Celebrity ≠ Chefs

By relocating the ethos of cookbooks from chefs > celebrity chefs > celebrities, we secede the attention away from those dedicated to the craft to those dedicated to star power.

Cook books have a certain allure. It’s nice to read the story behind a particular dish, especially if it’s from a famous chef’s grandma or third uncle twice removed, and there is much to be gained from learning from the greats. Cook books are artefacts that offer the option and encouragement to learn from the top chefs in the world, to see how they roast a chicken or make a cucumber salad or construct gazpacho. Unlike most print media, cook books require a sense of chaos to be used correctly; a dish rag to wipe away pasta sauce in between pages, or a carefully rigged bowl to have the book spread open in front of your cutting board. It is not unlike an auto-repair manual, where its expected to have thumb prints of oil or other car related juices upon the page.

But what exactly constitutes a ‘chef’? We have our Gordan Ramseys, our Anthony Bourdains, our Ina Gartens. These are the people who are food first, personalities second (contrary to how Mr. Ramsey presents himself, he spent time working at La Tante Claire and Harvey’s before making a television appearance with his current mien).Then of course you have the celebrity chefs that are bombastic by design such as Emeril Lagasse and Mayor of Flavor Town himself, Guy Fieri. Yet even these former chefs have experience as, well, chefs. Sure they have adapted their culinary ethos to the Internet age, but they did get their start behind an actual burner.

So it’s an odd find to go to a bookstore and see cookbooks that are, for all intents and purposes, written by people specifically not chefs. What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Benny Blanco, and Snoop Dog have to say about the art and craft of cooking that more renowned giants haven’t already said? In what world would someone opt for Baywatch star Pamela Anderson’s cookbook I Love You: Recipes from the Heart instead of Thomas Keller’s masterclass tome, The French Laundry Cookbook? Would you buy a survival guide from Taylor Swift or Bear Grylls, the guy who eats snakes on television and uses camels like Tauntauns?

For insulation, not for eating.

The answer is the obvious one: celebrity endorsements, celebrity advertising, celebrities being celebrities. The works. The publishing machine hides nothing: Snoop Dog, famous for other things beyond cooking, is a highly marketable person, and cooking is just one theater that his brand can conquer. Obviously there are some chefs who exist within the Venn-Diagram of the chefs | celebrities matrix: Babish got his start on the Internet recreating food from televisions shows (my favorite is always his reaction to Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “milk steak”) and both “cool / nerdy in a Rivers Cuomo kind of way” Josh Weissman and “70’s punk aesthetic meets VSCO girl” Olivia Tiedemann got their momentum from posting videos. But it’s still them cooking. You can tell that these chefs in the era of culinary content creation still live and breath the culinary arts. If they weren’t making videos where they made wagyu smash burgers or homemade tortellini they would probably be working BoH for someplace trendy and awesome.

If the Swedish Chef authored a cookbook inspired by his many grueling years in the Muppets kitchen, I’d buy it. But if the Swedish Chef authored a cookbook simply because he’s the “Swedish Chef” and is popular on the Internet for his personality, then that leads into Salt Bae territory.

The standards for what constitutes a celebrity hobbyist and a professional are a fine line when taken through the veil of celebrity star power and the publishing industry. Fans of Danny Trejo might want his cookbook, Trejo’s Tacos. I had a cookbook that made Harry Potter inspired snacks when I was ten, and no doubt some publishing company filled their coffers using my need to have chocolate frogs and cookies shaped like the Golden Snitch. Yet there needs to be a difference between celebrities who simply enjoy cooking, and actual chefs who create user manuals for autodidactic upskilling. This lack of distinction and how we approach culinary texts are cannibalizing itself and weakening the authenticity of what a great cook book is. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat should be held in a higher regard than a musician who discovered that souffles and lobster thermidor impresses people at parties.

But then again, why does it matter? I bet no one else is losing sleep over this. If Dolly Parton’s cook book helps you be a better cook, so be it. I’m not trying to bash celebrity cookbooks, but I do think it’s worth highlighting that pop culture and star power have a top-down approach towards homogeneity. Cookbooks are now being published not by the merit of the food or the time spent cooking by the author, but more instead of their Instagram following or their ubiquity on Tik Tok. Perhaps it’s because most cook books have a picture of the author on the cover.

But 5 million followers can’t be wrong, right?