Bam!
MATUS, VICTORINO
Bam! Making sense of America's celebrity-chef culture By Victorino Matus At almost any given hour on any given day, a food show is being aired on your television. It could be a reality-based...
...The network also moved to a bigger and better space in lower Manhattan...
...Take three eggs, you add maybe a little bit of cream, one teaspoon of butter, you mix it together in a bowl—the butter should be melted—and maybe dice up Swiss cheese, season with salt only—the pepper comes at the end before you serve it—and you put that in a container and you cook in a bain-marie in the oven at 300 degrees...
...It was midnight...
...Their reach is expansive—multiple restaurants, television shows, cookbooks, product endorsements...
...For some celebrity chefs, the culinary revolution and all it entails can be overwhelming...
...She replied, "He's the new chef we hired" to improve the menu...
...It may take a little time but everything takes a little time...
...They are the best I've ever tasted...
...The dishwashers, the cooks, everything was the same...
...He dreaded even more returning nights to the chef's apartment, where even using the bathroom could unleash a torrent of irrational abuse...
...Richard asks me to name one French chef on the Food Network...
...Jacques Pepin agrees...
...You live alone in an apartment or with a couple of friends, and there's a collective yearning for sitting around the table, having this sort of nuclear family that cooks," says Bourdain...
...He tried to think of any place where someone would take him in...
...I don't know that people are actually watching Rachael or Emeril and even trying to cook that stuff...
...But now we are geniuses, you see," he says with a laugh...
...While kitchens are mostly less violent today, the spirit of Rahaut lingers...
...paired with wine, $155), but the feast is well worth it...
...Not that it matters...
...I would just want to show the way I cook," he says...
...The salad was actually more impressive...
...To ignore that is to lie...
...I think chefs all over the country are the biggest contributors [of their time] to raising money, for their community, for national or local causes," says Boulud, who spearheads numerous charities...
...Over the course of the next few years, the Food Network would expand its programming, talent, and reach— it is currently available on all seven continents...
...Three years later, Child made the cover of Time magazine...
...She also purchased the signed menu for another $5,000...
...The philosophy and quality of this flagship restaurant is the 'brand.' The chef then creates a midlevel fine-dining restaurant...
...And speaking of young chefs, Food & Wine recently held its Ultimate Kid Cook Contest...
...It becomes successful...
...He jokes that if Daniel Boulud opens a restaurant in Washington, which is quite possible, he will open one in New York...
...The guest count for Iron Chef Amer-ica—on which chefs compete to devise the best menu around a secret ingredient revealed at the last minute— is even smaller, at 50, and is by invitation only...
...Alexander is six years old...
...In celebrity-chefdom, this temper was turned into an asset, as everyone knows who has seen Ramsay's reality series on Fox, Hell's Kitchen...
...The Oreo was invented here in 1912...
...At the time, Richard was 14...
...Or perhaps you will learn something useful from Ina Garten, aka the Barefoot Contessa...
...Antonin Careme—chef to Napoleon, Talleyrand, Tsar Alexander, the Rothschilds, and George IV of England—began publishing cookbooks in France in 1815...
...It sold 10,000 copies locally and earned her a check for $70,000 in its first year...
...Katlyn reported that Florence's new offerings are enormously popular...
...He put his one spare shirt in a small suitcase and walked toward the train station...
...Then it dawned on Lagasse to "leave my ego at home" and "bring my professionalism and talent to work," which led to his getting discovered while doing a cooking demonstration in Nashville...
...Ramsay himself apprenticed under another perfectionist chef in England, Marco Pierre White, and mentions to Buford "the excesses: the hours, the abuse, the weeping, spending the night on a dining-room banquette because there wasn't time to go home and be back for the morning prep...
...The culinary world's elder statesman and a dean at the French Culinary Institute in New York, he urges his students to become artisans and craftsmen...
...Here, the chef must select one of 12 contestants to run a restaurant at the Green Valley Ranch resort in Las Vegas...
...The ever-expanding reach of the Food Network and the constant churning of talent drove one chef over the edge...
...Taking a shower was like going to Hell," Michel says...
...The Food Channel...
...In short, have we gone completely and irrevocably insane over food and the people who make it...
...Wait a minute," Pepin interrupted...
...We started off with TV dinners with our families and then . . . moved to the big city, and the closest we get to that is kind of like this Sex in the City/Friends scenario where we huddle around coffee or go out to places for entertainment...
...And these things earn respect from people for celebrity chefs...
...Last May, for the first time in his life, Richard won the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef award...
...Not to mention arguably the most influential chef of all time, Emeril Lagasse...
...No surprise, the Washington Post awarded Komi three stars...
...Ray, who turns 39 this month, is the host of not one, not two, but five shows, one of which is Inside Dish with Rachael Ray...
...Bourdain, author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly and star of No Reservations on the Travel Channel, lamented the lack of quality programming on the Food Network and the failure of some hosts to inspire and challenge viewers to cook better food...
...She also does ads for Dunkin' Donuts...
...He's on . . . CBS...
...I need to take care of my restaurant!'" Richard is a man with presence, a burly Frenchman of 59 with a white beard and mustache...
...It wasn't by winning the grand prize on a show like The Next Food Network Star that she rose to the top...
...Often this person is a single adult...
...That would be unthinkable...
...Bar Towel Set"), it is tempting to view today's celebrity chef culture as unlike anything that has existed before...
...And, because the food and the environment at the establishment are not chef dependent, they can thus be replicated over and over again...
...Bobby Flay encounters the same attitude among students at the French Culinary Institute (where he won the Outstanding Graduate Award in 1993 and is currently a master instructor...
...It could even be an interviewer...
...So does the tradition of culinary apprenticeship as boot camp, where verbal—if not physical—assaults are routine...
...The master chef oversaw the dining facilities aboard oceanliners, founded his own company, Escoffier's Food Preparation Syndicate Ltd., bottled his own sauces and pickles, entered the canning business, wrote numerous cookbooks, including the seminal Le Guide Culinaire with its 5,000 recipes, and even published his own magazine, Le Carnet dEpicure (featuring himself in the first issue in 1911...
...The final component of this cultural phenomenon is the diner/viewer/consumer, who in the 1980s and '90s became increasingly obsessed with good food and the chefs who make it...
...Adds Jacques Pepin, "There is something very fulfilling in . . . cooking for someone...
...Careme—who is credited with inventing both the souffle and the toque, the tall, white hat worn by chefs in the kitchen to this day—lived comfortably in Paris off his royalties long after failing health forced him out of the kitchen...
...So maybe these are surrogate parents and brothers and sisters who are cooking for us on TV and are fulfilling for us some kind of collective yearning...
...And then, with a glint in his eyes, he asks, "You want me to do it...
...In a Washington Post profile last year, April Witt described Richard's experiences as an apprentice and boarder with a pastry chef in Sedan in the Ardennes...
...I think that's the next step...
...When Pepin worked at New York's Le Pavillon in the early 1960s, he belonged to the dishwashers' union, Local 89...
...For instance, when he talks in his colorful English about customers apprehensive over the butter in his sauces: "But the first thing they do, they take half a pound of butter and they spread it on a piece of bread and—boop...
...I asked my waitress, a high schooler named Katlyn, who Tyler Florence was...
...Michel Richard knows the feeling...
...He went back to the pastry shop...
...Contemplating the omnipresent Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse (the latter has 10 restaurants, 12 books, 2 shows, and numerous products like the "Emeril Kick It Up a Notch...
...After my interview with Pepin, I followed him around the French Culinary Institute, in lower Manhattan, where midterm and final exams were getting under way...
...There were two [types of lettuce] in the supermarket, iceberg and romaine...
...No doubt contributing to high morale is the esteem in which the profession is now held...
...Where does it end...
...And today she's proven to be pretty smart...
...Once Ramsay allowed himself to get angry, he seemed to look around for other things to stay angry about," writes Buford, "as though something had been switched on that he couldn't control...
...On a recent evening, it included delicate oysters, softshell crabs, tender ox tail, foie gras bak-lava, and fleshy octopus—an almost Caligulan experience that lasted four hours...
...They featured a vast array of recipes and advice on presenting meals (plates should be hot, do not overload the table, dessert is a reward), all spiced with behind-the-scenes accounts of life among royalty...
...The message seems to be resonating...
...What of the impact of this celebrity chef culture on future generations of culinary school students...
...After the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, in which all but one of the ship's 32 cooks died, Escoffier raised money for the families of the kitchen staff...
...As an apprentice in France, Boulud was tasked with buying ingredients for the head chef and was permitted to park his car in a prime spot, closer to the restaurant than his senior colleagues...
...Pepin remembers the sparse offerings at the supermarket when he first arrived in New York in 1959...
...The two would later run the Savoy in London, the Hotel Ritz in Paris, and ultimately, in 1899, the Carlton, London's first hotel to have baths in all 300 guest rooms...
...Thomas Keller, famed chef at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, lamented to Michael Ruhlman that sometimes he wished he could simply cook in a kitchen again...
...You will feel tremendous pressure to move forward as your peers advance...
...Today the complex is known as Chelsea Market...
...As we wait for them to cook, we talk about the state of celebrity chefs...
...Richard is no stranger to television...
...Escoffier was 38, Ritz was 34...
...Either way, Rachael Ray is one of the most successful, powerful, and influential food celebrities in the country today—quite an accomplishment for someone who insists she is not a chef...
...One of Lagasse's early shows on the Food Network, How to Boil Water, was a bit of a snoozer—the camera crew would doze off while filming it, prompting Lagasse to occasionally yell, "Bam...
...With that, the James Beard Outstanding Chef sets to making me scrambled eggs...
...But looking back, one discovers that today's mass-market celebrity chefs have some obvious antecedents...
...Up and down staircases, the 71-year-old Pepin was excited to show off his school, and recent knee surgery didn't slow him down...
...Now he is down to two, one of which is the award-winning Michel Richard Citronelle in Georgetown...
...Her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was not published until 1961 (by Knopf) when Child was 49 years old...
...As he told Michael Ruhlman, this drives him nuts...
...At an Applebee's in Falls Church, Virginia, I ordered Tyler's New Yorker, which was perfectly fine for a chain...
...He wearied of the constant commuting and absence from home...
...After Rahaut's retirement, Escoffier took over and was determined to reform the kitchen—banning alcohol during working hours and restraining himself from assaulting his assistants...
...Over lunch, Pepin, who once declined the job of head chef at the Kennedy White House to run the test kitchen of Howard Johnson, discussed an idea for a show involving cooking with stars like Sophia Loren...
...There were no leeks, no shallots, no chervil, no herbs...
...You have to repeat, repeat, repeat so that it becomes so much a part of yourself that you don't have to think about it...
...troops...
...For any number of reasons, this career path is no longer possible...
...The brainchild of Reese Schon-feld, co-creator of CNN, the network would at first be seen by a mere 6.5 million subscribers...
...On the other hand, Applebee's earnings in the first quarter of this year are a third of what they were last year...
...What he remembers is the producer limiting him to three minutes for a recipe that takes half an hour...
...There are actually two green rooms: one for Rachael Ray and Emeril (he normally likes a fruit plate) and another for everyone else...
...Others view her as the embodiment of all that is wrong with our food culture today and, as another celebrity chef put it, "closer to Paris Hilton than to Julia Child as someone who is famous for just being there...
...At first, he closes his eyes in deep reflection, then he leans in...
...This is awesome," said one student under his breath...
...And then, when you are ready to serve it, you take a fork, and you break it a little bit...
...And he speculates about the future: "I think each chef is going to be online with his own show...
...Indeed, there are more than a few aspiring chefs who seem genuinely committed to the art of cooking...
...When those classes sold out, Ray took the next step and wrote a book in 1998 entitled 30-Minute Meals...
...After the food and ingredients for one of these shows are prepped in the kitchen, they are sent off to Studio A, home to Rachael Ray, Emeril Lagasse, and Iron Chef America...
...That's so Raven...
...Anyone with unrealistic expectations is in for a rude awakening...
...I did NBC, ABC, a lot of TV shows...
...The rest move every year or so...
...They don't like butter but they eat butter all day long...
...Daniel Boulud, the four-star chef and restaurateur of Daniel, in New York, among other eateries, remembers being chased by a superior around the kitchen at knife-point...
...On the third floor is the network lobby, sleek and citrusy in appearance with lots of greens, yellows, and oranges...
...The other could be your lover, it could be your child, it could be your grandmother, it could be a friend, it could be anyone...
...What was the turning point and who caused it...
...If you happen to miss Rachael Ray, odds are you will see one of her home-cook colleagues Victorino Matus, assistant managing editor of The Weekly Standard, is working on a book on celebrity chefs...
...Richard got his start in the kitchen the old-fashioned way...
...According to biographer Laura Shapiro, "Julia looked grotesque, her hair frizzed and her makeup garish, dressed up in caftans and evening pajamas, or rigged out for a barbecue in jeans, a vest, and a purple ten-gallon hat...
...Bourdain opened his critique by sharing "some thoughts on the Newer, Younger, More Male-Oriented, More Dumb-Ass Food Network...
...Carrie Welch, the director of public relations, is kind enough to give me a tour of the facilities, which take up all of three floors...
...His tasting menu is expensive ($78...
...I remember chefs at the restaurants where I apprenticed who had been doing the same thing for ten years and were perfect at it," writes Daniel Boulud in Letters to a Young Chef...
...This is also the site of the demo station for Throw-down with Bobby Flay...
...Even more ambitious was Auguste Escoffier, who in 1884 accepted the job of chef of the Grand Hotel de Monte Carlo, managed by the upstart hotelier Cesar Ritz...
...One is Johnny Monis, just 28 years old, who is chef of the restaurant Komi in Washington...
...The butter definitely improved the flavor of the steak...
...And when you're ready to make reservations, you get to see the chef and the way he cooks...
...I give you the best way to scramble eggs: You scramble them after they are cooked," he whispers...
...The advance was $750, and she had to pay for her own publicity tour...
...Won't they all want to skip restaurant work and demand their own shows...
...He sat on a bench...
...The fight was broken up after Boulud ran through the dining room during service...
...One of the first stops is the green room—a waiting area for the talent...
...More recently, Julia Child shunned product endorsements: "I just don't want to be in any way associated with commercialism (except for selling the book in a dignified way), and don't want to get into the realm of being a piece of property trotting about hither and yon," she once wrote...
...Soon the network received its first-ever Nielsen rating...
...Last February, the always outspoken Anthony Bourdain had had enough of the "ascent of the Ready-Made bobblehead personalities" and posted a diatribe to that effect on food writer Michael Ruhlman's blog...
...In Albany, working as a buyer for a gourmet store, Ray learned that most customers simply didn't have the time to prepare elaborate meals, which then led her to conduct cooking classes...
...How did we get from Julia Child and Jacques Pepin to the more than 30 celebchefs now featured at the local bookstore...
...Escoffier, who died in 1935, would most certainly have his own television show and maybe even a live band were he with us today...
...and "We want you to be human...
...Observes Anthony Bourdain, "The whole system is designed to weed those people [with unrealistic expectations] out and break them quick...
...A prechopped onion bought in a supermarket first of all tastes terrible...
...Boulud and a friend made sure to get everyone back...
...Ramsay has no qualms about repeatedly calling a female contestant a dumb blonde...
...Ted Allen, a contributing editor to Esquire, food and wine expert on Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and judge of several episodes of the compelling series Top Chef, points out that "that first job you get out of culinary school is going to pay you $10 an hour and you're going to be peeling onions...
...I think so...
...But he also went after (no surprise) Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee (calling the latter "pure evil") while praising Alton Brown, Emeril, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, and even Giada De Laurentiis...
...The problem (much to the delight of producers) is that most of the cooks are barely qualified, leading Ramsay to explode on every episode...
...On the sixth floor are the production kitchens for shows like Emeril Live, 30 Minute Meals, and Iron Chef America as well as the test kitchen for every recipe to be aired...
...No, I didn't have the heart to tell him about Inside Dish with Rachael Ray...
...In any case, morale at the best cooking schools is high...
...I knew I was the best chef way before this," he says with a hearty laugh...
...Of the 100 cooks working under him (he owns five restaurants), he estimates only half will stay longer than a year...
...I'm sure Tyler Florence takes a lot of s— for doing Applebee's commercials, but if you look at the food . . . it's pretty good," says Ted Allen...
...Boop—gone...
...He slams an egg onto the chest of another cook...
...Near the reception desk, a flat-screen is showing Inside Dish with Rachael Ray...
...Besides, "Nobody spits in the soup in kitchens anymore...
...He says he was routinely slapped and punched...
...On occasion, his voice slips into a falsetto...
...On a visit to Citronelle, I get to hear both...
...Some of the "beauty shots" of hands adding ingredients are taped...
...Chefs who cook for the wealthy and powerful have always enjoyed a certain fame, and they have always been ambitious...
...His attitude toward the art of food preparation is very much the one expressed by two food-culture colleagues: "What I want to see," says Ted Allen, "whether it's a hoagie or caviar canape," is "love on the plate...
...My mother will not accept me...
...One night, left alone to scrub the shop, Michel sat on his bucket and wept...
...But then came Essence of Emeril and, more important, Emeril Live in 1997, fulfilling the chef's dream of combining a cooking show with elements of Jay Leno...
...At one point, he ran 10 restaurants across the United States and Japan...
...Letters written at the time expressed sentiments like "How could you...
...Then it occurred to him: "I have no place to go...
...They see all these celebrity show hosts," he says, "and they think, 'I can do that.' And some of it is, they don't know how to cook yet...
...According to Michael Ruhlman, theoretically, it doesn't: "An unknown, talented chef creates an outstanding one-of-a-kind restaurant that is quickly recognized throughout the country by the press, its quality conveyed by word of mouth and the difficulty in getting a reservation...
...Last April, the New Yorker's Bill Buford profiled England's most famous chef, Gordon Ramsay, known both for his screaming sessions and his acclaimed food...
...How much I care...
...The question he is asked most often is, "How do I get my own television show...
...Whenever Pepin walked into a room, the place would light up...
...On one occasion he had forgotten to roll up his windows, and when he returned at night, Boulud noticed his steering wheel and windshield were slathered in chocolate...
...The chef grabs a contestant and yells in his ear, "You can't cook...
...Someone had also stuck fish guts beneath the hood, causing a rancid odor to emanate from his vents...
...You had to go to a specialty store in New York to just get regular white button mushrooms...
...A chef and restaurateur who specializes in the flavors of the Southwest, Flay has developed the "throwdown" as his TV gimmick: He turns up unannounced, camera crew in tow, and challenges a chef with a signature dish—cheesesteak, fish and chips, chicken cacciatore—to a contest to see whether the chef or Bobby Flay can make it better...
...Rudy Giuliani, Donna Hanover...
...It is those who survive this winnowing who will carry the culture forward...
...The sumptuous mansion, the Rolls-Royce pulling up to the door...
...But chances are, at this very moment, the show you will find devoted to food is on the Food Network, a channel now available in more than 90 million homes...
...I mean, cooking is maybe the purest form of love in a way because you always cook for the other...
...Oh my gosh...
...We are contributing with our talent...
...I say "Alton Brown," to which he screams, "He is not French...
...The worst thing is not to be able to go to somebody and cry in somebody's arms," he says...
...They don't have a culinary point of view, so they have no direction in it and, (a) there's an awful lot of competition to get a job in a restaurant, and (b) there's an awful lot of competition to get their face on camera and it's getting harder and harder...
...A few major disappointments, a couple of busy Saturday nights— they're gone...
...While I am thinking on this, he says in a high pitch: "No, no, no, no, no...
...She sells food and kitchen-ware (try the Fiiri two-knife set—they're "super-duper grippy...
...Other times he yells...
...He's right...
...It is estimated that chefs help raise close to $100 million annually for various causes...
...With his explosive temper, he legendarily fired 7 of 13 line cooks in one night...
...While Child was largely level-headed about the business, even she fell prey to excess on at least one occasion— her 1983 short-lived series Dinner at Julia's...
...Appropriately enough, the new offices are in the very building that once housed the National Biscuit Company—Nabisco—makers of such guilty pleasures as Nutter Butter, Mallomars, and Chips Ahoy...
...Later Raven's friend Joelle showed up and everyone had a ball...
...At most, writes Kenneth James in Escoffier: The King of Chefs, "he pulled at an ear lobe with thumb and finger while rubbing his cheek," saying, "I am going out for a while, I can feel myself getting angry...
...A more attractive, countervailing tradition that the food world has maintained through the years is charity...
...She tells people you don't even have to dice an onion...
...In March the company closed 24 restaurants...
...Whatever the chefs' good works outside the kitchen, any comparison with the culinary culture of the past points to one endangered leg-acy—the discipline of working at a single restaurant for an extended period...
...A proud kitchen is a good kitchen," says Bourdain, "and just by virtue of raising the prestige of chefs and cooks, and of the profession, that's been a good thing for diners...
...Likewise during the First World War, he cofounded the Comite de Sec-ours aux Familles des Soldats Frangais and assured those on his staff who had gone to war that their jobs would be waiting for them...
...If Michel made a mistake, "Bang—he hit you," Michel recalls...
...On the social scale, we were quite low...
...In my opinion, their ego and ambition get in the way of their progress as a chef...
...Nevertheless, Mastering the Art of French Cooking became a national bestseller, and Child's own show, The French Chef, would debut in 1963...
...The problem of the TV show is that it takes too much of your time, you feel guilty...
...But of course, Rachael Ray never passed herself off as a fine cook...
...We're there to make people at home feel good about themselves...
...He asks why chefs on TV "have to act like a clown or look like a clown"—he refuses to name names on the record...
...It's also more expensive...
...And she is not alone...
...It's a completely different flavor...
...The new convergence of our food culture and our entertainment/media/leisure cultures can be traced to November 23, 1993—the day the Food Network was launched...
...My criticism is not so much that her food suffers by comparison to restaurant food," he told me...
...Grand prize winner Alexander Donowitz made a beet and cheddar risotto and hopes to open an Italian restaurant several years from now...
...People go there because the brand is the same as the brand of the flagship, but the chef doesn't have to be there and, more to the point, isn't expected to be there...
...As Michael Ruhlman notes in The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooks in the Age of Celebrity, "Ray makes a big point of the fact that she's not a chef—which is true, but she has cooked in a restaurant, in addition to washing dishes, waiting tables, and tending bar...
...And of course there are the legions of professional chefs who have become TV celebrities: Bobby Flay, Tyler Florence, Tom Colicchio, Daniel Boulud, Mario Batali, Alton Brown, Masaharu Morimoto, Jamie Oliver, and Anthony Bourdain...
...It could be a reality-based series in which very qualified executive and sous-chefs compete for $100,000, or a reality-based series in which mildly talented cooks vie for the prize of their own cooking show, or a reality-based series in which miscellaneous contestants, including a nanny and a cook for a retirement home, are browbeaten by a tyrannical English chef until a winner emerges who will be invited to run a restaurant in Las Vegas...
...Michel remembers dreading the man's heavy footsteps down the narrow stairway to the shop's basement kitchen each morning...
...like Paula Deen, Sandra Lee, or, if you are lucky, the sultry Giada De Laurentiis (granddaughter of Dino) on Giada in Paradise, which sounds more appropriate for late-night Cinemax than the Food Network...
...You've been here for three months and you don't know how to hold a knife, you don't know how to cut a tomato, you don't know how to chop parsley, and you're talking like you are on par with [Alain] Ducasse and all of those guys...
...You give it to your wife...
...When our eggs are ready, he breaks them up in the baking dish, generously sprinkles them with cheese, adds two dollops of sour cream, freshly cracked pepper, and two crisp slices of fried plantain...
...The line is sometimes difficult to see, but I know where I mean to be...
...Most of the early shows were cooking demonstrations ("dump and stir," in the trade lingo) and included hosts Robin Leach, David Rosengarten, and the future ex-Mrs...
...When my wife told her mother and her aunt that she was going to marry a chef, they said, 'What's going on?' She was marrying a domestic...
...When Escoffier began working at the prestigious Petit Moulin Rouge in 1865, he was subjected to the tirades and blows of head chef Ulysse Rahaut...
...The show had a raucous studio audience and even a band—no one had seen anything like it...
...Let's say for 35 minutes...
...But what the chef and star of After Hours—the most sophisticated cooking show on television—also remembers is the hazing...
...And still today, with or without a TV show, his true passion is cooking...
...But Ray is also the author of more than 10 books and has her own magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray...
...Much as Rachael Ray is known for saying "yum-o" and "EVOO" (extra virgin olive oil), Richard has a verbal trademark, whether or not he realizes it...
...When I am in one restaurant, I feel guilty because I'm not in the other restaurant...
...And any good mother would've wanted her child to marry a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, but certainly not a cook...
...The item generated more than 700 comments, largely sympathetic...
...The first two pages showcase the latest dishes, such as Tyler's New Yorker: a strip steak with a scoop of garlic butter, onion rings, and a hearts of romaine salad...
...The set is deceptively smaller than on camera—Emeril's audience numbers 185 and is chosen by lottery...
...His fellow Frenchman Daniel Boulud can sympathize: "When I got married, my wife came from a background [of] bankers and socialites and not at all from the field of hard work like the restaurant business...
...It's that she cheats...
...Doubly so in the age of the "open kitchen" design, an innovation of Wolfgang Puck at Spago...
...For Cook for the Cure, a fundraiser for breast cancer research and awareness, one woman donated $25,000 for a dinner cooked by Jacques Pepin at his Connecticut house...
...And whether or not we like Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, or the Food Network, all are heavily involved in multiple charities and in support for U.S...
...It is just a matter of time before the Food Network starts calling...
...Some see Rachael Ray as the greatest TV cook since Julia Child...
...He could never leave the bathroom clean enough to satisfy his tormenter...
...How do I get my foot in the door...
...Though soon to be acquired by IHOP, Applebee's has just adopted a menu with three different pictures of Florence on the cover...
...Whether or not Tyler Florence and the Food Network (whose logo appears inside the menu) can save Applebee's remains to be seen...
...NBC's Al Roker bought the book, and suddenly Rachael Ray was on the Today show (where Julia Child made her own television debut in 1961, using the studio's hot plate to make an omelet...
...Richard then brings them over to the chef's table, where we share the meal...
...Looking for mushrooms at D'Agostino's, he was told "aisle five" for canned mushrooms...
...Still, he will not rule out television in the future...
...Fun—it has to be funny...
...When asked what prompted his ferocious and salty screed, Bourdain traced his "intermittent sense of nausea and outrage" to some of the messages celebrity chefs were conveying, particularly Rachael Ray...
...On a recent episode, the host spent time with the actress Raven Symone, learning how the young star likes to prepare quick and easy meals such as baked ziti and salad...
...The kitchens were spotless and the students were intensely focused...
...We're very customer-oriented on these shows," Ray explained to Ruhlman...
...Business prowess is not the only attribute of celebrity-chef culture that has venerable roots...
...This was not Hell's Kitchen...
...Indeed, celebrity chefs are now more successful, if not wealthier, than many other professionals...
...People compare him to Santa Claus, and not just for his appearance—Richard is jolly...
...Throughout our interview, he throws in the word "boop...
...Profitability also crept upward: This past year, according to a trade publication, the network's revenue from ad sales and licensing fees alone came to more than $488 million...
...Even if it's a minority of people who watch the Food Network [and try out the recipes]," Bourdain adds, "enough people are actually raising their expectations and knowledge of what food is—particu-larly their expectations...
...A variation on this process can be observed at Apple-bee's, a national chain ("Eatin' good in the neighborhood") that is attempting a kind of rebranding by association with the Food Network and its celebrity chef Tyler Florence...
...It is so creamy and so delicious...
...Bang, bang, bang...
...Boulud urges the young cook to "concentrate on the needs of the chef for whom you are working...
...And I find, frankly, when you are as powerful and as influential as she is, particularly with kids, to serve food that is clearly unhealthy and to endorse a product like Dunkin' Donuts—I mean, how much money do you need...
...I'm sorry I overcooked them," he apologizes...
...The host of Fast Food My Way recalls talking to a first-year student at the New England Culinary Institute who had strong cooking disagreements with master chef Michel Bras...
...So to claim you are helping working families by suggesting such a thing is shameful...
...The Food Network's executive chef Rob Bleifer is equally concerned about students' expectations...
...In July, Monis appeared on the cover of Food & Wine as part of its "America's Best New Chefs" issue...
...Rather, he says, students should be asking, "How should I approach a chef...
...And technique...
...Originally from Fall River, Massachusetts, Lagasse became the executive chef of Commander's Palace in New Orleans at age 23...
...Then came an ambitious 34-year-old chef, Emeril Lagasse...
...At Citronelle, I ask Chef Richard about one of the few dishes I can make fairly well: scrambled eggs...
...And the person you are most likely to see on this network is a woman named Rachael Domenica Ray...
...And when he reflects on shifting fashions in cookbooks: "I remember when I moved to this country 30 years ago, with the [arrival of] nouvelle cuisine, we used to have a section [in bookstores] on French chefs, Paul Bocuse, Roger Verge...
...In 2004, Ray's 30 Minute Meals beat Emeril Live for the first time in the ratings—it currently draws 750,000 viewers on weekdays and more than a million when re-aired on the weekend...
Vol. 12 • August 2007 • No. 46
