, Roasted, Chopped & Beaten: When Cities Declare War On The Restaurants That Feed Them was published as Chef Tropepe reveals ground breaking information on the controversial subject of restaurant inspections. Having a Judicial Doctrine in Hospitality Law, Chef Tropepe has successfully defended food service establishments against claims based in fiction through aggressive cross examination city and state inspectors and investigators. In this book, Tropepe brings the reader directly into the courtroom for an eye opening experience.
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In September 2023, Chef Tropepe's long awaited full color cookbook titled ROOTS: Unlocking The Potential & Discovering The Delicious In All Natural Ingredients was released and having Chef Tropepe embark on what would be his second book tour of his career.
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All of Chef Tropepe's books are available at Barnes and Noble online by searching "Vincent Tropepe" in the search bar box. Or you can click on the Barnes and Noble logo below to be redirected.
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