Rethinking the Celebrity Chef
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Emily Thomas asks whether the curious phenomenon of the celebrity chef, is undergoing a metamorphosis. The modern celebrity chef has their finger in a lot of pies - multiple restaurant chains, merchandise, cookery books, TV programmes, even campaigning and charity work - oh, and then there\\u2019s that Michelin star to hang on to as well. A number of chefs now have fortunes running into hundreds of millions of dollars. The breadth of their expanding empires is something that the renowned chefs of 30 years ago couldn't have even imagined. In this episode we\\u2019re asking whether we\\u2019ll see further mission creep.
As home cooks increasingly look online to culinary amateurs with blogs and online videos, where does that leave the \\u2018celebrity chef\\u2019? Will we see them carve out new spaces in the public eye, adding even more skills to their ever-expanding portfolios: Chefs for president? And will we see more chefs from outside the US and UK achieve global dominance?
We\\u2019ll also ask whether we should embrace the chef as a multi-dimensional superstar - or is all this taking us further from food, with the possibility that we\\u2019re missing out on culinary geniuses who don\\u2019t shout loudly enough?
(Picture: Man in chef whites throwing flour in the air, Credit: Getty Images)
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