celebrity chefs – Sheryl Kirby

I’m not being haunted exactly, but in the past month or so, the number of references to Antonin Careme popping up in my life are really, well…beyond coincidence.

Careme was, of course, the world’s first celebrity chef. Know as the King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings, he began cooking as a teenager and worked his way out of poverty to eventually cook for Napoleon. He was, first and foremost, a pastry chef, and with his pièces montées (huge structures and centrepieces, often in the shape of buildings) is likely responsible for their ongoing popularity to this day – all of those crazy cake competitions on The Food Network – Careme started that trend.

It may just be that I watch far too much British food programming. In March, there were 4 different UK shows that mentioned Careme.

The most Careme-focused was a series called Glamour Puds in which pastry chef Eric Lanlard traces the history of Careme from his childhood home to some of the castles and estates where he worked, even cooking in the historic kitchen of Valencay Palace where Careme worked for Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, right-hand man to Napoleon. Lanlard also offered demos and recipes of some of Careme’s most famous pastries, from the Mont Blanc to the famous macaron tower.

Continue reading “The Ghost of Careme”

Imagine for a moment that you’re walking down the street and you pass a punk-looking kid wearing a black t-shirt with Anthony Bourdain’s face on the front. Or you’re in the mall and the gaggle of girls outside of Old Navy are all wearing sparkly pink shirts emblazoned with the Rachael Ray logo. Or maybe you’re watching the news to see thousands of women mobbing the airport when Jamie Oliver deplanes and races to a limo to be whisked away before someone gets injured.

To people in the industry, the concept of chefs as celebrities seems vaguely uncomfortable. The people who cook the food for restaurants, events, and hotels are meant to be behind the scenes. They’re part of the great machine that makes a dinner or an event happen seamlessly and beautifully; the kitchen is called “back of house” for a reason. Most dedicated cooks don’t want the attention – they want to do their jobs and do it well, and don’t much care for the cameras and interviews and face time.

But most is not all, and as more and more of the celebrity chefs we watch on TV sign endorsement deals or create product lines of their own, the desire – we’ll even call it a “need” to be seen, to be out there promoting the gadgets, the cookbook, the product lines and oh, yeah, the restaurant – becomes overwhelming.

Continue reading “Chefs Are the New Rock Stars”