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

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

And while English has embarked on multiple projects, his restaurant operations have, at times, struggled, an indication, some say, that he has spread himself too thin. Around the same time that English made Esquire magazine's March 2002 list of Best Dressed Men in America, his original Olives restaurant in Charlestown, Mass., was closed twice by the health department for numerous food safety violations, Rossant recounts in her book.

While expansion doesn't necessitate a decline in restaurant quality, it does require a solid operational infrastructure. Industry observers often point to Jean-George Vongerichten as a chef-restaurateur who has maintained the quality of his establishments while expanding from one restaurant, New York's JoJo, to 12 restaurants in five cities, several of which are different concepts.

Vongerichten's restaurant group requires about 2,000 employees and an internal management company for functions such as sourcing and purchasing services, human resources and financial operations, according to his partner, Phil Suarez.

What's in a name? Money

Some celebrity chefs have turned to endorsing products for additional income, although endorsements also can be a sticky issue among culinary talent in the industry.

Noted cookbook author and cooking-show star Rick Bayless of Chicago's Frontera Grill and Topolobampo last year encountered criticism from many of his high-profile colleagues for appearing in advertisements touting Burger King's line of low-fat chicken sandwiches.

"Personally, I'd draw the line at what Bayless did," says Anthony Bourdain, the Food Network star who penned the international best seller "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly."

"When you espouse [a sustainable-farming] philosophy loudly for most of your career and then really betray it to sell a product that is the antithesis of what you've talked about, then I think that is crossing the line," explains Bourdain, who also is executive chef of Brasserie Les Halles in New York.

Bayless was unavailable for comment by presstime.

Lidia Bastianich, another New York chef-restaurateur and TV series star, agrees that endorsements can be a slippery slope. "You have to really be careful endorsing products, because there are many opportunities that come in front of you," says Bastianich, owner of the restaurant Felidia. "If you consider the economics, you'd take everything. So you have to set priorities and limits for yourself."

Milliken and Feniger of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Border Grill currently endorse a line of Kohler professional sinks that they themselves use, according to Milliken.

Endorsements are "something that we take very seriously," she says. "We're not actresses, and so we wouldn't be good at endorsing something we didn't believe in and really like. It has to hit that standard."

Other chefs, such as Eric Ripert of New York's Le Bernardin and Food Network's Tyler Florence, say they are wary of endorsing products.

"It took 20 years to build my reputation and the reputation of Le Bernardin," Ripert says. "Why spoil that for a couple thousand dollars?"