Jill Van Cleave and William Rice are a serious power couple. She's an author, food stylist, and chef who cooked in top restaurants in Chicago, New York, and Florida; ran the test kitchen of the Ketchum Food Center; then wrote Icing on the Cake and Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies. A regular contributor to Progressive Baker magazine, she has just published The Neighborhood Bakeshop, a compendium of recipes and stories celebrating the nearly lost art of the great local bakery, inspired by her experience as managing partner of a small retail bakeshop in Chicago. He's the much-decorated food and wine columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His résumé includes gigs as editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, executive food editor of the Washington Post, and restaurant critic for Washingtonian magazine. Rice was a founder of D.C.'s L'Ecole de Cuisine, and he studied cooking in France, training at the Hôtel de la Poste in Beaune and the Château d'Angludet in Margaux. He has cooked for Paul Bocuse and for Gerald Ford; he won the first-ever Who's Who award for "Best Food Journalism"; he has even been made a Chevalier of the French government's Ordre du Mérite Agricole. And he just happens to be the author of The Steak Lover's Cookbook.

We figured that we'd better assemble a potent lineup to help this pair celebrate their latest works, and what bespeaks power more clearly than a meal from a New York steakhouse? Nothing we can think of-except a serious carnivorous meal turned out by chefs from four of the city's top meateries. Smith & Wollensky, for instance, has been called "one of America's best steakhouses" by the Wine Spectator; chef Victor Chavez is a 20-year veteran who has won kudos from DiRoNA and the Wine Enthusiast, as well as from The New York Times, which called it "a steakhouse to end all arguments." Fans of Pat Cetta's succulent fare at Sparks Steak House might take issue with that assessment, though. As Zagat puts it, this bastion of serious steakdom is a "classic," and not for the calorie-counting meek-at-heart. Then there's Morton's of Chicago, a 20-year veteran of the cattle biz; New York magazine declared Gus Nations's clubby domain the "best steakhouse in New York." Still hungry? Anne McManus, pastry chef at Maloney & Porcelli and a graduate of some of the city's top pastry kitchens, promises to wipe out the remains of your appetite with sinfully sweet fare.