Lights, camera, cooking! New crop of celeb chefs act out to gain fame

Nation's Restaurant News, March 22, 2004 by Erica Duecy

New york -- Bright lights, big kitchen?

Onstage at the Supper Club in Times Square, a trio of Broadway performers rehearses songs and dances alongside a grand piano and a kitchen set. The song, "A Meal to Remember," is the opening number of a new dinner theater show starring real celebrity chefs.

With a booming voice and sparkling smile, top toque Michael Lomonaco of New York's Noche is preparing ingredients for rum-marinated pork chops. His star turn on the Great White Way marks yet another high-profile landmark in the lucrative--but challenging--world of celebrity chefdom, which stretches from cookware endorsements, international restaurant chains and branded grocery lines to high-paying consulting gigs and network TV series.

"Ever notice that garlic likes to be treated rough?" Lomonaco quips to his on-stage sidekick, Broadway veteran Paige Price. "You take a knife and just thump it, just smash it, like this," Lomonaco intones. Price jumps back in feigned fright as the chef smashes and then peels the garlic.

Following an intermission during which the 150-person audience eats the meal that was prepared onstage, the singers reappear for a second number. Then Lomonaco takes the stage again, performing kitchen tricks, deftly dicing mango, pitting avocados and filleting chile peppers.

Chef's Theater, which will debut in Times Square March 30, is just the latest opportunity in an ever-expanding roster of options for celebrity chefs. Among the show's rotating cast are famed culinarians Todd English, Tyler Florence, Andre Soltner, Jacques Pepin, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger.

The celebrity chef phenomenon has so permeated American pop culture in the past decade that Wolfgang Puck is right up there with NBA stars Alonzo Mourning and Juwan Howard on the celebrity scale, according to the 2003 Forbes magazine "100 Top Celebrities" list. Flipping through the television channels on any given day, one can see Emeril Lagasse delivering his trademark "Bam!" on Crest toothpaste advertisements, performing cooking segments on ABC's "Good Morning America" and "kicking things up a notch" at least twice daily on the Food Network.

In the expanding and rapidly changing landscape, a new generation of chefs is venturing further from the restaurant than ever before, industry observers say.

While Puck and Lagasse first cooked for years below the radar of a national audience, younger chefs are attaining national fame at an unprecedented pace.

Such chefs as Rocco DiSpirito and English say they look to media maven Martha Stewart, rather than other chefs, as a model for career growth, referring to their restaurants as the "bricks-and-mortar" representations of their respective brands.

And while not every aspiring culinarian is looking to become a business mogul, the traditional model of a chef whose singular focus is the restaurant is becoming increasingly rare.

But that sea change concerns veterans of the industry who say the quality of the craft will suffer as the focus intensifies on celebrities in the culinary arts.

Moreover, others--including chefs who have weathered media backlash and failed restaurants--point out that there is no recipe for success in building a restaurant empire. The business is fraught with pitfalls, including over-expansion, ownership disputes, management gaffes and other potentially brand-breaking issues.

From back-of-the-house to center stage

In the past decade the culinary arts in the United States have become more prestigious and financially rewarding than ever before. During that period The Culinary Institute of America has seen an explosion in cooking-school applications, says CIA president Tim Ryan.

In 1972 the CIA was the only cooking school granting degrees. Today there are more than 300 schools and 55,000 students studying culinary arts, he says. At the CIA alone there are about 2,500 fulltime degree students.

In a historical context, "we're in the second phase of the culinary revolution," Ryan explains. The first phase began with the generation that came of age in the late '70s and '80s, who started out carrying the banner of American cooking, he continues. That generation, including Jeremiah Tower and Alice Waters, comprised "American chefs cooking American food, showing that we could be as good as Europeans, if not better."

The second generation of chefs is "no longer content with the Soltner model, which previously was what we all looked at, having one great restaurant," Ryan says, referring to the renowned founding chef of Manhattan's long-running but recently shuttered Lutece.

Rather, they are ambitions entrepreneurs, building upon the accomplishments of pioneers such as Puck. "It's a fascinating thing to see," Ryan says. "It's self-perpetuating. We're attracting better talent than ever before."

Correspondingly, Americans' appetite for celebrity chefs and the cooking media has grown exponentially. The Food Network, a major outlet for cooking shows, now reaches 80 million households, up from 6.5 million households at the time of its 1993 launch.