Brew Baker's Chef Named Among Best Chefs in America

You may come for the bagels, baked fresh daily, or the potato salad with no mayo, made with a special Austrian family recipe. Or the fantastic Ahi tuna salad and finish with any of a dozen fancy pastries.

Brew Bakers on Main Street in Middletown was lauded last month for the work of owner, Josef Aigner, an award-winning Austrian chef who won the gold medal for best chef in Salzburg.

This year's Best Chefs America book included a handful of Connecticut chefs, including Aigner.

He has won many European cooking competitions. He was chosen to spend the weekend at a monastery, cooking for Pope John Paul II, and later for Pope Benedict XVI while he was Cardinal of Munich.

He also cooked for the king of Bahrain and for the Dalai Lama. He moved to the US in 2006, got his Green Card, and started working at the famous French/Italian restaurant, "CAVEY's" in Manchester, where he was pastry chef. Some of our special desserts are made by him. Before coming to the U.S., Josef was also a Marathon runner and Ski racer.

Best Chefs America examines the work of chefs across the United States, and conducts thousands of one-on-one confidential interviews to find out who chefs considered to be the “best” among their peers.  

To be considered the “best” is the highest honor any professional, including chefs, can receive and those included in this book should be very proud to have their work acknowledged by their fellow chefs.  
Less than 1 percent of all chefs and professional cooks in America made it into the book.
Best Chefs America staff worked day and night to interview over 5,000 chefs in all US States and Territories. The approach required a complex computerized telephone system to handle the sheer call volume and to record calls for accuracy.