Food Network: Chefography 2

By JULIETTE ROSSANT A second run of Chefography which first airs Sunday, March 18th through Friday, March 23rd from 8:00 P.M.-10:00 P.M. The series explores the lives of Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Sandra Lee, Nigella Lawson, and Tyler Florence from their childhoods to becoming stars on The Food Network. There are interviews of parents, siblings, mentors and fan, and even Tyler's young son Miles. Here is the Food Network press release about the Bobby Flay profile which premieres on Sunday, March 18th at 10:00 P.M.: He’s a high school dropout who discovered his passion for cooking completely by accident. After a brief career detour to Wall Street, Bobby Flay set his sites on a culinary career and won over New Yorkers with the big, bold flavors of his innovative cuisine at his first restaurant, Mesa Grill. A long time Food Network personality, Flay has hosted several popular Food Network series over the years and currently appears in Throwdown and Iron Chef America. Today, he is a critically-acclaimed chef and restaurateur an award-winning cookbook author, and one of Food Network’s most beloved stars. The format is familiar to anyone who has watched a MTV "rockumentary" of a favorite rock star. Is there something to learn? You learn about his passion for athletics (shared by many super chefs -- see Super Chef, pp. 175-177). There is plenty on his photogenic wife, actress Stephanie March. This is superficial stuff to anyone familiar with Bobby's career, but fun for those outside New York, who only get to watch him on his Food Network shows. Like the MTV rockumentaries, the same talking heads appear throughout the show: one interview, spliced into multiple soundbytes. Among those for Bobby, you get Dorothy Hamilton head of the French Culinary Institute, where he was one of the first graduates, oddly commenting throughout on his career and accomplishments. (Look for Dorothy again in April on PBS's Chef's Story, which also features a biography of Bobby.) There are even odder clips of an elderly couple billed as Bobby's biggest fans -– isn't he a chef with a strong young female following? What is missing are nitty-gritty details of how he made his way up through the kitchen world. How did he deal with being younger and less experienced than many of his cooks? How did he work out the financial arrangements of his restaurants with the Jerome and Lawrence Kretchmers? What kind of missteps or failures did he experience along the way? What's not explained is what Bobby's food is like. What is Bobby's spin on Southwestern cuisine? How is he different from Jonathan Waxman or Mark Miller or Robert Del Grande among many others? He isn't alone in dabbling with blue corn, hot chilis and cilantro. Perhaps the problem remains that it's difficult to discuss food without eating it, and there are too few chefs interviewed for the production to really say anything definitive about his cuisine. So, unlike a MTV rockmentary, where you can hear Stevie Nicks belt out a song to understand her angst, Bobby's bubbliness and optimism are left ungrounded in his real talent. Tyler's biography premiers a few weeks later on March 21st at 9:00 P.M. and sketches the same kind of career path. He dropped out of high school, discovered a passion for food, attended culinary school, ended up in New York at the Food Network -- yada yada. What is startling is how much the two good looking male chefs resemble each other. Bobby and Tyler had divorced parents, both struggled in school, felt passionately about a cuisine (Southern, Southwestern) and attend culinary school but develop in restaurants in New York, married, had a child and divorced, and pursued the Food Network. They are both work-a-holics, who achieved much while still very young. We meet Tyler's parents, step-brothers, mentors, and see the same close-up snap shots of Tyler over and over again. Most biographies stress uniqueness, Chefography stress TV chef sameness. The very name Chefography is a bit misleading. Is Sandra Lee a chef? Is Rachael Ray? Previous articles: [Food Television--complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, Chefography --> back to Super Chef