Chef Puts Charity 'On The Line'

Eric Ripert really is that cool. The four-star chef—a sometime Top Chef judge, practicing Buddhist, and altogether nice person—announced this morning that throughout 2009, Le Bernardin will donate $1 to City Harvest for each customer who dines at the restaurant. City Harvest feeds more than 260,000 men, women, and children each week; the charity organization “rescues” more than 20 million pounds of food each year from various food service sectors. Chef Ripert also announced this morning that $1 will be donated to City Harvest for every copy sold of his new behind the scenes cookbook called On The Line (seen here), which we wrote about last month.