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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

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The Food Chain: Rethinking the Celebrity Chef

Magazines & Reviews

Rethinking the Celebrity Chef

30/08/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Rethinking the Celebrity Chef

The curious metamorphosis of the celebrity chef.

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’s 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’re asking whether we’ll see further mission creep. 

As home cooks increasingly look online to culinary amateurs with blogs and online videos, where does that leave the ‘celebrity chef’? 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’ll 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’re missing out on culinary geniuses who don’t shout loudly enough?

(Picture: Man in chef whites throwing flour in the air, Credit: Getty Images)

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