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Tim Boerum showed up for his part-time job at a Stew Leonard's Wine Store in Farmingdale knowing only that some chef he'd never heard of would be signing cookbooks that day. Then he saw the crowd of giddy fans. They packed the store and trailed out into the parking lot, holding cameras, sharing favorite recipes and doubling the store's usual number of Saturday customers to 2,000.

"It looks like people waiting to get into Woodstock out here," a stunned-looking Boerum said.

Are chefs the new rock stars? You wouldn't think so to look at the woman causing a sensation at the head of the line. Lidia Bastianich, a calm and approachable self-trained cook, hosts a public television show out of her home in Douglaston Manor. But lately she and a growing number of others in her league, including Food Network stars like Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, can do more than draw a crowd.

Chefs are the latest celebrities to parlay talent and outsized personalities into business empires, encompassing television shows, books, restaurants, food or cookware products, endorsements -- even toothpaste commercials.

"It seems like these celebrity chefs have really become icons now, and people are mesmerized by them," said Stew Leonard Jr., chief executive of Stew Leonard's food and wine stores. He said an appearance by Bastianich has been known to create more excitement among his customers than one by actor and salad dressing entrepreneur Paul Newman. "If somebody told me you could have Lidia or a movie star, I'd say give me Lidia right now," Leonard said. "She's pretty hot."

Some who attended her book signing in Farmingdale were so overcome that they hugged the chef with tears in their eyes. Some took hold of her fingers and kissed them. "She's got bountiful hands," said an admiring Leonard Ross, 87, of Lynbrook.

Lady Bountiful

And those hands have built a bountiful series of enterprises. Capitalizing on her cooking skill and comforting persona as the idealized Italian mama, Bastianich, 57, oversees ventures with revenues she places in the several-million-dollar range. They include five restaurants: the highly acclaimed Felidia, along with Esca and Becco in Manhattan and two others, in Kansas City and Pittsburgh. A new one, Il Posto, should open in the Meatpacking District within a year.

Her cooking show, now called "Lidia's Italian American Kitchen," started in 1998 and runs on PBS stations that reach 86 percent of the viewing public. Three cookbooks have sold more than a million copies. She also sells pasta sauces, tours to Italy and wine from her Italian vineyard.

Making the Forbes list

Even with all that, Bastianich doesn't match the intersection of food, fame and fortune brought together by some other top chefs. Forbes last month listed three among its 100 top celebrities from the worlds of sports and entertainment.

Wolfgang Puck, the Hollywood chef-restaurateur, is ranked as Forbes' 75th highest- paid celebrity, personally making $11 million a year and employing nearly 5,000 people. Regular gigs on the Food Network's "Iron Chef America" and ABC's "Good Morning America" help publicize Puck's products, including frozen pizzas and entrees, along with six fine-dining restaurants and a chain of 40 casual Express restaurants.

Emeril Lagasse, the Food Network's New Orleans-based, top- rated star, followed closely at No. 79 with $9 million from media deals, restaurants, food and cookware products, and Crest toothpaste commercials.

And New York's Jean Georges Vongerichten ranked 91st with $5 million from his 15 restaurants, including his Manhattan flagship, Jean Georges, and the new Spice Market.

Most cooking school grads work long, anonymous hours in hot kitchens, but the stars follow a different script: Start with cooking ability, add some telegenic qualities -- sex appeal is best, but down-home charm can work in a pinch -- mix in marketing savvy and some lucky breaks, and, fingers crossed, you've got a celebrity chef.

Shrewd business people

"So many chefs, especially chefs who are stars, have turned into incredibly shrewd business people," said Bob Tuschman, vice president of programming at the Food Network, who said he looks for hosts who communicate in distinctive, compelling and passionate ways.

But why the public interest in chefs now? "Looking for our heroes and rock stars in the food world makes sense," Tuschman said. "Food brings us joy and creativity and cohesiveness in a world that's often about negativity and pulling people apart." His network has certainly ridden that positive energy, now reaching 80 million households, 12 times the number when it was launched in 1993.

Plenty of other businesses want to bask in the glow of celebrity chefs, who along with reality TV contestants are probably the fastest-growing category of public personalities now evaluated by Marketing Evaluations of Manhasset. The company calculates Q-scores, a measure of the popularity and likability of celebrities, at the request of television shows, ad agencies and publicity firms that hire stars to make appearances or endorse products. This year, clients asked for ratings on 21 chefs, four times the number of two years ago.

"Chefs are popping up all over the place in terms of their exposure and recognizability," said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of Market Evaluations. Beyond the Food Network, it seems that all over the television dial -- from cable channels like Home & Garden Television, The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel to network morning shows -- somebody is telling us how to filet a wild salmon or garnish a bowl of chili. "Both men and women are attracted to the genre," Schafer said. "It's become much more broad-based in its appeal."

Are the stars great cooks?

But are the most successful chefs the best cooks? Hardly. The Food Network's Tuschman said of the perky Rachel Ray, star of "30 Minute Meals": "Will she be cooking at a top restaurant tonight? Probably not. But is she an authority on how to make great food in 30 minutes or less? That's her expertise, and that's useful to millions of viewers."

Still, foodies lament that the best-known cooks and the best-selling cookbooks now have more to do with who projects well on television than who can properly deglaze a pan.

"A lot of these chefs simply hire somebody to write their recipes," said Judith Jones, a senior editor at Knopf. She has edited acclaimed cookbooks for 40 years, including those of Julia Child, even before Child appeared on television. Many TV chefs, said Jones, use restaurant cooking techniques -- often involving long lists of unusual ingredients and contributions from a large staff of sous chefs -- that can leave home cooks confused, frustrated and reluctant to buy cookbooks again.

"I understand the value in terms of marketing, but I don't think the books are truly helpful and instructive," she said. Still, many publishers are willing to pay substantial six-figure advances for cookbooks by TV stars who don't even submit recipes with their proposals.

Annoying their fans?

Chefs risk alienating fans in other ways. "You can either become overextended or, even more dangerous, overexposed," said Mark Erickson, vice president of continuing education at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, where media training is now on the curriculum. "If it becomes commonly known that you can go eat in a celebrity chef's restaurant but he's not going to be there, you can have a backlash."

The most visible flameout was Rocco DiSpirito, skewered when his NBC reality TV show, "The Restaurant," this spring showed him enjoying his fame rather than working the stoves at the poorly reviewed Rocco's 22nd Street. He's currently embroiled in a court suit over ownership.

A chef's stature also can be tainted by inappropriate endorsement deals. Rick Bayless, a public TV chef whose business interests include Chicago's Frontera Grill and a line of salsa products, invited derision when commercials he made for Burger King clashed with his image of favoring food from local farms.

Bastianich has managed to avoid such missteps, in part, she said, because she never planned to become a star. "I never thought of going this way," she said. "I was just taking the opportunities as they came."

In 1972, at age 24, she and her then-husband, Felix Bastianich, opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Forest Hills, featuring the simple Italian cooking that has become her signature. By 1981, the couple launched the more upscale Felidia in Manhattan, which now receives a food rating of 25 out of 30 from Zagat Survey.

Some guest appearances on Julia Child's television show in 1994 led to other offers, and it soon became clear that Bastianich had qualities that came across on camera: her plump, strong hands; her open, round face; her sensible, easy authority and her many references to tradition and family. All won her a loyal following for her PBS show.

To meet Bastianich is to enter a zone of likability. In an interview in her cookbook-filled office upstairs at Felidia, Bastianich, between offers of cappuccino, exuded warmth. She also explained that she's savvy enough to know that fans appreciate authenticity.

"I understand what they respond to, but that's me," she said. "There's a sense of comfort, of soothing, of inviting. People feel that I'm non-threatening, like they're a part of my kitchen."

TV brought opportunity

Once television established her celebrity, other opportunities presented themselves, Bastianich said. "Big businesses like Knopf," her publisher, "see the opportunity and push it even further. If you're a little bit talented and if you communicate and you have that charisma, the businesses around you propel you, they merchandise you, they sell you."

Her son Joseph helped launch her subsequent restaurants and the Italian wine company, and her daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali started high-end tours to Italy. Recently, Tina Johnson, a former chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue, joined the enterprise to help sell major retailers on carrying such branded products as tableware, linens and pots and pans.

These days, television has brought more glitz to the celebrity chef sweepstakes, amping up background music and pushing younger chefs with blatant sex appeal, like Style Network's voluptuous Nigella Lawson or the smoldering Bobby Flay of the Food Network and CBS' "The Early Show." In contrast, Bastianich's low-key approach seems almost quaint. But that was fine with her fans at the cookbook signing in Farmingdale.

"She's home cooking with Italian soul," said Sue Ricciuti of Bethpage, who brought in a book, stained with tomato sauce, which Bastianich signed.

So Bastianich is staying with the approach that works for her. "Sex sells these days," she said. "But my following is based on being able to communicate."

Besides, Bastianich said, a chef with her fame doesn't lack for offers -- business or personal. "I get a lot of marriage proposals, let me tell you."

Source: Becky Aikman - South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Posted August 2 2004