Celebrity Chefs
A tip of the hat to the ultimate celebrity chefs.
In this day and age, we are inundated and surrounded by food. No longer the standard three meals a day to sustain us; it’s everywhere, infiltrating our lives wherever we look. Never-ending TV food shows (there are currently over 400 hours per week of food programs on the air), advertisements, social media, celebrity chefs, Instagram ‘influencers’, reality shows, street food, you can’t escape it.
Ask anyone to name 3 or 4 celebrity chefs, and they’ll likely have no trouble rolling off some big names such as Gordon, Jamie and Nigella. If they’re up to speed, they could probably name some upcoming young buck who is about to take the scene by storm. Still, if we look back through history, we’ll realise that while there have been many chef celebrities over the years, only a few can be considered chef royalty.
So, I decided to write about some of my favourite celebrities in the food world. To say it’s a rabbit hole to go down is an understatement; I could write for days on worthy legends. However, in no particular order, here is a list of 5 ultimate legends of the food world that you should but probably, don’t know enough about.
Swedish Chef from the Muppets. Swedish Chef was the only chef I knew when I was a kid. Nowadays, most kids would probably name Jamie Oliver when asked to name a celebrity chef, but in the 70s and 80s, Swedish Chef was the ducks’ guts of TV cooking. First appearing in 1975 in The Muppets – Sex & Violence (what the?), he was an ‘influencer’ long before the rise of social media, holding a weekly slot on the Muppets for decades, throwing utensils around the kitchen, singing and talking in complete gibberish and teaching us kids that you could make doughnuts, flapjacks and even salad with use of a shotgun. He once took on a posse of Spanish lobster Bandidos who stormed his TV set to rescue a fellow crustacean and invented a catchphrase that is still iconic today in Børk Børk Børk!
He wasn’t just a TV chef, though; he also took to the silver screen easily and has appeared in every Muppet movie ever made, most notably in A Muppet Family Christmas, where he famously targeted arch nemesis Big Bird to cook as the Christmas turkey. Badass. Swedish Chef was the creation of Jim Henson. It was one of only a few Muppets to have real human hands, allowing the dexterity required to toss spoons around or employ his unorthodox set of utensils such as the firearms mentioned above, tennis rackets, hand tools or his go-to blade; the cleaver. Never one to shy away from the dangerous, in episode 212, ‘Bomb Egg’, he was severely maimed when a misguided explosive charge damaged the Chefs face, scarring him for years.
He was a Master of Marketing too. Capitalising on his global popularity, he launched his cereal brand in 1988 ‘Cröonchy Stars’ - The cereals ingredients listed on the side panel listed, amongst actual ingredients, items the cereal was exempt from, including ‘no trombones, no broccoli, no shoes and no wheelbarrows’. The merch didn’t stop with cereal; he also had a line of figurines, coffee mugs, a mini flashlight and a Crazy Recipes Card Game. His guy had it all and inspired me, and I’m sure many other kids of my generation, into a career in the kitchen. Total Legend.
Eugenie Brazier (1895-1977) – If ever there was a chef who deserved more props, it was this woman. Le Mère Brazier revolutionised modern cookery, yet few people have heard of her. Born on a farm in La Trancliere, in eastern France, she was taught to cook by her mother until, at the age of 10, her mother passed, and she was sent to work on a farm where he honed her culinarily skills. Having a child out of wedlock at age 19, her father kicked her out of the family. She went to Lyon and worked as a nanny during the first World War, eventually working in the kitchen at Le Mère Fillioux, a high-class establishment with a female-only kitchen.
In 1921 at the age of 26, she opened her first restaurant, Le Mère Brazier and in 1933 became the first woman to be awarded 3 Michelin Stars. This achievement was repeated when she opened her second restaurant Col de la Luere, in the Alpine foothills. Her Michelin record remained unmatched by any chef until 1998 when French-born chef Alain Ducasse was awarded his second set of three stars. She developed and championed Lyonnaise cuisine and founded the current lineage of top chefs from Lyon, including Paul Bocuse, her student.
She passed away in 1977, leaving her cookbook unfinished. Her surviving family finally completed it in 2009 with the English version La Mère Brazier – The Mother of Modern French Cooking was published in 2014. When researching Eugenie, I referred to Larousse Gastronomic. Undoubtedly, among the most respected encyclopaedias of French cuisine, many of the great cooks of the 20th century are listed on its pages. Yet, sadly, there was no mention of Brazier despite her incredible achievements. I have tracked down the French publishing house Hachette Livre and have asked for this to be rectified in the next edition. Feel free to do the same.
Keith Floyd. (28 December 1943 – 14 September 2009) No discussion of food royalty can be had without mentioning Keith Floyd. Born near Reading, his foray into food began modestly while serving in the Armed Forces, where he would constantly pester the mess cook to prepare elaborate meals. After realising that he and the Army were mutually incompatible, he left and found work in the catering industry as a dishwasher, a vegetable peeler and, perhaps most naturally, as a barman. After numerous failed restaurant businesses both in the IK and France, he eventually got his break as a radio chef (I can’t imagine how boring it must be to listen to a cooking show without the visuals), that in turn led to him being offered his first BBC TV series ‘Floyd on Fish’ in 1984, and the rest his history.
His eccentric, often chaotic style of cooking (perhaps also inspired by Swedish Chef) was always perfectly balanced with a glass of red wine in one hand, and regularly, as the programme progressed, it would become evident that Keith was getting more and more pissed and jovial, talking to the cameras and the crew operating them. Often filmed in unusual locations such as on a boat on rough seas or the middle of an Italian market, he was the pioneer of taking cookery shows outdoors on site and paved the way for the plethora of TV chefs you see today.
While his on-camera persona endeared him to millions of viewers, off camera, he was a chronic smoker, he struggled with alcohol throughout his career, and his personal life bore the brunt. He lost his licence for driving three times over the legal limit and crashed his car, had numerous failed restaurants, four divorces, and was twice bankrupt. The excesses eventually took their toll on his health. We lost him to a heart attack in 2009 at the age of 65, ironically whilst settling into the couch to watch the documentary about his 25 years in the public eye. A legend and royalty of the highest order, he was the master, appearing in over 25 TV series and publishing 19 books. Perhaps most significantly, he was the first chef we all felt we knew personally.
André René Roussimoff (May 19, 1946 – January 27, 1993), best known as André the Giant, wrestler and actor. I know what you’re thinking, He isn't a chef, and you’d be correct. Still, when researching legends of the food world for this article, I stumbled onto some facts about Andre and his unbelievable drinking exploits. I figured he deserves mention on this merit alone. A giant, he stood at 7’4” and weighed around 500 lbs. He was a champion of the 80’s WWF Wrestling popularity boom, having fought some of the greats, including King Kong Bundy and Hulk Hogan.
But it’s the stories of his ability to consume booze which is truly out of this world. His colossal size led to severe pain throughout his body as it struggled to carry such a frame, and, refusing to take prescription painkillers, often it was alcohol he turned to. He once drank 156 cans of beer in one sitting (it should also be noted that a can of beer could easily fit in the palm of his giant hands). He drank the entire stash of vodka on a flight to Japan. He once met with Hulk Hogan at Tampa airport on a layover and drank, in 45 minutes, 108 12oz. glasses of beer – that’s around 60litres – about 55 times more than the average human stomach can hold. He would often order pitchers of ‘rocket fuel’ any combination of spirits and liquors and regularly drink six bottles of Mateus wine before a match. He once drank 12 bottles of wine on a 23 hours bus ride through Japan and reportedly told an anaesthetist that it takes him 2 litres of vodka to ‘get warmed up’. On one trip to the UK, he was told it was last call and to leave a bar unless he was drinking, so he promptly ordered 40 vodka tonics and drank them all. Surprisingly there isn’t much information on what the big man could eat. However, stories of him ordering 12 steaks and 15 lobsters at dinner with friends circulate, and, given the tales of his thirst, I’d believe it. Chef no, but Legend, yes.
Georges Auguste Escoffier (Born 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) arguably, along with Eugenie, one of the grand masters of cooking. Born outside of Nice, in Southern France, he cut his teeth at his uncles’ restaurant at age 15 before moving to Paris, only to be called up to active duty in the Army, where he was given the position of army chef. After seven years in the army, he left and, in 1878, opened his first restaurant in Cannes called Le Faison d’Or – The Golden Pheasant. By 1884 he had moved to the glitz and glamour of Monte Carlo to work alongside Cezar Ritz. Yes, that ‘Ritz’ of luxury hotel fame, but it wasn’t long until the two of them were poached to London to run the new Savoy Hotel. It was here that Escoffier stamped himself as one of the greatest chefs ever to bone a duck.
He adapted and refined the technique of arguably the most outstanding chef of all time, Marie-Antonin Carème. Escoffier simplified and modernised the elaborate and ornate style of his master and, perhaps most importantly for cooks ever since, codified the recipes for the 5 Mother Sauces – the fundamental sauces of French cookery that are still taught to student chefs to this day. At the Savoy, he took cuisine to a new level, creating dishes that are still famous, most notably, the Peach Melba; a dessert he made for Dame Nellie Melba, the Aussie soprano opera singer who at one time lived at the Savoy. The dessert was vanilla ice cream with peach and raspberry sauce. Simple, you might think, but he presented it on a trolley with a giant ice sculpture of a swan, the desert nestled in its outstretched wings. Now that’s how you serve dessert.
His time at the Savoy didn’t last forever, and in 1898 he and Ritz were fired for gross negligence and mismanagement. It took the force of Met police to eject the kitchen team, who had taken up arms with their knives and refused to leave. (I could see this happening in today’s kitchens). The case was eventually settled out of court when it became evident that more than £6000 of wine had been ‘diverted’ through the kitchen, and Escoffier was found to be taking bribes and ‘gifts’ from suppliers. (this, too, I have seen happen in today’s kitchens) After the Savoy, he set up kitchens at The Ritz Paris and The Carlton London, luring much of the Savoy clientele. In 1913 he cooked an elaborate multi-course lunch followed by another even more elaborate dinner feast for Kaiser Willem II and hundreds of dignitaries upon where The Kaiser proclaimed, ‘I am the Emperor of Germany, but you are the Emperor of Chefs’. His legacy is unquestionable. He codified modern French cuisine, invented the hierarchical system of kitchen management still used throughout kitchens worldwide and set the standard for haute cuisine. And he ‘diverted’ £6000 of wine through the kitchen. King of chefs, Emperor of chefs. Royalty.
