Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez is the Executive Pastry Chef of PRINT. Restaurant located in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.  Celebrated for her 3-star desserts, she attended the Restaurant School in Philadelphia before traveling to France to complete her education in Burgundy and Paris. Heather has worked in a slew of notable establishments, including Tom Colicchio’s Mondrian, Union Square Café, L’Impero, Veritas and Judson Grill.

For her first personal venture, Carlucci-Rodriguez opened Lassi, a tiny take-out restaurant featuring Northern Indian home cooking. “Even though she is an unlikely Indian restaurant owner, she’s a passionate one”, wrote Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld of New York Magazine, adding “Her food tastes unlike any other Indian restaurant in town – fresher, cleaner but undiluted in its intricately spiced essence.” In March 2006, New York Magazine named Lassi Best Take-Out in New York City.

With her husband and Executive Chef Charles Rodriguez, she opened PRINT. Restaurant, a seasonally sourced restaurant situated Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. The menu incorporates sustainable ingredients from New York area local farms and regional vendors sourced by the restaurant’s full-time in-house forager. The cuisine appeals to locavores, evoking original flavors honed from around the world.

Heather is also the founder of Chefs for the Marcellus, a group of chefs, restaurateurs, and other food professionals who have come together to protect our regional foodshed from the dangers of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (fracking).

In addition, Heather also authors a blog on traceable eating. Her blog can be found at: http://www.thirtytraceabledays.squarespace.com/

In the pastry kitchen, it’s always an offset serrated.  They always come in really handy. Other than that, always a 10″ chefs knife. One of my favorite knives when I started cooking was a 7″ Korin Shiro-Ko Hongasumi Deba  given to me when I worked in the kitchen at Sony. It was stolen out of my car a number of years ago. Guess I never got over it!

My first knife was given to me by my father. I still have it. I don’t know the brand but it’s a Japanese style stainless steel knife.  It’s always looked like a relic.  It was always my favorite knife in his kitchen. When I got into culinary school, he gave it to me.

How do you answer that in the middle of New York?!  Recently I’ve really enjoyed NoMad, Daniel Humm’s new project.

Any kind of curry.  I owned an Indian restaurant, Lassi and was exposed to curries from all over the world.

Beef randang is the next one I want to master.

I’m working on reopening Lassi and working on a video/TV project, “Delicious America“.