Back to the Celebrity Chefs issues.....

This may not be your issue and you may not agree with me, however, the concept of a celebrity chef is often a separate thing from being a A-list chef. Most world class chefs are virtually unknown to most of the American public.

This morning the nominees for the Oscar award were announced, most nominees were expected and some expectations were not met, as usual. Living in Chicago has always given chefs a great place to work and learn the craft but it is only recently that we have just been acknowledged as a world class culinary city. The James Beard award ceremony was held here and a Michelin Star was finally given here. It is my opinion that there are two classes of this type of publicity rich name dropping realm of the celebrity chef. The first, and often most important realm, is the realm of the hard-working award winning professional chef. These unsung brave knights of the kitchen are superstars and revered but aren't exactly household names. The other realm of celebrity chefs are those television culinary stars that some of us can name and watch often.

Among the television chefs are some well versed real trained chefs that got noticed because of their cookbooks, or from doing some local television segments, or former contestants on a cooking competition. Then there are some that sooo are NOT chefs in any way but have a cooking show due to their persona which was pitched and groomed for television. Once their show was accepted by the viewing audience then the cookbooks, product lines, and other offerings became popular at your local outlets.

I am not a fan of all food centered television and some of the most popular ones do not teach much in way of technique, food knowledge, or culinary exploration. The advent of the Food Network is both good and bad for my industry, for example, Duff Goldman's show Ace of Cakes, brought attention to sculpted fondant cake creations increasing the demand for these type of cakes. Awesome right? Well not completely, some customers who would inquire about getting one of these types of cakes often were victims of sticker shock. These types of cakes can take several days of designing, baking, ordering supplies and/or shopping, and then creating which is why some of these can cost $4 per person and upwards. What is astonishing, to some, is the amount of times spent on these projects because if they were a fan of the show, they saw these items get produced in a half hour or hour show not realizing that it was more than a week of taping that got edited. This would get customers to ask questions like "don't you just order this or that?" not realizing that what they have requested had to be handmade originals and therefore had to be reflected in the pricing.

Champagne dreams with Kool-aid money is an obstacle for some folks but as a well-versed pastry chef I have been able to share with those clients how they can afford to have the showpiece cake they are seeking at lesser pricing by downsizing the cake and adding matching cupcakes to have enough to feed the guest without braking the host bank.

If you are a avid watcher of the food porn now available on the Food Network, ABC, NBC, PBS and many more, just keep in mind that all of these shows have teams of chefs doing the research, prep, and hard work behind the scenes that you never ever see in order to produces these offerings for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully, whomever you watch on television is actually showing you things that you can take into your own kitchen. The fad nowadays is for every actress, actor, singer, dancer, or television personality to have a food line, kitchen equipment, and/or cookbook for sale at your local K-Mart.

Everyone has a relationship with food, if they are in fact a human, but not everyone has a good relationship with food or has had any significant lessons in the kitchen producing good food for others. The companion podcast of this blog, coming very soon, will be made of conversations with all sorts of people about their food relationships including my chef friends. Follow who you like, hopefully I am one that you will follow, but also find out if they actually know what they are doing on your screen or if they are a manufactured celebrity who knew a producer and where blessed to be given a show.

Enjoy