Michael Nagrant stirred up a tempest in an immersion circulator late yesterday with a piece at Chicago magazine on chefs as, well, celebrity divas or bad boys of one kind or another. Not exactly a new complaint, but he makes a reasonable case that we’ve hit some kind of tipping point locally, citing such examples of chefs gone wild in one form or another as Graham Elliot, James Toland, Chuy Valencia and Brandon Baltzley. “One form or another” is perhaps the operative phrase here, because chef-ego takes very different forms in these cases. In Elliot’s case, what Nagrant objects to (that he’s now being handled very carefully as one of the stars of a network TV show) is actually a reaction to his earlier celebrity bad boy persona, in which he said whatever he pleased. If you have to submit questions in writing now, it’s less because he’s too big for you these days than because he has corporate masters.
But it is likely that Elliot’s old say-whatever-and-get-away-with-it-all-the-way-to-fame-and-the-bank m.o. was an influence on other chefs, to the extent of encouraging the belief that being outrageous made you a media darling. Which of course it often did; Valencia apologized for the crass sexual commentary in his Top Chef audition video, after it became his successful Top Chef audition video. And Baltzley is frank about the value of baring his druggy history to the likes of Details— “This is my livelihood… So I’m gonna go with it [the press].”
Which brings us to the other culprits— the media and those who consume it, who love the 1% who make splashy news more than they love the workaday 99%. In the aftermath of the piece Baltzley took to Twitter to complain that now that he’s merely cooking, he’s not getting the love of the bitch goddess Fame the way he did last week when he was better copy:
The blogs ignore the charity pop-up on December 12, the launch of http://cruxrestaurant.com , and that we’re opening a space. But they jump at @chicagomag article. There is your answer to the “media darling” aspect of my career.
But it is likely that Elliot’s old say-whatever-and-get-away-with-it-all-the-way-to-fame-and-the-bank m.o. was an influence on other chefs, to the extent of encouraging the belief that being outrageous made you a media darling. Which of course it often did; Valencia apologized for the crass sexual commentary in his Top Chef audition video, after it became his successful Top Chef audition video. And Baltzley is frank about the value of baring his druggy history to the likes of Details— “This is my livelihood… So I’m gonna go with it [the press].”
Which brings us to the other culprits— the media and those who consume it, who love the 1% who make splashy news more than they love the workaday 99%. In the aftermath of the piece Baltzley took to Twitter to complain that now that he’s merely cooking, he’s not getting the love of the bitch goddess Fame the way he did last week when he was better copy:
