I'm a bit confused by this TNR article blasting celebrity chefs. The author, Kelly Alexander, argues that the cults headed by celebrity chefs have pushed cuisine into rarified realms. "Diners", she writes, "used to think restaurants were lucky to get their business; now they feel as if they have to tote around culinary resumés to prove they're good enough to occupy the tables ('eaten at the French Laundry two times in the past year and at Nobu eight times in the last five, including the London outpost')." Well, maybe.
But isn't one of the top celebrity chefs Rachel Ray, whose cooking makes a fetish of simple ingredients and blistering speed? As for the cult of celebrity chefs influencing the average diner's night out, that's not the case for anyone I know, or even know of. Entrees costing more than $10 are a pretty bad strain on the budget, so I don't tend to patronize places where the chef can license his likeness.
Indeed, the whole phenomenon is only relevant for a miniscule subset of the restaurant-going population, those living in culinary meccas (like New York) with the money, time, and interest to eat at French Laundry, or Nobu, or others establishments were meals stretch into the three and four figures. Which makes this article pretty similar to the bete noire of Michelle Cottle's cover story on the New York Times Thursday Style section. Her piece was title "The Grey Lady Wears Prada" and, at least on the web, the header was "Journalism Shacks Up With the Superrich." It blasted The Times for editorializing on inequality while pushing a section devoted to the pleasures, problems and peculiarities of conspicuous consumption. So how's Alexander's plaintive defense of well-heeled epicureans any different?