What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver

By JULIETTE ROSSANT How do you get the next generation to be loyal to your brand? If you are a chef you can appeal to what they eat – and chefs are moving into the fast casual space to hook younger, less well-heeled diners (as well as older, richer diners who might not want fine dining every night). You can wear their clothes, and for years chefs have been sporting baseball caps instead of toques, and spikey hairdos just like their younger diners. And you can get into what they are into – the internet, myspace.com, Youtube.com and video games. If you needed evidence beyond reality TV that cooking is a game, then look no further than What Cooking? With Jamie Oliver: the first video game to feature international cooking star Jamie Oliver and his delicious, world-renowned recipes, scheduled for release exclusively on Nintendo DSTM for Christmas 2008. What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver walks players through virtual and real-life cooking situations, from shopping to chopping, dressing the dish to serving up meals. The portability of Nintendo DS means Jamie Oliver is with you every step of the way to offer help and inspiration at the supermarket, in the kitchen, on the barbecue or wherever you feel like cooking up a storm. Sounds like a perfect Christmas gift for hungry 'tweens, twenty somethings and those tired of digging up their favorite recipe from a traditional cookbook. The game comes with voice recognition, an interactive shopping list that "automatically saves ingredients from chosen recipes (either Jamie Oliver's or your own creations) and organises them by food type making trips to the supermarket a breeze. You can add any other items you want to the list using the keypad or text recognition." Come to think of it, lots more people could benefit from these features. Jamie is already downloadable to cellphones. One hundred of his top video clips are available for download by Vodafone Live!-. (see Jamie Oliver on Vodafone Live!). Jamie everywhere, all the time, in whatever form you want. This from Jamie in the press release: I really want to get as many people as I can cooking simple, tasty food, so I’m really excited about bringing a book’s worth of my recipes to a game for the first time. You can cook my recipes for real at home or in the game’s 3D kitchens, but what’s brilliant is that you can come up with your own recipes then share them with your mates and family over wi-fi. Lovely. The ideas is that you can cook as a game, or for real – in a way, there is no difference. Jamie is virtual, and your food can be, too. It's the ultimate diet! Get tired cooking in the game, and then you won't have the energy to eat! What's Cooking? with Jamie Oliver is scheduled for release across North America in October 2008. So there is time still for American chefs to make a deal for their own What's Cooking? Previous articles: Branding: Jamie Oliver - Watching the Salt Jamie Oliver & Paul McCartney: - Anti-Landmine Campaign Jamie Oliver Label: Sainsburys v. Tesco Jamie Oliver: Chicken Out! Jamie Oliver: Jamie At Home Jamie Oliver: Cook with Jamie Jamie Oliver Cartoon By Aardman Jamie Oliver Betters British School Food FOOD PIX: Jamie Oliver Fat Suit Nora Sands: Nora's Dinners Jamie Oliver Signs Sainsbury's Jamie Oliver New Year: School Lunch Jamie Oliver on Vodafone Live! Jamie Oliver: Real Guts Fat Lady Sings Jamie Oliver Jamie Oliver: School Lunch July 4: East Meets West Wall Street Journal: Beef over Chef Sponsorship? Amazon UK's Steamy Xmas Chefs [Chefs & Branding - complete] [Chef Games - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, Jamie Oliver --> back to Super Chef