Charlottetown – (March 21, 2006) – Cellar Door Productions (Prince Edward Island), along with Ocean Entertainment (Nova Scotia) are pleased to announce that their successful food series ‘Chef at Home’ with Chef Michael Smith has been nominated for the 2006 James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Awards, to be held in New York on May 8th.

The series has been selected along with three other programs as a nominee for the prestigious ‘Best National Television Food Show’. The program, a co-production with Cellar Door Productions and Ocean Entertainment, in partnership with Food Network in Canada, inspires and empowers home cooks to improvise, venture beyond recipes, and learn how to instinctively create flavourful, simple food for family and friends.

Often called "the Oscars” of the food world, the annual James Beard Foundation Awards are the food worlds biggest award honors. Established in 1990, the James Beard Foundation Awards recognize cookbook authors, restaurants, chefs, food and beverage journalists, broadcasters, and restaurant and graphic designers. As part of its mission to celebrate, preserve, and nurture America’s culinary heritage and diversity, the James Beard Foundation will celebrate the culinary legacy of New Orleans during this year’s award ceremony.

“I’m tremendously honored to represent Canada at the Oscars of the food world”, said Chef Michael Smith. “This is a recognition of the hard work many, many people put into creating the best cooking show on TV.”

“We are very excited about this nomination”, stated Gretha Rose, Executive Producer. “This recognition for ‘Chef at Home’ clearly indicates the continued popularity and success of the Chef Michael Smith series of phenomenal programming.”

“We are no longer just a top rated series in Canada”, says Johanna Eliot, Executive Producer, “as ‘Chef at Home’ is now recognized globally.”

‘Chef at Home’ is one of five television productions featuring Chef Michael Smith. The original ‘The Inn Chef’, which was so successful that it was followed by two specials entitled ‘Saturday Night’ and ‘Mountain Magic’ and the top rated series ‘Chef at Large’. Chef Michael’s programs can be found on Food Network in Canada, Discovery Home in the United States, Asian Food Channel in Japan, XYZ in Australia, Living Channel in New Zealand, as well as the BBC in various countries, and various other territories around the world.