Juliette Rossant

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The Food Channel® Trendwire

I'm Giving the Super Chefs Just One More Curtain Call

From Art Siemering's vantage point at the Noble Idea Center —

After running a two-part series on the star-chef trend in the April 12 and 19 editions of Trendwire, I intended to drop the subject for quite some time.

But that was before I got a call from Juliette Rossant, author of Super Chef: The Making of the Great Modern Restaurant Empires (Free Press, $25), offering a hot-off-the-press copy of the book I had earlier quoted as an authoritative overview of the hot-chef phenomenon from a business standpoint.

Rossant's biography identifies her as a former Forbes magazine reporter, but don't mark this effort down as a dry business treatise.

As expressed on the inside of its own dust jacket:

In Super Chef, Rossant profiles six of the hottest names in the industry today. From Wolfgang Puck's Spago Beverly Hills to his pizza in your freezer, from Charlie Palmer's Microsoft-powered eWinebook to Todd English on the QM2, from Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger's appearing as the Food Network's Too Hot Tamales to New York's most recent contender, Tom Colicchio, of both Gramercy Tavern and Craft — Rossant spins their tales of haute cuisine and corporate conquest."

And the telling is enhanced by all the rich and famous people who wander in and out of the lives of these kitchen tycoons — "from James Brown to Kirk Kerkorian, from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton, from Greg Norman to Martha Stewart, from Wayne Brady to Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., from Michael Jordan to Regis Philbin."

As for me, I've only begun to read Super Chefs since its arrival early last week.

But I've already found a telling quotation from chef Mary Sue Milliken:
"In retrospect, there were plenty of things that were tough, and I don't think that's what drove people like me and Susan (Feniger), Barbara Tropp and Joyce Goldstein and Lidia Bastianich and Anne Rosenzweig. Those people owned their own restaurants because being in the system with men just never felt equal and fair, so it's like ?I'm going to be my own boss3?4that's how I'm going to deal with this!'" ¬Ý

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© 2004 Noble Communications. The Food Channel® Trendwire newsletter is published by the consumer intelligence unit of Noble & Associates, a food-focused advertising and marketing company with offices in Springfield, Mo., Chicago, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis. And Washington, N.J. Comments or questions may be directed to Art Siemering, the newsletter's editor-in-chief, at art.siemering@noble.net, by phone at 417-875-5187 or by fax at 417-875-5199.

The Trendwire newsletter is distributed electronically each week, 52 times a year. Its content, in whole or in part, may not be copied or reproduced in any form. All quotations must credit The Food Channel Trendwire as the source. Individual e-letter subscriptions are available for US$195 per year. Corporate subscriptions are US$895. For subscription inquiries, contact Art Siemering at 417-875-5187 or art.siemering@noble.net.

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