The Cult of the Celebrity Chef Goes Global

They start behind the counter and end up in the spotlight. How the phenomenon of the celebrity chef has transformed the restaurant industry and even changed the way we eat

By Lisa Abend Monday, June 21, 2010
    • Finlay MacKay for TIME

    From left, chefs David Chang of New York City's Momofuku; Jamie Oliver, aka Britain's Naked Chef; and Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli.

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    The Internet has also played an important role: on websites like Grub Street (1 million page views per day) and Eater (2 million), chef groupies can breathlessly track every charity event and opening — sometimes before the chef has gone public with the news. A whole subindustry of agents and publicists has sprung up to manage everything from a chef's media appearances to his hairstyle. And, yes, the chefs are mostly hes: although women are entering the profession in ever greater numbers, the vast majority of celebrity chefs are male.

    All the fawning has propelled a profession once considered little better than servitude to the ranks of the glamorous and profitable. "I hate the word, but it's all about establishing a brand," says Mario Batali, whose endeavors include 15 restaurants, countless awards, a television show that had him tooling around Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow and a full line of cookware products. "Because once you have that, all these other opportunities open up, and you have this giant soapbox."

    Food Revolutions
    Perhaps no one knows that better than Jamie Oliver. In 1999 the lowly line cook began taping The Naked Chef (he wasn't dressed down — his recipes were), which turned the 24-year-old into a national star in Britain. "I would make focaccia with semolina on the show, and semolina would sell out across the country," he says. "You quickly learn that you have a responsibility."

    In between making gobs of money — doing endorsements for a supermarket chain, launching a dating website for food lovers, etc. — Oliver has worked hard to improve people's eating habits. He collected more than 270,000 signatures in favor of improving school meals and delivered the petition to 10 Downing Street; eventually the British government pledged £650 million ($940 million) to the task. This spring he launched the TV show Food Revolution , which tracks his dietary-reform efforts in Huntington, W.Va., one of the most overweight cities in the U.S. He has also set up educational kitchens in Huntington as well as in Britain and Australia, to give families cooking lessons on how to prepare simple, healthy meals.

    In other words, Oliver has become a culinary activist. "At heart, I'm probably no more political than anyone else," he says. "But because of what I do, people listen to me. And right now there's a massive need for information."

    Oliver is hardly alone in trying to educate consumers and shape public policy. In recent years, the pioneering Alice Waters has seen her Edible Schoolyard project, which uses gardening to teach children about where their food comes from, spread from Berkeley, Calif., to New Orleans; Greensboro, N.C.; and Brooklyn, N.Y. Dan Barber, a New York chef leading the effort to make agriculture more sustainable, has become so influential that he has spoken at Davos. This month, Michelle Obama got more than 500 chefs — including Rachael Ray — to join her initiative against childhood obesity. And everywhere, lesser-known cooks are teaching locals about the value of eating well-raised food. If there are green markets popping up all over the U.S. and diners scanning menus for the name of the farm that grew the carrots they're about to eat, we have chefs to thank.

    Celebrity has had salutary effects on the profession of cooking as well. "Thirty years ago, most people who worked in restaurant kitchens had either just gotten out of the Army or were on their way to jail," says Batali. "Now you get all these people who went to college, then found their passion in cooking. The level is suddenly much higher because the people cooking are a lot smarter."

    Most major culinary schools are going through an unprecedented growth spurt. For example, applications to the Culinary Institute of America, the premier cooking school in the U.S., have jumped 50% in the past six years. That may have something to do with the economy. At the venerable Cordon Bleu in Paris, communications director Sandra Messier notes, "we've seen a lot of students using their severance packages from their old jobs to pay tuition."

    Cheering as if He Were Mick Jagger
    For every potential cook who puts herself through an expensive culinary program or grinding apprenticeship, there are many more who seek to bypass all the years of drudgery and enter the profession through a new channel: reality TV. This year thousands of people applied for 17 slots on the seventh season of Top Chef (which premieres June 16). Some of the applicants are well-trained rising stars with James Beard awards under their toques. But most are nobodies rolling the dice.

    Jodie Thompson, 30, a British travel agent, managed to beat some 20,000 other applicants to become one of the lucky 500 who got to audition this spring for MasterChef , the British counterpart to Top Chef . In a London conference room, she unpacked a Tupperware container from her bag and carefully plated the rosemary-scented roasted duck breast she had prepared earlier. She waited nervously as, cameras rolling, a producer took a bite and asked why she had chosen this route to launch her culinary career. "My brother went to catering school for two years," Thompson replied. "I thought this would be more direct."

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