Public Television and Cooking Shows

The following decade saw a shift in the cultural attitude about money. Those with plenty spent it lavishly and conspicuously, and such behavior in turn had a constructive effect on the culinary landscape. Because many people were eating out in fine or trendy restaurants in the 1980s, chefs began to earn a cachet previously unknown to them. Austrian chef-restaurateur Wolfgang Puck, for instance, is an icon of the era. While he did not have his own cooking show until the next decade, in many ways he heralded the age of the celebrity chef. Americans culinary education of the past two decades found new vigor in the works of creative chefs.