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the reluctant GOURMET

Look who’s cooking up a storm

TV HERO Chef Antony Bourdain has a rock-star persona

Steaks aren’t the only things sizzling in the kitchen these days. Now it’s the beefcake that gets all the attention. With Chefs rapidly becoming raging celebrities, the quiet, brilliant Chef of yesterday seems to be getting edged out of t he game, no matter how diligently creative he is, or what dazzling magic he can work with his gifted hands.

Now, to make that essential stove-to-centre stage crossover from cook to Chef, you need to be able to handle woks and weights with equal élan, use under-eye cream with the same diligence you make soufflés and charm diners into asking you out to dinner.

Though Chef Gorgeous, with tattoos across his bulging biceps and swaggering attitude, is just one face of Celebrity Chefdom, he’s probably the most obvious one. Especially now, with Discovery Travel And Living bringing a string of pouting, preening Chefs into our living rooms. Evidently, there’s something inexplicably seductive about good looking people who can flamboyantly juggle knives, aggressively shred lettuce and (gasp) delicately ice pink three tiered cakes. All in one episode!

And they don’t even have to be famous for their skills in the kitchen. Take the New York Hot Chef poster boy, Rocco Di Spirito. He was included in the People magazine’s ‘sexiest men alive’ list. His restaurant opening was recorded by NBC cameras and made into a series called ‘The Restaurant.’ Though it was ultimately closed down, the show drew more than nine million viewers a week. Then there’s the legendary Chef Wolfgang Puck from Spago, whose successes include a world famous restaurant, also an appearance on ‘Frasier’ and ‘American Idol’, as well as a role as himself on ‘Las Vegas’.

Which could explain the concept of ‘Chef’s Theater: A Musical Feast,’ that has proved popular in New York. It’s a cooking-class cabaret, where a celebrity chef prepares a meal accompanied by a Broadway cast, that sings original songs about eating and drinking. It concludes with the audience being served the meal they have just watched the chef prepare, and then dessert and more entertainment.

If you’re in the market for some cheesecake instead of dinner, there’s the other species of Chef: the sultry cover boy. Chef John Villa, for instance, is better known for appearing in Playgirl without even so much as a fig leaf on, than for his excellent restaurant Pico, in New York.

Television bad boy Chef Antony Bourdain, famous for his brash attitude and rock-star persona derides this celebrity culture, despite having all the requisite symbols of it, including — reportedly — a tattoo of a skull on his right shoulder and one of an Ouroboros (an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle) on the left. His scathing now-famous blog entry on writer Michael Ruhlman’s says he finds himself “riveted by its awfulness, like watching a multi-car accident in slow motion. Mesmerized at the ascent of the Ready-Made bobblehead personalities, and the not-so-subtle shunting aside of the Old School chefs…”

It’s not that different in India. Sanjeev Kapoor draws gasping, gaping hoards of women every time he speaks. The last time I watched him give a cooking demonstration in Chennai, he was swamped by women furiously fluttering their eyelashes at him, as they asked leading questions on browning onions in the microwave. (Or something equally generic.) His wife Alonya and I were swept aside by the ravaging hoards in high heels. As we caught our breath, and readjusted our hair she rolled her eyes and said it happens every single time he addresses women.

The restaurant business has become show business. It’s not surprisingly really, especially if you believe in that old chestnut about ‘the way to a man/ woman’s heart is through their stomach.’ An article on ‘Sex and the Single Chef’ on the Food and Wine site talks of how groupies have become just another fact of life for chefs. Apparently, there is a rock-and-roll aspect to being a chef. “Women think that men who can cook are sexy — add a little power, and it’s irresistible.” So do you know where the blender is?

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