This March, Forbes magazine for the first time included five chefs on its list of "Celebrity 100,'' the most influential and highest paid people in a variety of professions. They've got the fame. They've got the fortune. They've got the culinary career those wannabe chefs all envy. From culinary school to super stardom, these chefs have cooked up hot culinary careers, with a generous side of glamour.
Combine Equal Parts Creativity and Job Satisfaction
What's the number one job perk of world class chefs? From the cooking school kitchen to the backs of their own restaurants, chefs and pastry chefs get to spend their whole careers surrounded by great food--fresh summer Burgundy truffles, controversial D'Artagnan fois gras, or exotic chocolate goat cheese. Each day, top chefs have the chance to put their creativity to work on the freshest kaffir-lime leaves, the most delicious rhubarb in Muscat wine and grenadine. No wonder they can realize their culinary visions to the fullest. As celebrity chef Rachael Ray explained in a recent interview, "You do it with your own two hands, so there's a sense of pride. You really do forget all your problems, because you're focusing on the food."
Add a Heaping Dash of Cash
Culinary arts school taught many of these chefs how to tell mascarpone from robiola. But today's hot chefs and pastry chefs cook up much more than delicious food. More and more of them are using their culinary expertise to build multimedia empires in which being up to their elbows in some yeasty tomato dill concoction can really bring in the dough. World class chefs, who would typically make around $70,000 to $100,000 from their signature cuisines, can easily double or triple this basic income through consulting, books, and television, according to a recent article in the New York Times.
Some culinary hot shots really make it big. Leading the pack of elite chefs on Forbes' ''Celebrity 100'' list was Wolfgang Puck, who owns restaurants from coast to coast and a line of frozen foods. Forbes estimated Puck's 1998 income at $10.5 million. Star television chef and New Orleans Restaurateur Emeril Lagasse was next in line at $2.4 million. Others included New York chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten with $2.1 million, Los Angeles chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa with $750,000, and Daniel Boulud of Manhattan with $700,000. With salaries reaching the millions and their own restaurants in the most glamorous cities across the country, today's culinary titans have the recipe for the good life.
Spice it up with Some Star Treatment
These days, culinary school or baking school isn't just a ticket to the back of a kitchen. Today's hottest chefs and pastry chefs can really get the star treatment. Cooking show personalities, for example Emeril Lagasse, have become instantly recognizable. In a recent interview, Lagasse explained his amazement about how much this has changed over the last decade. "Chefs weren't really respected other than being in the kitchen," he says. "You rarely saw them in the dining room interacting with people...Now all of a sudden, people have started looking at chefs and saying, 'Wow! That person really is a craftsman, is really a business person, they can do publicity.'"
Here are some world class chefs whose fame and fortune is really heating up:
- Wolfgang Puck owns Spago, the famed Beverly Hills restaurant that has gone international (now with six in Tokyo alone). He also runs his own lines of cookbooks, kitchen equipment and appliances, and food products, and operates his own catering business--which caters the official Academy Awards events. He boasts a range of acting credits including TV shows Frasier, Las Vegas, American Idol, and Iron Chef America, and the movie The Weather Man.
- Rachael Ray is the star of 4 shows on the Food Network, has written an average of one cookbook a year, and is now the star of her own syndicated talk show, co-produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. She also has her own bimonthly magazine. Rachel was recently identified by Forbes as the second most trusted person in America (right after Tom Hanks). Her romantic wedding in a gorgeous castle in Tuscany in September, 2005 was the subject of eager media attention, and she and her husband now live in a stunning apartment in New York's Greenwich Village.
- Mario Batalli brings the glamour of Italian culinary arts to his many New York hot spot restaurants (seven at last count!). From Greenwich Village, to the Theater District, to historic Washington Square, Batalli's restaurant empire is worth over $65 million dollars. He hosts two popular Food Network programs--Molto Mario and Ciao America--and was named "Best Chef in America" last year by the James Beard Foundation. And star treatment? Batalli has been GQ's Man of the Year in its chef category. Now, his expanding restaurant empire has gone West, moving into some of Los Angeles' and Las Vegas' most chi-chi neighborhoods.
Today's world class chefs may start at cooking school, but they land in the chicest restaurants across the country, at the heads of their own businesses, and even on TV. No doubt about it--for these cooking titans, a culinary career has written a recipe for the good life.