Superstar celebrity manager Shep Gordon, who also happens to be one of the 12 founding members of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine movement that kicked off 25 years ago, talked food for a bit at a book-signing event last week for his newly released “They Call Me Supermensch” ($25.99, HarperCollins Publishing).

At a gathering at Ward Village Courtyard (the former IBM building) in Kakaako, he discussed working with, managing, promoting and helping to turn chefs into household names, including Emeril Lagasse, Daniel Boulud and so many others. He’s spent so much time with chefs, one can’t help but wonder whether he cooks.

“I love to cook,” he said. In fact, he does not employ a personal chef.

He said he learned to cook because decades ago the late, famed French chef Roger Verge told him to do so.

Gordon’s favorite Hawaii products to cook include “Kauai shrimp, meats, just anything (local), and papayas and mangoes for sauces and glazes,” he said.

His favorite local guilty pleasure is Lappert’s coffee ice cream, he admitted with a smile.

As for local eateries he loves to visit, Gordon named Side Street Inn — not that much of a surprise, since chefs love it.

During one of the many shows Anthony Bourdain, chef and TV personality, has shot in Hawaii, he joined a host of local chefs at the original Side Street to nosh. And Bourdain and Gordon, longtime friends, reunited for another Bourdain show, the Hawaii episode of CNN’s “Parts Unknown.” Some of that show was filmed at Gordon’s expansive Keawakapu Beach home.

Before Gordon’s book-signing, he had dinner at MW Restaurant with chefs Roger Dikon and Ed Kenney, and recording artist Jack Johnson, and their wives.

According to Dikon, they didn’t order anything from the menu. Instead, chef-owners Wade Ueoka and Michelle Karr-Ueoka brought out dish after dish, dessert after dessert, until no more could be eaten.

When all arrived at the signing, their praise for the dining experience was overflowing.