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 Recipe For Success:
Food Network Phenomenon
In an age when chefs approximate rock stars, the Food Network is the ultimate stage. A television channel devoted to all things culinary, there is simply no better place for foodies to get their fix.
By Nicole Alper
"Bam!” With this signature utterance Emeril Lagasse, who I am watching live at the Food Network studio, tosses some chopped pineapple into a blender. The audience around me is at the edge of their collective seat, waiting for the moment when the fruit will transform into agua fresca, a thirst-quenching Mexican drink. A massive chandelier, from which dozens of olive-oil-filled glass bottles hang, gleams overhead as Emeril interacts with bandleader Leonard “Doc” Gibbs like he was hosting a late-night comedy show rather than a cooking program. “Whaddya say, Doc?” jokes Emeril, as he tops off the now frothy concoction with a generous pour of Cabo Wabo Blanco tequila. “This is the way we drink it, right?” The audience explodes into applause.
As a child growing up in California, when most children were watching Sesame Street, I sat on my mother’s lap glued to The French Chef. My mother is actually French, which should have translated as “great cook,” yet being orphaned during World War II, she came to the United States without knowing so much as how to boil an egg. “Julia Child taught me how to cook,” she once admitted. An American Francophile taught my French mother how to cook her native cuisine and became the culinary gold standard for American housewives across the nation. But Child did more than simply teach techniques for making the perfect coq au vin — she set the stage for the creation of the Food Network.
“We have Julia to thank for the food television phenomenon,” says Susan Stockton, Food Network’s senior vice president of culinary production. “She really taught us how to have fun in the kitchen.” Since Child’s time, preparing food has morphed from a woman’s perceived duty to a gender-neutral national obsession, and the iconic Child has been replaced, not by an individual, but by an entire network. With the Food Network soaring from 6.5 million subscribers in 1993 to a staggering 90 million today, they are at the top of their culinary game, tapping into and embodying our nation’s love affair with food. America is indeed addicted to oil: Only it’s extra virgin olive oil.
Sitting in the studio at the Food Network, housed in the fabulous new space in Chelsea Market (the former home of the Nabisco cookie factory, where the Oreo cookie was invented), I pondered how what began as a humble series of instructional cooking shows transformed into America’s multimedia culinary giant. The Food Network empire extends well beyond just programming: There is their website (the number one visited food website in cyberspace), their cookbooks (five published to date), whispers of a new magazine, and a partnership with Kohl’s to release a full line of home goods, including stainless-steel cookware, kitchen gadgets, and cutlery to be released this fall.
The Food Network’s loft-style office spaces are swathed in appetizing cantaloupe and honeydew tones, and the test and production kitchens possess an infectious energy. Trays holding a motley collection of ingredients are all meticulously labeled for the next show — a monumental amount of preparation goes into just one segment. Two shows are shot daily in the studio (a season’s worth of programming is shot in just two weeks), but of course many shows are taped in other locations. Paula Deen brings viewers her home cookin’ straight from her house in Savannah, Georgia, while Nigella Lawson delivers her sensual food style from her native London, England.
The network’s colossal success is a surprise to even the most senior staff members. “When the Food Network was conceived,” explains Bob Tuschman, senior vice president of programming and production, “it was all inexpensive studio cooking shows geared toward women. I don’t think the people who founded the network could have possibly foreseen it becoming part of American pop culture the way it has.” The network’s success is vitally linked to the rise of star chefs — personalities able to talk turkey with the speed of a Sotheby’s auctioneer while keeping their cool behind a 400-degree stove.
“We are a personality-based network,” explains Tuschman. “When people think of the Food Network, they think of a particular talent.” The network found its first major personality in Louisiana-based chef Emeril Lagasse, who, on his show Emeril Live, replete with a live studio audience and house band, could slice, dice, sauté, and sear while entertaining audiences with his contagious energy. “Emeril Live was one of the first breakout shows to take cooking to a whole new entertainment level,” says Tuschman. “Emeril exemplified what the Food Network wanted to be about: celebrating food.” But getting the perfect formula took some fine-tuning.
“After September 11th we had to change our focus,” explains Stockton. “People wrote in and said they loved watching, but more as armchair cooking. The recipes were fabulous but complicated. They really wanted to know how to make a great meatloaf or perfect brisket.” At a time when Americans were looking toward comfort food to soothe an injured national soul, the Food Network set out to develop a lexicon of American cuisine. With a staff from such diverse backgrounds as Peru, France, and China knowing that Americans were, despite a dip in international travel, still captivated by the world beyond their borders, the network designed a formula that stayed close to home while paying tribute to other cuisines. It became their signature recipe for programming: comfort food with a world bent, using ingredients you can find in most grocery stores.
Today the network caters to a dual audience: During the day, “how to” shows such as 30 Minute Meals With Rachael Ray and Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee are aimed at instructing the home cook via a medley of feminine ideals. There’s the full-figured elegance of Ina Garten, on the Barefoot Contessa, who whips up romantic dinners for her husband, accessorized by rose petals and a roaring fire at their Hamptons home; the down-to-earth “girl next door” charms of Rachael Ray, who exclaims “delish!” while whipping up tasty recipes, often for less than $30; and the elegant grace of the show’s latest superstar, Giada De Laurentiis, who creates hearty Italian fare and takes her charms on the road with Giada’s Weekend Getaways, indulging in food-inspired travel from Charleston to Cabo San Lucas. But perhaps no Food Network star has grabbed the imagination — on both sides of the pond — as much as Britain’s domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson.
A striking, dark-haired beauty, Lawson’s sultry sophistication matches her pleasure-driven brand of domesticity. Joining her Food Network series, Nigella Feasts, which first aired last year, she is set to debut a new series, Nigella Express, this fall. “It’s all about food that’s simple, fast, and fantastic to eat,” says Nigella. “Just because you might not have much time to cook, doesn’t mean you should shortchange your taste buds!” And if there’s one thing Nigella does not abide when it comes to food, it’s deprivation. “Food underpins my life,” says Nigella. “It is the story of who I am and is my language. And I am not just talking about my greed for it (which I don’t attempt to hide!), but rather my love of being around food, researching, shopping for, preparing, and serving it.”
Known to devotees for her bimonthly column in The New York Times “Dining In, Dining Out” section, Nigella “found an instant home on Food Network,” says Tuschman. “Our viewers love her combination of delicious sensuality, effortless style, and no-fuss recipes.” Indeed, Nigella’s mischievous use of language, as she reminds you to be “gentle” with the rice before checking to see “how well-behaved it has been,” even suggesting you think of a healthy sauce as “moisturizer you eat rather than having to slather all over yourself,” makes you almost forget you are watching a cooking show. Nigella is the embodiment of self-indulgence, delivered with characteristic British finesse.
Come prime time, the network taps into viewers’ hunger for light-hearted fun, as food morphs into high-energy entertainment delivered by eccentric emerging cultural icons. Take, for example, Southwestern cuisine king Bobby Flay. Known to millions as the resident chef for The Early Show on CBS, Flay’s restaurants, cookbooks, and wildly popular Food Network shows, BBQ with Bobby Flay, FoodNation with Bobby Flay, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Boy Meets Grill, have ignited America’s taste buds.
Coupled with the bastion of Bobby Flay-style celebrity chefs are characters plucked from everyday life — chefs with a heavy dose of quirky passion. The bleach-blond and goateed Guy Fieri began traveling the nation looking for great food in unlikely places on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, while Robert Irvine, with an air of British body builder meets 007, achieves the seemingly unachievable on Dinner: Impossible. Meanwhile, rocker pastry chef Duff Goldman and his motley crew construct delicious edible replicas of everything from typewriters to gauchos in his hit Ace of Cakes.
Another key ingredient in the Food Network’s success is competition programming, where food is sport and top chefs, such as the clogs-and-shorts-donning Iron Chef Mario Batali, whose theater background only adds to the drama, are the star athletes. These highly charged, testosterone-ridden competitions pit charismatic chef against chef, whether it’s Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto who, in only 60 minutes, dashes the hopes of challenger Chef Linton Hopkins with his superior use of the secret ingredient, sablefish, or a confident Bobby Flay who has no bones about challenging the best in the field to culinary showdowns, preparing everything from hot dogs to barbecue. These competitions helped establish the network’s new demographic: Today a third of the prime-time viewers are men. “We have popularized cooking and have shown it can be easy and fun and cool to do,” says Tuschman, “especially to guys who may not have naturally spent time in the kitchen.” Two new shows raise the temperature: The Next Food Network Star, where several chefs hungry for their own food show battle it out under torturous circumstances, and The Next Iron Chef, where the fiercely creative competition is between those who have already proven their expertise at the executive-chef level.
But no matter how high-flying the celebrity, the network never loses sight of their biggest star — the food. Star chefs must share the stage with the ingredients they elevate. “Beets were a downtrodden little vegetable,” laughs Stockton. “Now they’re being served alongside foie gras!” With Nigella, pomegranate seeds transform into “red jewels” and golden sultanas are “glorious little nuggets of amber.” She sees the Food Network, “by continuing to add variation and discover new ways of talking about food,” as fulfilling the role of mediator in an inexhaustible conversation about food. “The more I write, read, and talk about food,” says Nigella, “the more I conclude that food is something that unites us all.”
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CELEBRITY CHEFS
Bob Tuschman, senior vice president of programming and production, dishes on some of the Food Network’s biggest stars.
 Clockwise from top left:
On DUFF GOLDMAN: “Duff marches to the beat of his own mixer,” laughs Tuschman. “He’s unpredictable, offbeat, a little crazy, and one of the most creative guys I’ve ever met.” In between sculpting, making art, and playing music, Duff attended the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, before doing a tour under some of the most prestigious pastry chefs. Returning to Baltimore to open Charm City Cakes, Goldman hosts Ace of Cakes, where he uses everything from blowtorches to drills to perfect his creations.
On GIADA DE LAURENTIIS: “Though she’d never admit it,” says Tuschman, “Giada is our Hollywood glamour. She’s an expert cook, but her talent is housed in such a vivacious and bubbly personality, you forget she is movie star beautiful.” The granddaughter of famed film producer Dino De Laurentiis and graduate of the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu in France, Giada is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author and regular contributing correspondent on The Today Show, covering trends in travel, food, and lifestyle.
On BOBBY FLAY: “He’s down-to-earth, unpretentious, passionate, and totally relatable to a lot of the audience,” says Tuschman. “And there’s that great cocky New York edge to him.” This year marks the first time Flay’s restaurant empire goes international. Mesa Grill is opening at The Cove, a brand new luxury resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas.
On ALTON BROWN: A former cinematographer and video director, Alton reinvented himself after attending Vermont’s New England Culinary Institute, by taping Good Eats. He writes, produces, and stars in each Food Network episode. In his bestselling cookbooks and newest show, Feasting On Asphalt, Brown pays tribute to everything from kitchen “hardware” to great American road food.
On RACHAEL RAY: “Rachael is the girl next door,” says Tuschman. “She knows exactly who she is. What you see is what you get.” With her no–nonsense style while whipping up great dishes in under 30 minutes, Rachael Ray has shot to the top of the food chain. She has her own magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, and has just launched her brand-new hour-long show, Rachael Ray.
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