The end of the chef cult?

Has the end of the chef cult arrived? Probably not, but expect to see more emphasis on food than personality. (Photo courtesy of the Culinary Institute of America/Greystone.)

Could the age of the chef be coming to an end? A few indicators seem to point that way.  The New York Times ran a pair of interesting opinion pieces in recent weeks, both of which address the perceived divide between cooks and chefs.

On Nov. 29, Marcella Hazan, who many credit with bringing authentic Italian home cooking to American kitchens, sounded off in “No Chefs in My Kitchen.” As the essay’s title suggests, Hazan firmly and proudly considers herself a cook and deplores the way the term “chef” has come to describe everyone from professional chefs who run restaurant kitchens to avid home cooks.

In last Sunday’s Times, Mark Bittman, who writes the paper’s Bitten blog and Minimalist column (as well as a popular series of How to Cook… books) offers “So Your Kitchen is Tiny. So What?” in which he describes his dinky New York apartment kitchen, which suits him just fine, thanks. As he points out, great food is turned out by the person standing at the stove, not by the stove itself. Like Hazan, Bittman is not a trained chef, though he is a first-rate food journalist whose passion for cooking has made him a bona fide authority. I suspect that, also like Hazan, he’d be just fine with being labeled a cook.

Hotels magazine recently polled industry folks about top hotel food trends for 2009, and “Chef-driven restaurants scale back” tops the list. The cost of launching and maintaining big-name chef-driven establishments outstrips their profitability, one expert tells the magazine. I’m always leery of chef-empire restaurants, since I know that the chef whose name is on the door isn’t the one cooking my food, or even overseeing the kitchen.

The cost of launching and maintaining big-name chef-driven restaurants outstrips their profitability, says one industry expert.

All this led me to wonder if the celebrity chef cult–largely driven by media outlets like the Food Network and Gourmet, as well as by hefty PR budgets–is coming to an end. To find out, I sought the opinions of chefs, home cooks, and foodies. 

Iri Greco, of Panforte Productions, which produces food-oriented content for broadcast and new media, says the focus has shifted from true chefs to approachable, accessible food personalities along the lines of Rachael Ray. Viewers are still eager to learn about chefs, she adds, as evidenced by the popularity of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” which showcases pros in “a more ‘real life’ incarnation. [Audiences] want to see the down and dirty, real people succeeding and failing.”

Wade  Williams, of the catering and event-planning firm  PicnicLA, agrees. TV programming like “Top Chef” and the Food Network “will keep the trend going for awhile. People love to eat  and love to watch fun people cook,” he notes. Personality and food go hand in hand, he adds. “You have to have both. Food is cooked with passion and love.  Your personality is always reflected in your cooking. If you’re a dull chef, you definitely will end up with dull food.”

Will farmers displace chefs as the new food world celebs?

Focus on nourishing, high-quality, seasonal food will pave the way for rising culinary stars, says Anne Dimon, editor of TravelToWellness.com, “Chefs who will become the new ‘celebrities’ will be those who put healthy, nutritious eating at the core of their food philosophies,” she predicts. Galen Zamarra, of New York’s Mas (farmhouse), and Jean-Charles Dupoire, of Loire Restaurant in Toronto, are two chefs who exemplify this approach. Cookbook author Linda Eckhardt takes this idea a step further. She thinks the emphasis on locally produced ingredients will shift the spotlight from chefs  to farmers. 

I also put the question to the Serious Eats community, which is made up of keen observers of food trends. Overkill is an issue for many. Rachael Ray was fine when she was on one show. But now that we’re bombarded with her (too many) TV shows, magazine, and endorsements, it’s too much. Similarly, seeing Tyler Florence shilling for Applebee’s and Alton Brown using his kitchen-scientist persona to sell grape juice diminishes their credibility.

SweetHeat puts it best: “I see 2 kinds of celebrity chefs: 1) the TV kind (Bourdain, Rachael Ray, etc) and 2) the Chefs who are famous for their cuisine first: (Keller, Ducasse, Boulud, Vongerichten, etc). The TV kind I am sick of. The 2nd group I adore.”