Gentry, Ann 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954, in TN; married Robert Jacobs; children: Halle, Walker.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Los Angeles, CA. Office—Real Food Daily, 514 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401; fax: 310-451-7154.

CAREER:

Restaurateur, chef, and educator. Real Food Daily, Los Angeles, CA, owner and chef, 1988—.

WRITINGS:

(With Anthony Head) The Real Food Daily Cookbook: Really Fresh, Really Good, Really Vegetarian, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2005.

Contributor to Junior and Vegetarian Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann Gentry's Real Food Daily restaurants in the greater Los Angeles, CA, area have become immensely popular for their unique offerings: meals that are entirely vegetarian and made with fresh, organic produce. Tennessee-born Gentry first became interested in vegetarianism when she moved to New York in the 1970s. After later relocating to California in the late 1980s, she began a delivery-based catering service called Real Food Daily. Gentry opened her first restaurant in 1993, and has since garnered critical praise for her innovative recipes that are hearty, seasonal, and healthy.

Gentry worked with Anthony Head to combine her best recipes with basic information on preparing vegetarian cuisine in 2005's The Real Food Daily Cookbook: Really Fresh, Really Good, Really Vegetarian. A Publishers Weekly reviewer described the recipes as "clear and comprehensive," adding: "Beginning cooks and those new to veganism will find much to enjoy here." Sylvie Greil wrote in a review for the Food Paper that "Gentry has no other mission than to have people make and eat real, satisfying and healthful food. In this book (unlike in many raw food books we encountered) there's no dogma." On the Vegetarians in Paradise Web magazine, a contributor regarded the compilation as "a cookbook collector's dream—attractive graphic layout, quality paper, several full-color photos, gorgeous cover design, and exceptional recipes," and concluded that The Real Food Daily Cookbook is "an exceptional volume of original recipes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, August 8, 2005, review of The Real Food Daily Cookbook: Really Fresh, Really Good, Really Vegetarian, p. 230.

ONLINE

Food Paper,http://www.thefoodpaper.com/ (February 21, 2006), Sylvie Greil, review of The Real Food Daily Cookbook.

Real Food Daily,http://www.realfooddaily.com/ (November 21, 2006), author profile.

Vegetarians in Paradise,http://www.vegparadise.com/ (July, 2006), review of The Real Food Daily Cookbook. *