Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay, Tom Colicchio, Mario Batali, Paula Deen, Alain Ducasse, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, Rachael Ray.
To some people these 10 individuals are household names, while to others they are virtually unknown. Without a doubt, there is one person who knows each of them all too well: their investment banker. These are the recently crowned "Ten Top-Earning Celebrity Chefs," in ascending order, according to Forbes Magazine. Yes, Forbes. The realm of the chef has grown so large that even the nation's financial industry has been forced to take note. If you would have told a Forbes editor 20 years ago that he would be publishing this list, he would have looked at you like you were chugging the cooking sherry. And if you had told him that the woman on top of the list would be pulling in over $18 million a year, he probably would grab the bottle and take a swig himself.
The people on this list come from various aspects of the food industry — some are restaurateurs, some are television personalities, some are both. All of them, except for one, are actually chefs, meaning that they have some form of professional culinary training. Rachael Freaking Ray is not a chef, and she openly admits this. Yet, somehow she sits on top of this list with almost $16 million a year more than Bourdain. Don't feel too bad for the guy — he'll drown his sorrows while he's off trekking in Malaysia or Morocco.
How is that possible? The answer is simple: Being a celebrity chef has less to do with being an actual chef than you would think. Celebrity chef-dom is about branding, marketing and personality. The celebrity part of the equation is slowly taking over the chef half of it. Most of these 10 probably don't spend much time cooking in an actual kitchen unless it's on the set of one of their numerous television shows. They do, however, spend a lot of time with their respective marketing teams, creating new brands of cookware that they can sell to the masses.
Cynicism aside, I have a tremendous amount of respect for these chefs. People like Puck, Flay and Matsuhisa (co-owner of the celebrity-magnate Nobu restaurants) have spent years building vast culinary empires based on their number one talent: They can cook damn good food. Other celebrity chefs not on this list, such as Ferran Adrià and Wylie Dufresne, are internationally known for their daring and innovative forays into molecular gastronomy. Then, there is the other part of the celebrity chef community — Deen, Sandra Lee and Rachael Freaking Ray. Do they cook? Sure — although Lee's "Cocktail Time" is another story. Are they breaking the mold with their cooking? No. But are they really entertaining to most of the country? Absolutely.
Ray is on top of this list because (for some reason that I just don't get) people like to watch her talk show. And her four Food Network shows. And buy her cookware. And subscribe to her magazines. People also love to eat Ducasse's elegant food and watch Batali win on "Iron Chef America." Ultimately, these 10 are where they are today because they were able to capitalize on the things that we as a society love to do — eat, shop, watch TV, read, etc. — and because they are really good at doing it. As a result, they are also really good at spreading an appreciation and love for all things culinary, which for me, should be the end goal. They just so happen to also be really good at making bank.
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Caryn Horowitz is a junior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.
