Celebrity Chefs

[Gil-galad]

Alright, who watches the food channel? ^^ I know you're out there. Anyways-- I'm curious what everyones opinions are on celebrity chefs. Are they actually good chefs? Or are they just pretty faces and personalities that attract people to watching their shows? I mean with some shows, like Rachel Ray's, it's pretty obvious the stuff she makes is pretty basic-- but her show is one of the highest rated on the entire channel.

The kind of ironic thing I find about celebrity chefs, is that they don't even work in restaurants. They have restaurants with their names slapped across the signs, and they'll never cook there.

So anyways, I'm curious of two things: Who else out there watches cooking shows, and what do you think of celebrity chefs?
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[Ujitsuna]

There are too many cooking shows and too many celebrity cooks in the UK right now. People watch them without any intention of actually cooking what is being shown to them so no one's cooking gets any better either. :x The BBC must have about eight or nine cooking shows on a week at the moment, it's a big thing right now, especially "healthy eating."

[Milan Fiori]

Hrm, well I suppose it's who you consider to be celebrity chefs in the world. Rachel Ray for me is not a chef. She's a TV personality. She hasn't had any formal training, she hasn't worked 10 to 50 years in a kitchen learning the skill and gaining the knowledge that it really takes to be a chef. It's like if you were to call Julia Child a Celebrity Chef. She was a famous TV personality who showed people the joy of cooking.

Even someone like Emeril Lagasse, he's a very sucessful chef, but how many people actually know he flunked of J&W University? He's again more of a TV personality than a chef. He skill has atrophied over the years.

Now for me, the real celebrity chefs for me, is someone who did something remarkable in the field of cooking or even just a chef who owns a really successful restaurant.

I mean how many people know about Auguste Escoffier, Antoine Careme, or even Fernand Point? These people revolutionized how we eat, not only at Restaurants, but also at home. These men are considered the fathers of modern day cooking, but how many people actually know they existed?

But other then men like that, people like Anthony Bourdain, Thomas Keller, Ferran Adria are all celeberity chef's in my book. They own some of the most successful restaurants in the world and not only that, people like Adria are innovators, coming up with new and cutting edge ways to serve and make food, while people like Bourdain are touring the United States for book signings or their own TV shows.
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Be awed by our prowess!

[Gil-galad]

[Milan Fiori]

I am proud to say I've met him, worked with him, assisted him in a demo, and then got completely drunk with him.

He frequented my school many times to do book signings, Cooking Demo's and whatever. I happened to be in charge of the group helping when he came to do a Demo and signing on one of his books, and afterwards he along with a few of us from the group went to a nearby bar and just went at it. He's a bit nuts actually, very very funny, but he can be awfully vulgar, and he's been in the business for so long, he has some freaking amazing stories to tell.
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Be awed by our prowess!

[Tullaryx]

I would say that my favorite celebrity chefs are two very robust cooks. One has to be Paul Prudhomme. His blackened cajun redfish is quite yummy and always something I must have whenever I visit New Orleans and his restaurant. The other one has to be Sam Choy. He does some very great Asian-American fusion dishes and also made me enjoy traditional Hawaiian recipes. She's more of the Rachael Ray type but I also enjoy Nigella Lawson. :)
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[Amyral]

I think Milan had it right, there is a distinciton between a pure tv personality and a celebrity chef, the real distinction being whether they were a personality first or a chef first. Julia Child was a personality. Mario Batali was a chef (and still is, from what I've heard).

Personally, I prefer the people who recognize that they aren't real chefs and instead focus on actually teaching how to cook, rather than doing random dishes. Of course, the best on Food network would be Alton Brown, who knows he's not a chef, just a guy whose showing how to make relatively simple, everyday dishes, like pancakes, and explaining why they should be made that way. Instead of showing how to make a lemon torte with a creme freche sauce, he shows how to make squid with all sorts of silly props and such. I find his show to be quite informative and more useful than the other shows on the network.

For the actual tv chefs, you know, I'm ambivalent to all of them except for Bobby Flay, who just came off as a pretentious dork with an unhealthy mango fetish to me (seriously, he uses it in like, every show and it's not even a southwest ingredient). Anthony Bourdain is very entertaining, although his show is more or less the kind of show I would always want to do if I was a tv chef, just showing what real people ate. I'm sure that prevents him from actually cooking, but his show is still interesting. I think Mario Batalli would be cool to hang out with. Of course, there's Gordon Ramsay, but he still cooks in one of his restaurants in his off time when not torturing people (or, rather, when not torturing the people he doesn't pay.)

[SwissStopwatch]

I seem to vaguely remember some of the people Milan just mentioned being cited as inspirations for various challengers on Iron Chef. Which, despite my appreciation for cooking, is the only reason I ever had to watch Food Network. I usually don't feel like staying up long enough for the show to come on, though. And no, Iron Chef America doesn't count.

Now, since I said the only reason I have to watch Food Network is Iron Chef, you might guess my feelings about celebrity chefs. I don't particularly care for them. Rachael Ray has little if anything to teach me about cooking. The kind of thing I hear she does is stuff that I know how to do or can easily figure out on my own. Plus, I find her to be a bit annoying, and it's incredibly creepy that her face is starting to appear in so many places. Some of the other celebrity chefs may be less annoying or perhaps more knowledgeable about their craft (or, more accurately, they might do more intricate things), but I still don't care for them too much. That doesn't mean I think they're all bad, but I usually would much rather read a recipe and try it, and perhaps alter it a bit to suit my own tastes. Either that or just start straight up experimenting. Now, sometimes it does help to have someone in the kitchen giving you pointers and steering you away from messing up too badly, but celebrity chefs don't count for this. You won't necessarily learn all that much from some television personality making a simple dish.

I do have to say, though, that whenever I've turned on public television over here and stumbled upon one of the chefs there, I'm more likely to get some sort of idea for what to do out of their show. Not all television chefs are bad, but, a lot of the more popular celebrity ones didn't get that way because they were good at cooking, and they're not necessarily worth listening to. Although if you're no good at all, they provide a place to start, maybe... as I said, they aren't all bad.

...and yes, I really dislike Bobby Flay. His various appearances on Iron Chef made him come off as a big whiner blaming his inability to outdo the Iron Chef he was up against on minor pathetic things like "I dropped my knife" and then implying/stating that there was favoritism or cheating going on. Considering how silly Iron Chef is at times, whining about how you lost on it is even sillier.

[Sailor Sexy]

Hah, the Iron Chefs are the greatest chefs of all time! I always enjoyed watching that show and just looking at their creations is enough to get me drooling. Granted, I couldn't afford to eat those creations more than once or twice in a lifetime, but it would so be worth it.

Bobby Flay pisses me off too. Acting all cocky thinking that he can beat anyone, yet he hardly ever won on that Throwdown show of his. Funny, really, you'd think that they wouldn't continually show his ineptitude over and over again.
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~Uguu!~

[Phamex]

[Galt]

I like Rachel Ray's show. She's funny and entertaining. She makes me want to eat the food she cooks.