Great chefs or jesters to the rich?

“Food events and cooking shows with leading ‘star’ chefs are becoming more and more like a fashion shows,” Stefano Stefano Bonilli once said when talking about food and the restaurant scene and I could not agree with him more. And I must confess that everything involving those worlds are beginning to turn me off. This not just because of the ‘star system’ that has emerged over time as much as the role many chefs, fortunately not all, have defined for themselves. For me they have become jesters for rich and powerful more than creators of culinary fashion and culture. It is true, however, that great cuisine is expensive and demands excellent quality ingredients and more personnel in the kitchen and for service. But let’s get real, who can really with any frequency go out to dinner at restaurant where a meal costs between 200 and 500 euros a head? Where a dish along can cost 50 euros and the wine list has markups of 300-400%? Without a doubt this is a world of luxury, one that needs to exist because if there are people who are rich it is good that they spend their wealth to boost the economy. Nevertheless, for me this is not sufficient to make certain chefs media heroes, giving them TV shows and pages and pages of media coverage.

All this has made them very popular but only because they have become like actors in a movie or on TV and has little to do with their culinary expertise. And in the end what they are touting is only for those with ample financial resources, something that in the end interests them more than excellent food. Up until a couple of decades ago it was possible for many to afford to go to a ‘star’ restaurant whereas today their prices have skyrocketed due to a new clientele of the very rich and often ignorant and this has driven away many authentic food lovers and connoisseurs. Should you find yourself at a famous restaurant you can easily see how much of the clientele is made up of these ‘nouveau riche’ customers, people who are there for status much more than any love of quality, fine dining.  And so in the end we must resign ourselves to the fact that many famous and media-present chefs, fortunately not all, have become jesters to the very rich and less and less the great professionals they should be. But if that is what makes them happy…