enjoy high status or require the services of publicists, voice
NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER
coaches, elocution tutors, dermatologists, and hair stylists. They required only free liquor, as much food as they could pilfer, a few shekels at the end of the week, and maybe the occasional blow job from a sympathetic waitress. Now, my fry cook is pestering me all the time. He wants to know when he gets his "wide-screen TV, bitches and ho's." He's saving up for his own publicist—as soon as he learns to speak English.
Maybe people just aren't fucking enough. There was a definite upsurge in the fortunes of chefs with the early eighties discovery that indiscriminate sexual activity can kill you. Certainly people seem to be eating more—evidence, perhaps, of sublimated desire. As chefs rushed to acquire basic communication and diplomatic skills, thighs expanded in seemingly direct proportion. "Food porn" began to take hold around the world: buyers of lavishly photographed, expensively bound cookbooks gaped longingly at pictures of people doing things on paper, or on television, that they would probably never try themselves at home. Are celebrity chefs seen as safer, nonthreatening alternatives to, say, rock and rollers, or porn stars of the past? Given the choice between having that cute, perky Jamie Oliver in your kitchen or Tommy Lee, Jamie's presence would seem less likely to lead to penetration or the theft of prescription drugs.
But that can't be all, right? Maybe Rick Stein—and Nigella Lawson, for that matter—appeal to some other need, some deeper emptiness in our collective souls. Rick can honestly be called a celebrity chef. He's put in his time in professional kitchens. Like me, he's getting a little old to put in fourteen-hour shifts every day in a hot a la carte kitchen. Celebrity chefdom can be a pretty nice score, an appropriate payoff for years of toil and uncertainty. Nigella is a celebrity, no question about that, but is she a chef? Of course not. Which is fine. Her show is about eating well, not so much about cooking—about the good stuff, like pork fat and pork skin, becoming approachable, even fun. But Rick Stein and Ms. Lawson share a common and profound appeal, I think. If you're like millions and millions of others of generations X and Y, or a lingering boomer, maybe you left home for school or work when you turned eighteen, ran away to the big city, Mom and Dad an embarrassing reminder of childhood whom you occasionally phone up on holidays. As you sit in your lonely apartment, you feel a yearning, a longing for a sense of family, of belonging. Disconnected as you are from roots you still feel ambivalent about, those big family meals in movies are looking strangely good. A vestigial "nesting" impulse takes hold and you find yourself watching Rick or Nigella, thinking, "Gee, I wish he were my older brother, or dad, and he was cooking for me." Or "I wish Nigella were my sister, or mom, cooking me that slow-roasted ham. I wish that leftover scrap of pork she's nibbling on in the middle of the night were in my refrigerator."
Let's face it: Nigella probably cooks better than your mother. And she's a lot better looking, and cooler. Nigella wouldn't mind if you smoked weed in your bedroom before dinner, would she? She wouldn't criticize you if you came home with your nose pierced and a fierce, full-back tattoo depicting Saint Peter and Dee Dee Ramone shoveling coal down the crack of your ass. Of course not. She'd say, "Remember to clean that nose with alcohol—and wash your hands for dinner! We're having roast suckling pig with quince chutney."
So maybe the celebrity chef racket isn't all bad. Even Jamie Oliver at his most frenzied and annoying is probably, on balance, a force for good. The celeb chef thing, at its best, entices the unknowing, the fearful, the curious to eat a little better, maybe cook once in a while. And it provides much-needed late-career lucre for older, broken-down, burned-out chefs like,
NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER
coaches, elocution tutors, dermatologists, and hair stylists. They required only free liquor, as much food as they could pilfer, a few shekels at the end of the week, and maybe the occasional blow job from a sympathetic waitress. Now, my fry cook is pestering me all the time. He wants to know when he gets his "wide-screen TV, bitches and ho's." He's saving up for his own publicist—as soon as he learns to speak English.
Maybe people just aren't fucking enough. There was a definite upsurge in the fortunes of chefs with the early eighties discovery that indiscriminate sexual activity can kill you. Certainly people seem to be eating more—evidence, perhaps, of sublimated desire. As chefs rushed to acquire basic communication and diplomatic skills, thighs expanded in seemingly direct proportion. "Food porn" began to take hold around the world: buyers of lavishly photographed, expensively bound cookbooks gaped longingly at pictures of people doing things on paper, or on television, that they would probably never try themselves at home. Are celebrity chefs seen as safer, nonthreatening alternatives to, say, rock and rollers, or porn stars of the past? Given the choice between having that cute, perky Jamie Oliver in your kitchen or Tommy Lee, Jamie's presence would seem less likely to lead to penetration or the theft of prescription drugs.
But that can't be all, right? Maybe Rick Stein—and Nigella Lawson, for that matter—appeal to some other need, some deeper emptiness in our collective souls. Rick can honestly be called a celebrity chef. He's put in his time in professional kitchens. Like me, he's getting a little old to put in fourteen-hour shifts every day in a hot a la carte kitchen. Celebrity chefdom can be a pretty nice score, an appropriate payoff for years of toil and uncertainty. Nigella is a celebrity, no question about that, but is she a chef? Of course not. Which is fine. Her show is about eating well, not so much about cooking—about the good stuff, like pork fat and pork skin, becoming approachable, even fun. But Rick Stein and Ms. Lawson share a common and profound appeal, I think. If you're like millions and millions of others of generations X and Y, or a lingering boomer, maybe you left home for school or work when you turned eighteen, ran away to the big city, Mom and Dad an embarrassing reminder of childhood whom you occasionally phone up on holidays. As you sit in your lonely apartment, you feel a yearning, a longing for a sense of family, of belonging. Disconnected as you are from roots you still feel ambivalent about, those big family meals in movies are looking strangely good. A vestigial "nesting" impulse takes hold and you find yourself watching Rick or Nigella, thinking, "Gee, I wish he were my older brother, or dad, and he was cooking for me." Or "I wish Nigella were my sister, or mom, cooking me that slow-roasted ham. I wish that leftover scrap of pork she's nibbling on in the middle of the night were in my refrigerator."
Let's face it: Nigella probably cooks better than your mother. And she's a lot better looking, and cooler. Nigella wouldn't mind if you smoked weed in your bedroom before dinner, would she? She wouldn't criticize you if you came home with your nose pierced and a fierce, full-back tattoo depicting Saint Peter and Dee Dee Ramone shoveling coal down the crack of your ass. Of course not. She'd say, "Remember to clean that nose with alcohol—and wash your hands for dinner! We're having roast suckling pig with quince chutney."
So maybe the celebrity chef racket isn't all bad. Even Jamie Oliver at his most frenzied and annoying is probably, on balance, a force for good. The celeb chef thing, at its best, entices the unknowing, the fearful, the curious to eat a little better, maybe cook once in a while. And it provides much-needed late-career lucre for older, broken-down, burned-out chefs like,
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