Lydia Shire: Balancing Act

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Boston Magazine's recent article, "Let Them Eat Duck Fat" profiles the career and business moves of Lydia Shire. It takes on difficult question of how to balance artistic demands of great cuisine with the financial demands of running a business: And many of today’s rising stars are business savvy in ways that Shire has never been, parlaying their restaurant successes into lucrative personal brands. (Blue Ginger’s Ming Tsai has a TV show, three cookbooks, and his own line of Target cookware.) That kind of empire building doesn’t appear to interest Shire. What she enjoys now is what she’s always enjoyed: playing with flavors, textures—and expectations. If she makes great food, the business will take care of itself. This analysis begs a further question: if chefs like Lydia open more than one outlet, do they, by necessity, need to become business-minded and entrepreneurial? Many of Lydia's foibles, strengths, and challenges will be familiar to readers of Super Chef: re-doing a menu at inappropriate times, ignoring food and labor costs, attempting to keep an aging restaurant vibrant and fresh. Part of Lydia's talent lies in an energetic, relentlessly optimistic approach shared by many super chefs: Even in the face of her ugly squabble with [Kenneth] Himmel, Shire shows no sign of changing her ways. While we talk at her house, she reveals that she has a new project in the works—a restaurant in Maine, due to open next summer. With new horizons open to chefs in business and media, is the one-shop great chef on the wane? (Click here to read the entire article.) Previous articles: Vote for White House Woman Chef [White House - complete] [Chef Profiles - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to superchefblog