Celebrity News:

CHICAGO - Chef Art Smith wants to get you back to the table. Specifically, the dining table.

Smith, who served as Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef for 10 years, believes that meals shared with family and friends can provide nourishment way beyond the physical kind.

While still working with Winfrey on special events, he opened a new Chicago restaurant this summer, published a sequel to his best-selling cookbook and won a humanitarian award for creating Common Threads, a nonprofit organization designed to teach children that food, as he says in his Southern accent, "connects us all."

His first cookbook, "Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family," won a 2002 James Beard Award - regarded as among the most important in the food world.

His new cookbook, called "Back to the Family," is filled with simple, hearty recipes, many tinged by his Southern upbringing, with colorful names such as "Church Lady Deviled Eggs," "Electric Lemonade" and "Anne Bloomstrand’s Chicken Under a Brick."

Smith says he’s never felt pressure to make his cooking more upscale: "I don’t think people care as long as it’s good. I’ve never been ashamed to serve a biscuit."

Even at his new restaurant, Smith says he hopes it feels like he had the customers over for a Sunday dinner - along with raising awareness for Common Threads. Located in an old carriage house and with just about 30 seats, Table 52 opened to positive reviews this summer.

"Art is a man who loves loving other people through food," Winfrey said in a statement. "I always believed that opening his own restaurant, which is one of his lifelong dreams, is what he should do.

"It was hard for me to give him up, but I really felt that the world needed to taste his food," she said.

Smith, however, is still her go-to guy for special events - for instance, overseeing the menu for her gala fund-raiser in California for Sen. Barack Obama.

Of course, his work with Winfrey has led to plenty of celebrity run-ins. "I think I have served all of Hollywood fried chicken," he said.

He casually tosses off tales of feeding Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks and Princess Diana. He admits to being awestruck only when he met Nelson Mandela, though he was pleased when Barbra Streisand went ga-ga for his peach cobbler.