is particularly excited to call the Majestic home after supervising four new restaurant openings for ARP last year.

“As a Chef, you always want to get back into the kitchen and just cook for the sheer joy of it. The Majestic is a perfect place for me to do that, and I love the size. It’s small enough for me to keep an eye on our guests and to work very closely with some very talented young cooks in our organization.”

Graham, a Florida native, earned his Culinary Arts degree in 1990 from the Florida Culinary Institute. His career includes Chef John Varnom at Au Bar/Au Sea in Palm Beach and Sag Harbor; Italian-Mediterranean under Chef Emile Labrousse in Fort Lauderdale at Casa Vecchia, and country French and Italian fare under Chef Ulrich Koepf at Bistro Mezzaluna, also in Fort Lauderdale. Duncan has also served as executive sous chef at the Pacific Rim fusion restaurant,

Azalea before heading up City Grill from 1999-2004.

At this AAA 5-diamond rated

fine dining restaurant, he worked with Georgia Grown Organic Farm Co-Op farmers, holding recognition dinners at the restaurant for local farmers, along with being one of the main market chefs at The Morningside Farmers Market. In 1994 Duncan took over the kitchen at Fifth Group Restaurants’ regional Mexican concept, SALA-Sabor de Mexico. From 2006-200 Duncan served as the executive chef for the Lettuce Entertain You concept, Wildfire Steaks, Chops & Seafood, from 2006 to 2008. In 2008, Duncan moved to the metro Washington, D.C. area to serve as opening executive chef for Founding Farmer’s flagship location, which launched to great acclaim and recognition, including being named, in 2009, as Top 50 Best New Restaurant by Travel + Leisure and among the 100 Best Restaurants, by Washingtonian. While there, Duncan was instrumental in sourcing all produce, dairy, and meat from local farmers in Virginia and Maryland. In 2010 Duncan founded Chefxpertise with a focus on creating culinary concepts, restaurant strategy, design, product innovations, and culinary training for independent restaurant clients.

we drove along Costa Blanca, arriving in Valencia we drove down to Alicante, Mojacar to Almeria. It is a beautiful drive, Valencia is probably my favorite city, on the way down we stayed in a villa near Denia & Xabia, the beaches were fantastic, and the food was great and reasonably priced, especially coming from expensive Switzerland!

The next day

we continued towards Benidorm, Cartagena to Mojacar where we stayed in another villa high above the village overlooking the Mediterranean; Mojacar features great beaches, clubs, and cafes along the beach and lots of restaurants with great seafood. On another day we decided to drive further south to Almeria, and that is when we came across the plastic, greenhouse fields that stretch over 450 square kilometers (the state of New York measures 141,300 square kilometers!) passing by mile after mile through these plastic tents along the highway, one does not think anything negative about it, we all enjoy the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables we pick up in our supermarkets and stores! that are originating from these areas.

Some of the things we saw

stopping there was incredibly disturbing, it is visual proof that mankind just doesn’t give a hoot about the future of this planet, it is all about the money! The next time you purchase vegetables and fruits from Spain I would like you to remember what I saw in this post, and maybe you should consider boycotting these farmers until they get their sh….t together and stop polluting the ocean with their plastic greenhouses!

Since I started a monthly clean-up of our local Swiss lac shores in the canton that I live in, and observed the state of our planet with plastic contamination all over the world, I started to look and investigate some of the worst contaminators on our planet. In my opinion, it is not just plastic, paper, and metal pollution that is a problem; it is also emission pollution through our cars and factories. In this case, it is very difficult for an ordinary citizen to do anything about it as it is the government’s duty and responsibility to resolve, eliminate, change, and punish the violators.

However, as a citizen, we can and should be aware of our surroundings, teach our kids what to do, and respect the environment. After googling some keywords like plastic, I came across a video by Simon Reeves, an English BBC contributor, who traveled along the same route we did.

I am adding a link to his video on Facebook. Depending on where you live, you may be able to watch the video, but some areas, like mine, didn’t allow me to view it because of legal rights or whatever.

It is appalling

what happens with the old, leftover, replaced plastics from these greenhouses? Plus under what terrible conditions the immigrants live working on these farms is another disaster.

Here is a link concerning that problem:

Channel 4 News Report

You can play a part in the preservation of the environment by sharing news and opinions about the preservation of our planet, that is the only effective way to make people aware of what is going on.

God Bless this planet

and help the human race to understand what’s at stake!

See the Video here