Is the era of celebrity chefs over?

Once a dominant force in the culinary landscape, the fortunes and influence of TV-chefs-slash-restaurateurs seem to be on the wane. They cooked their own goose, writes Victoria Hannaford.

Is the era of celebrity chefs living high on the hog over?

Judging by the right royal snubbing of Jamie Oliver, and his recent business woes, its goose could very well be cooked.

The UK’s “Naked Chef” offered to cook for Harry and Meghan’s wedding reception extravaganza last year — for free — and received nothing in the way of reply. That’s right, not even an “all right guvnor, thanks but no thanks”. Nada, nothing, zip. Ghosted more than the Tower of London.

And that comes hot on the heels of news that Oliver’s once pukka restaurant empire in the UK and Australia has started crumbling like a day-old baguette.

British chef Jamie Oliver got no response after offering to cook for Harry and Meghan last year. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

Locally, our own celeb chefs have been in hot water too. There’s hardly a high-profile TV-star-slash-restaurateur without a whiff of scandal.

MasterChef’s George Calombaris had to fork out $2.6 million in 2017 after underpaying staff due to errors in bookkeeping at his restaurants. It was the same year he was fined $1000 for an assault at a soccer game.

RELATED: George Calombaris opens up on recent difficult years

Shannon Bennett, who’s made many guest appearances on MasterChef, denied allegations in 2018 that his restaurants had unpaid bills and underpaid staff.

MKR’s Pete Evans is regularly mocked for his fact-free claims about the paleo diet. His TV co-pilot Manu Feildel refused to eat humble pie last year, blaming his restaurant Le Grande Cirque’s closure on poor reviews, rather than the shortcomings the reviews pointed out. (My days working in restaurants taught me that more than a few chefs have a touch of the Gordon Ramsays about them too. Some I encountered were so off their heads they’d make Ramsay blanch faster than a batch of green beans.)

Celebrity chef George Calombaris has had a tough couple of years. Picture: Rebecca Michael

But beyond these celeb chefs who’ve found themselves in a jam, when was the last time most of us actually used one of their recipes?

I once spent a week baking and broiling batches of fancy food from big-name cookbooks for an article. The annoyingly finicky and fatty recipes had me stewing at the end, and my shopping bill was completely fricasseed too.

I spent about three times what I normally would have, and hours and hours in the kitchen. I’ve never used a recipe from a famous name again — and I’ve given away my celeb chow cookbooks.

It cemented something I’ve been too sheepish to admit in our supposed celeb chef-fuelled foodie culture, but it’s now time to dish it up: I’d much rather a low-key delicious dish that doesn’t require a recipe with a bajillion steps than trumped-up fancy nosh.

MKR’s Manu Feildel recently blamed the closure of his restaurant on bad reviews, not the shortcomings the reviews pointed out. Picture: Instagram.

And a recent family lunch outlined the limits of celebrity chefs’ influence beyond my own culinary inclinations too.

It was a special occasion, marked with a simple roast, followed by a pav for dessert. A tried and tested meal that could have been served up any point in the past five or so decades, and completely ignored the fantastical food filling up our screens. Not a morsel of Heston Blumenthal’s molecular gastronomy or MasterChef’s breakdown-inducing “snow egg” in sight.

It made me realise that even if we’ve watched celeb chefs on TV, they’re providing aspirational fodder — in a similar vein to Keeping Up with the Kardashians — rather than inspiration for making meals in real life.

It’s a completely cooked small-screen fantasy, and hot air I’m finally happy to call time on; give me the simplicity of spag bol over a celeb chef’s souffle any day.

Victoria Hannaford is a writer and producer for RendezView.

@vhannaford

Originally published as Is the era of celebrity chefs over?