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Accident victim was a skilled cook

Tuesday, November 06, 2007
BY KEVIN SHEA

HAMILTON -- In his junior year at Steinert High School, James Vandewater IV went to a career fair and learned about studying the culinary arts.

"It came out of left field," his father, James Vandewater III, recalled yesterday of his son's sudden interest in all things culinary.

He went to a greatly respected culinary college and was headed to California next year to work at a restaurant perennially rated one of the best in the world.

James Vandewater IV's rise to what his father believes was culinary excellence was shattered by the thundering Friday night crash on Route 156 near Route 130 that took his life and that of his best friend, Nicholas Costa, also 21, who attended Rider University.

"Everywhere he went, he impressed," Vandewater's father said yesterday. "He was going places. It's a shame."

After the younger Vandewater's interest in studying cooking flourished in high school, he was accepted at and enrolled at Johnson & Wales University's Rhode Island campus in the fall of 2004, a university known for its cooking school.

After his freshman year, he worked at Rat's, in Hamilton, which has a reputation as one of the best restaurants in New Jersey.

Vandewater would go higher, though.

He recently completed a five- month internship at New York's Daniel, the eponymous creation of world-renowned French chef Daniel Boulud. At Daniel, Vandewater worked for Executive Chef Jean Franois Bruel Boulud's , his obituary says.

Vandewater had already earned an associates degree in culinary arts from Johnson & Wales, in 2006, but was working toward his bachelor's degree and was scheduled to graduate in May. While at college, Vandewater's father said, he also cooked at a well-known Providence restaurant.

After graduation, he had a position lined up with the French Laundry, a restaurant in California's Napa Valley that is known as one of the best in the world.

"It was his life," Vandewater's father said. "He gave up on girlfriends. He gave up on everything for it."