Chapter 15
The Cooking Business

"For the boomer generation, food has become sex, drugs and rock & roll," says Eroca Gruen, President and CEO of the Food Network.²³ And that makes a lot of sense. According to Miguel Sanchez Romera, a neurologist and star chef in Spain, food stimulates the same brain regions as sex, drugs, and music. Romera says that he selects the ingredients for his cuisine and food presentations accordingly—that is, to stimulate the appropriate brain regions.

Let's take a closer look at the cooking business and how something as elementary as the preparation of food has become outrageous show business. We will feature Emeril, the show business celebrity chef; Iron Chef, the world's most original cooking show; El Bulli, a restaurant in Spain where you can have the most outrageous dining experience; and Copia, where cooking businesses and cultural institutions have joined forces in a show.

Emeril: The Show Business Celebrity Chef

One of the best performers in the business is Emeril Lagasse—typically just referred to by his first name. Emeril is a mediocre cook and a great showman. In fact, as the biography on his web site states, "the man really wanted to be in show biz," and originally his idea was "to be a rock star." In fact Emeril has been called "the gastronomic equivalent of Elvis Presley" because he really rocks the house.

Emeril's TV shows have included How to Boil Water, Emeril, Essence of Emeril, Emeril Live, and Friday appearances on Good Morning America. In these shows, Emeril has transformed cookery into show business largely by engaging the audience in lively and irreverent interplay, where the kitchen talk becomes the language of male bonding. His "Emerilisms" capture this let's-rock-and-roll style: "Bam!" "Oh, yeah, baby," "Pork fat rules," (this isn't diet food), "Kick it up a notch" (add some spice), and "We're not building rocket ships here," (cooking is easy).

Emeril invites the audience to take part in his celebrity, to roar and shout with him. Cooking with Emeril is like having 50-yard line seats at the Super Bowl.

Within a decade, Emeril has created an empire that includes six restaurants, his own line of cookware, a range of gourmet products (e.g., Emeril's Spices, Emeril's Pasta Sauces, Emeril's Hot Sauces, Emeril's Coffee and Chicory), and five best-selling books. At his book signings, lines start 12 hours in advance and uniformed security guards have been hired to provide crowd control (or at least, to make it look as if crowd control is needed). Between 2,000 and 4,000 people typically stop by. His web site, www.emerils.com, launched in 1998, reportedly draws more than 300,000 viewers a month.

Watching Emeril, we can see how any industry can profit from a show business personality. Celebrityhood has enabled Emeril to expand his product offers through line and brand extensions in many directions. Note that Emeril products have almost nothing to do with cooking well. They have to do with that 50-yard line experience, the thrill of show business.

Iron Chef: The Most Original Cooking Show

This prize goes to an award-winning Japanese show recently brought to the U.S. on the Food Channel network: Iron Chef. It takes cooking show business and really does kick it up a notch, turning cooking into an extreme sport, a gladiator event. The show has been a national obsession in Japan, followed like a soap opera and in the news every week.

Iron Chef is hosted by Takeshi Kaga—a show business personality characterized by flamboyant dress and behavior—and features warrior-style cooking competitions. At the beginning of the show, Kaga sinks his teeth into an enormous yellow pepper like a wild animal. He is portrayed as a wealthy and eccentric gourmet who lives in a castle surrounded by an army of Iron Chefs with fanciful names like the Delacroix of French Cooking, the Prince of Pasta, and the God of Japanese Cuisine, along with a Chinese Iron Chef whose philosophy is Cooking is Love, and a Japanese Iron Chef who proclaims that Cooking is Entertainment. (He, of course, is our favorite.) The plot of the show also includes other roles: a pair of sportscaster-style announcers, the weekly challenger cook, the celebrity judging team, the video crew, the culinary panel, and more.

The show is performed in the cooking arena. Like a sports stadium, this arena is a huge space surrounded by rows of stadium seating and outfitted with television crews and cameras to catch all the angles. Special stands are reserved for celebrity actors and TV personalities who also serve as judges along with members of the cooking academy and at least one silly and giggling actress. There are also special bleachers for Iron Chef groupies who support the contestants like cheerleaders—though in a Japanese way (by mumbling certain chants and snickering politely at the challenger). The competition is timed, the feats are dazzling, and the ingredients push the boundaries of taste—both in their unheard-of fusion of flavors and in their use of rare (and often revolting) delicacies. Unlike typical cooking shows that tend to minimize the more disgusting aspects of food preparation, the Iron Chef video crew follows the cooks as they stuff a sheep's bladder or chop off a live fish's head, capitalizing on the gore with slow-motion replays. Iron Chef is not really about food, it is about technique, daring, and prowess, like a samurai duel.

Iron Chef makes the kitchen a dramatic realm of exalted heroes. Making a sauce is theater. This is an important lesson for your business. Don't take the ordinary activities of your business for granted. Isolate them. Ritualize them. Celebrate them. Make drama out of the process. Make heroes of your players. Get some cameras and lights in there, some music, some cheering fans, and some celebrity judges. Find the action and let people see themselves as heroes.

El Bulli Restaurant: The Most Outrageous Dining Experience

El Bulli (The Bulldog), a restaurant north of Barcelona run by Chef Ferran Adria, has been named Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant magazine. Tucked away at the end of a remote beach and open only from April to September, the restaurant has a waiting list of up to one year!

El Bulli redefines dining—it is no longer for sustenance or sociability; all that has been subordinated to pure show business. As one critic writes, "This cooking… amazes and excites, but in no way does it nourish and satisfy. In no way is this real food."²⁴ This is exactly the point: outrageous and shocking, the food at El Bulli has been called fantastical, surreal. Adria himself uses words like magic, creativity, and freedom to describe what he does. El Bulli has become a pilgrimage for gourmets, including a large number of world-class chefs. Superstar Chef Paul Bocuse says Adria is "doing the most exciting things in our profession today."²⁵ Some food writers believe he will change the direction of gourmet dining.

A typical show business dinner at El Bulli lasts three hours and consists of a series of 25–30 courses, each a tiny gem of pure show business. Amounting to no more than an ounce or so each, these tidbits and tiny swallows are presented with child-sized cutlery and stemware, and each is served in a custom-designed manner: on a silver tasting spoon or delicate stick, in a tiny fluted glass, on a paper-thin, hand-made wafer. Adria's creations have included ice ravioli, deconstructed tiramisu, and foam of tea. They are served with precise suggestions about how they should be eaten. "Bite the shrimp, sniff the card, squirt the tube into your mouth, in that order," as one diner described it. And at a rate of one course roughly every six to seven minutes, they don't leave any time for conversation. The focus is entirely monopolized by each successive morsel; the experience is completely immersionary.

In his book Gastronomia, Chef Adria outlines his philosophy—or, rather, his approach to food show business. He explains his obsession with texture, taste combinations, and foams; his desire to surprise, intrigue, and provoke. He calls his cuisine ethereal, which could also describe the restaurant's web site. There is nothing about food to be found there. You will only experience show business words like "emocion" and "mysteria" and flashing images of clouds and the sky.

When Adria is not cooking at El Bulli, he goes on cooking-demonstration tours from Australia to Japan. The food writer Sheridan Rogers, who attended a cooking demonstration by the master in Australia, had the following impression of Adria:

In many ways, he is to food what Salvador Dali was to painting—outrageous and at times shocking, a great self-promoter but certainly never dull. Some critics claim it's not food he serves at El Bulli but "constructs" of foam and rubber—and that he is more an alchemist than a chef.²⁶

Adria's attitude demonstrates his belief that when you judge a creative chef, you have to judge their technique, not the taste of the finished dish—because everyone has different taste.

Adria's approach to cooking is not without its critics. "During this three and a half hour sensory onslaught, I never heard anyone use the word 'delicious,' " writes Anthony Dias Blue in Wine Country Living.²⁷

That's just the way your critics are going to respond when you put on your ground-breaking show, so don't listen. Ed Razek created the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show against great odds: supermodels who wouldn't be bought and colleagues who wouldn't be sold on the idea. If you have something truly new, it is bound to be misunderstood by those who like the status quo—even though the status quo is going nowhere.

The reclusive location of El Bulli reminds us of another important lesson: Customers have to come to you. Don't chase after them. Make your flagship store, your headquarters, your factory, or your show business restaurant a destination spot.

Copia: Where Cooking Business Meets Cooking Art

Show business is transforming the cooking industry beyond television and star restaurants. Education and civic development through food are also becoming part of the plan as nonprofit organizations join forces with cooking businesses to find new ways to put on a great show.

The Napa Valley wine country has become one of the key tourist destinations for visitors to the San Fransisco area. The attractions of its vineyards and restaurants have been joined by a new show called Copia, the American Center for Wine—a $55 million dollar culture center situated on 12 gorgeous acres alongside the Napa River.

In the words of San Francisco Chronicle arts and culture critic Steven Winn, "Nothing signals the new glorified status of food culture more clearly than Copia, the modernist temple of wine, food, and the arts." Winn calls a day spent in the center "a comprehensive and slightly surreal experience,"²⁸ and it's easy to see why. Where else is cake artistry elevated to the status of a full-fledged immersionary experience?

Spearheaded with $20 million from vintner Robert Mondavi, with prestigious partners including the University of California at Davis, Cornell University's School of Restaurant and Hotel Administration, and the American Institute of Wine & Food, Copia is named for the goddess of plenty. A new genre in show space, the place is part culinary college and part funhouse for foodies, with exhibits like The Birth of Coffee and Toasters! Pop UP Art! Exhibits are extraordinarily professional, but the museum-quality character of the show is coupled with a witty, sophisticated approach, allowing humor to set the tone.

The center has garnered praise from the LA Times, USA Today, National Public Radio, and The New York Times by offering plenty: gardens, eclectic food and wine classes, an art-house film theater, music, dance, lectures, wine and food tastings, cooking demonstrations, and of course the Julia Child Kitchen. For nonmembers, admission is $12.50 and there are extra charges for some of the courses and tastings. Before it was a year old, the center had roughly 8,0000 memberships—at $60 to $1,000 apiece. Donations are mostly tax deductible.

A nonprofit institution with an educational mission, Copia has too much class to plug its contributors' wares. There's nary a brand name mentioned here—except for Mondavi's and those of other vintners. But foodies don't need banner ads: they can tell a brand of saucepan from 10 paces away. Like almost any museum, Copia can rent space to confer prestige—say, to Salton, which announced the relaunch of the Westinghouse brand at the Center.

What's being sold at Copia is, broadly, a whole lifestyle and the products that make that style possible, as well the city of Napa, which, with the addition of the center and a new opera house, is drawing new attention as a tourist destination.

Conclusion

As the case of cooking demonstrates, show business can transform an industry not just at its most commercial extremes (television shows and rock-star-like show business leaders), but also in the realms where commerce and culture, and business and community intersect.

In our final chapter we turn to the business of art, dominated by giant nonprofit museums and high-culture ideals. There we see how a cultural industry is being reshaped by show business from the inside out—from the art works exhibited, to the dramatic structures that contain them, to the very cities in which museums reside.