10 Things Celebrity Chefs
Won't Tell You
By Jason Kephart
1. "I'm a celebrity first and a chef second."
Take one part America's obsession with celebrity, stir in a cup of our passion for all things culinary, marinate in a mix of specialty cable channels and BAM! You've got the perfect recipe for the celebrity chef phenomenon. It's no surprise that more and more chefs are stepping into the media spotlight -- "they're the new most likable celebrities," says Susan Ungaro, president of the James Beard Foundation -- and they've grown in stature as America has fallen ever deeper in love with food.
The National Restaurant Association projects that restaurant sales will reach $558 billion in 2008, a 47% increase over 2000, and the Food Network, the culinary world's premier stage, has seen its subscribers more than double in that time. As the financial stakes get ever higher, chefs are fleeing their kitchens in search of a bigger piece of the pie. Rachael Ray, the Babe Ruth of celebrity chefs, has ridden her culinary fame to a daytime talk show and her own magazine. The secret? It's not just talent, says Andrea Rademan, VP of the International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association. "Without the marketing, you can't be a celebrity chef."
Wolfgang Puck made his way from Austria to Los Angeles via restaurants in Provence and Paris, finding celebrity on the way.
2. "There's absolutely no reason to buy my cookbook."
You say you love Bobby Flay's food and want to try to make it at home? Before you spend $35 on his Mesa Grill Cookbook, check out FoodNetwork.com's recipe database, where among the 36,000-plus recipes you can browse, a quick search will net you 1,914 of the master chef's recipes -- or 1,764 more than Mesa Grill contains -- and it won't cost you a penny. Indeed, free recipe-sharing sites like Recipezaar.com, which offers 271,000 recipes, and Allrecipes.com, which holds more than 40,000, also threaten to make your favorite chef's cookbook virtually obsolete. But so far the vast storehouse of free recipes available on the web hasn't dented cookbook sales; in fact those authored by celebrity chefs have driven overall cookbook sales to $540 million in 2007, a 4% increase from 2006.
Do beware, cautions Christopher Kimball, host of America's Test Kitchen: Often with free recipes, you get what you pay for. First consider the source; if you don't trust the author, go somewhere else. Also, look for a lot of detail in a recipe. In general, the more specific the descriptions and instructions, the more likely it's going to work, Kimball says.
3. "Just because I have a cooking show doesn't mean I'm a chef."
When the Food Network canceled Emeril Live in 2007, it put TV chefs with actual chef experience on the endangered list. The new food faces tend to be cookbook authors and soccer-mom cooks. The problem, says American Culinary Federation President John Kinsella, is that "people call anyone who writes a cookbook a chef. That's not what a chef is."
Rachael Ray will be the first to say she's never run a kitchen -- but then neither have a lot of the other big food stars, like Nigella Lawson, Paula Deen or Dave Lieberman. "It's not necessary that there are professional chefs on the Food Network," says Anthony Bourdain, "Kitchen Confidential" author and a celebrity chef in his own right. "But what they really need are good cooks, and they have precious few of those." A Food Network spokesperson says the idea is "to represent many different perspectives on food."
Foodies, take heart. PBS has been taking in Food Network castoffs, including respected chefs Ming Tsai, Mario Batali and Sara Moulton. "For us the most important prerequisite is that hosts are experts who are great teachers," says Laurie Donnelly, an executive producer for public TV.
4. "Sex sells, even with foodies."
As the celebrity chef phenomenon has exploded, a growing number of chefs are making mouths water for reasons other than their culinary acumen. Actress and model Padma Lakshmi, for one, has gone from guest-starring on "Star Trek: Enterprise" to hosting the popular reality show "Top Chef," where she muses about plating alongside Tom Colicchio, one of People magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive" for 2007. Lakshmi's food cred includes two cookbooks, "Easy Exotic" and "Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet" -- both of which feature glamour shots of the India-born starlet with her own recipes.
Rachael Ray forged new ground for non-model chefs when she appeared in the October 2003 issue of FHM in a skimpy outfit, seductively licking chocolate off a spoon. How did other women chefs react to the sexy spread? "It didn't hurt her career any," says Cat Cora, an FHM veteran herself, who has joined Nigella Lawson and Giada De Laurentiis in ditching traditional cooking togs for tight sweaters with plunging necklines. But not every celebrity chef is making a wardrobe reduction. "My hands do not function if I don't have an apron on or my hair's down," says Sara Moulton, host of "Sara's Weeknight Meals" on PBS.
5. "I'm addicted to porn -- food porn, that is."
"Mmmm," moans Nigella Lawson as she "Jackson Pollocks" melted chocolate over chocolate cheesecake on an episode of "Nigella Feasts." As viewers of the show can attest, there's a little something extra in Lawson's cooking. That something is what's known in the industry as food porn: presenting dishes with an eye toward their sensual appeal. And according to food stylist Wesley Martin, no one does it better than Lawson. "The way she talks about food and describes it is all about the senses," he says.
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To that end it's crucial the food look great on-screen. Food stylists like Martin often shop for ingredients, prepare and cook the dish, all the while making sure it's ready for its close-up. Lawson, for one, appreciates the help; in particular she credits director of photography Neville Kidd with making the dishes she creates look so scrumptious. "He's an artist creating beautiful paintings about the food," she gushes. But not all TV chefs are so concerned with presentation. On "Simply Ming," Chef Ming Tsai likes to plate the food himself and shoot it without too much fuss over how it looks. "You're doing a disservice if you make it look too good," he says.
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