Celebrity Chefs

Celebrity chef is the title given to people who are famous for cooking in public. Although the term did not gain widespread use until the 1990s, it is generally applied to all well-known cooks and chefs of the past and present. It is a role characterized by status, rather than a particular function, in a culture in which food has become a form of popular entertainment. There are many types of celebrity chefs—from restaurateur-activists to cooking show host-authors—and, collectively, they appeal to a broad spectrum of American society. Popularized through the mass multimedia, including twenty-four-hour television programming, cookbooks, consumer magazines, and the Internet, they have become prominent public figures in our culture.