by Allen Salkin
Either Matt called Tara or Tara called Matt. Matt says when he called, Tara said, “Wow, Food Network is calling us?” Tara says when she called, she opened with, “I know you get bombarded, but . . .”
Either way, it was oil and oil. Matt had already been reading up about Alton because of the Kodak article and told Tara he was definitely interested. She sent a tape and the updated bible with ratings information and the Tribune review. Watching Good Eats, Matt felt that same flush he’d had when he first saw Iron Chef in college: “This is going to be amazing.” Dozens of pitch tapes were coming into Eileen’s office a week, but he dashed into Eileen’s office with this one. She liked it and told Matt to set up a meeting. Not a week after the tapes had been sent to Food Network, Alton walked into the little Atlanta production office and asked Tara, “Has anything happened?”
“The Food Network wants to meet with us,” she said, smiling.
“Let’s go!”
“We’re working on getting flights booked right now.”
At the network headquarters, Tara began the spiel she’d practiced.
“Eileen, I’m sure you’ve been charged with wrapping shows around personalities. You’ve got Emeril. That’s one guy and he’s awesome. This is a new fresh way of looking at things. We’re not talking about recipes. We’re not talking about restaurants. We’re getting inside the food. We’ll do angles from inside the refrigerator. We’ll do things upside down. We’ll . . .”
Eileen was sold. She asked for them to come back with a bid to produce thirteen episodes.
But would Scripps go for another weird show? Good Eats would cost around $35,000 a half-hour episode, even more than the rights to Iron Chef.
“We already have Taste!” someone protested at a planning meeting. The premise of David Rosengarten’s show was to look deeply at one ingredient. It was produced in-house and cost less than half of Alton’s show.
“On the most superficial level, they’re similar,” replied Matt, who was so eager to speak at meetings that Eileen, after allowing her mentee a few minutes to make his points, often told him, “Shut up, Matt. That’s enough.” In this meeting, he was allowed to continue. “But they’re totally different in approach. Everyone loves David and, yes, there is a similarity. But David stands in a white room and talks about the cultural significance of a recipe. His show doesn’t move around. It doesn’t look at science. It’s not really comic.”
“I’m standing in the middle of a cow field with a farmer and a big chalkboard and you’ve got chalk all over the cow and I’m going, ‘Who in the heck is going to watch this show?’”
—TARA BURTCHAELL
Word came that ad sales thought Good Eats was too weird. Advertisers wouldn’t get it. Eileen argued that Good Eats might be unconventional, but it fit in with Iron Chef in that they both treated the viewer as smart and delivered offbeat entertainment. And its high level of inside humor could give the network a certain voice of geeky intelligence.
By late 1998, Eileen and Matt won the day again. Eric said, “Why not?” and Scripps agreed to give it a shot.
Matt flew down to Atlanta to oversee production of the first shows.
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As his programming budget increased to a workable but still tight $42 million, Eric, a fan of New York magazine’s annual “Best of New York” issue, created a show called The Best Of. Two local news reporters, Jill Cordes and Marc Silverstein, narrated short segments on the best entrees, confections, and delicacies from around the nation. Simple, but with The Best Of, Food Network entered new territory, sending cameras and reporters out into the country. Eric funded another “road show” called Door Knock Dinners, hosted and produced by Gordon Elliott, a former Australian talk-show host. Elliott, accompanied by a different chef or food personality each episode, would knock on people’s doors offering to whip up a meal for the family using whatever was in their refrigerator and pantry. Other new shows followed, including Legendary Hangouts, in which Ober’s former CBS colleague Morley Safer would sit in a booth at an old restaurant like Chasen’s in Hollywood and narrate a half hour on the joint’s legendariness; My Country, My Kitchen, which took chefs to their native lands; Melting Pot, featuring food experts like Padma Lakshmi and Aarón Sánchez cooking ethnic cuisines; and Taste Test, a corny game show hosted by David Rosengarten.
Question: “What is the official definition of pâté?”
Answer: “There is none!”
Eric was a supporter of David’s. He authorized the production of new episodes of Taste and brought in a new producer for In Food Today, Bob Tuschman, a former producer for ABC News. Bob’s first assignment was to modernize it. Before him, In Food Today had the look of a news program from the early 1960s hosted by people who hadn’t bought clothes since the 1980s. He brought in more light features and cooking demonstrations and ushered out breaking news.
Eric meanwhile took David to a tailor and bought him a well-fitting suit, something to frame the network workhorse as a thinking person’s food maven. Eric’s philosophy was that people watch people. Even in something as serious as news, people did not tune in to a particular show because of a deep affinity for CBS or NBC. They tuned in to see Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw.
Or Mario Batali. The chef had been without a show since he and Erica had fought, and now Eric told Eileen to bring him back. Mario always got good buzz and often showed up on gossip pages. He was a great self-promoter; even people who were not in the food world knew who Mario was. Batali did not win the full creative control he’d wanted, but after time away from the cameras, he concluded that he and the network were better off together than apart.
Eric’s philosophy was at odds with his bosses at Scripps. The parent company was less interested in personalities, more in formats. From his first pitch for HGTV, Ken had said programming would be inspired by the aisles of a home improvement store and articles in shelter magazines. HGTV, the flagship channel, was not about celebrities and buzz; it was about sinks and rosebushes. Eric saw the logic: networks that made stars would eventually be at the mercy of those stars. A show with a winning format would survive even if you cut high-priced talent loose.
But even though he understood it—and knew that he had been brought in partly because he understood it—he did not agree with it. His experience was that TV needed stars, especially cooking shows, where one person addressed the camera directly. In New York, instead of looking only for formats that would be hits, he and Eileen looked for stars that could make something a hit. Melting Pot; Ready. . . Set . . . Cook!; Chef du Jour; My Country, My Kitchen; and In Food Today functioned like a minor league farm system where new faces could be tested and budding stars could gain valuable on-camera experience.
One of the first talents to emerge from the system was Ming Tsai, a young chef who paired Asian ingredients with classical French technique. Ethnically Chinese, Ming was born and raised near Dayton, Ohio. His father was an engineer and his mother ran a modest takeout Chinese restaurant where Ming worked after school. He went to Yale to study engineering, but he played a lot of squash and skied as often as he could, and he spent summers in Paris apprenticing at bakeries and restaurants.
The summer of his junior year, he took classes at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and, after graduation, he spent two years in France working in restaurants. After earning a master’s degree in hotel management from Cornell University, and cooking in San Francisco, he was hired at Santacafé, a restaurant in Santa Fe, where his “Southwest Asian Cuisine”—dishes like coriander-crusted tuna with carrot-daikon salad and chile-cilantro vinaigrette, and grilled lamb marinated in Dijon mustard, ginger, and Chinese rice wine—attracted notice from national food writers. Ming first appeared on Food Network when cameras from Dining Around visited the restaurant where he was executive chef. His first words on camera were, “Hi, my name is Ming Tsai. I was born Chinese. I’m still Chinese! Now today I’m going t
o make you grilled lamb.”
The executive producer of Dining Around, Marilyn O’Reilly, was also overseeing Ready . . . Set . . . Cook! Impressed with Ming’s deep voice, strong jaw, and shy smile, she asked him to come to New York to compete on the show in 1996. After taping five episodes in a day, winning two, losing two, and tying one with Susur Lee, a Hong Kong–born East-West “fusion” chef six years Ming’s elder, Marilyn gave him a turn on Chef du Jour. The network featured few Asian chefs, and producers were weary of hearing viewer complaints about foreign-accented chefs, especially French ones. No matter how expert Eric Ripert, Jacques Pépin, or Wolfgang Puck were, people griped, “I can’t understand what he’s saying.” Ming spoke English like the Midwesterner he was—mixed with a bit of East Coast prep, like he had just come off a tennis court.
But even with his dimpled grin and unique ethnic appeal, he fumbled on camera. Unlike Ready . . . Set . . . Cook!, Chef du Jour had no studio audience. There were four cameras and a few crew members. Ming’s jokes were met with silence. He failed to move recipes forward quickly enough to finish on time and neglected to explain unusual ingredients with sufficient depth. Why are Asian peppercorns different from black peppercorns? What is ponzu?
“You’re not great,” Marilyn said. “But you’re better than most.”
“Thank you,” Ming replied. “I guess.”
He wanted to be as good at television as he was at everything else he put his mind to. He noticed what others who have spent time on TV usually notice, that appearing on the screen sprinkled some magic on him in other people’s eyes and made them want to listen. Ming moved to the Boston area to open a restaurant, and whenever Food Network called, he went and performed without pay. David used him on a dim sum episode of Taste. Marilyn offered him a chance to do Cooking Live during Sara Moulton’s annual vacation on one condition: “You’ve got to get media training if you’re going to do this. Get the training and you’ll become the network’s Asian expert, and then maybe we can get you a show.”
Ming made the pilgrimage to Lou Ekus, spending $3,000 for two days. He was stiff until Lou, pulling out a favorite trick, told him to seduce the camera by imagining he was speaking to someone sexy.
“I have a picture of someone I think is absolutely gorgeous,” Ming said. He taped a photo of his puppy Jasmine to the camera—the same trick Marion Cunningham had used years earlier with Rover. Every time he looked at Jasmine, he’d smile and relax.
“TV has an irrational power . . . When you’re in that black box, the average public just assumes you are the authority on that subject. I’m happy to admit that I think I’m as good as two thousand other chefs in this country. But am I in the top twenty? No. Hell, no.”
—MING TSAI
In February 1998, his restaurant Blue Ginger opened and he got strong reviews: “The first spoonful of a spring pea soup, brilliant green as grass, fragrant as the first mowing, explodes in my mouth,” critic Allison Arnett wrote in The Boston Globe. Soon after, Eileen offered Ming his own series on the network, East Meets West, a straightforward cooking demonstration show. On May 15, 1999, Ming, then thirty-four, won an Emmy for East Meets West, beating Julia Child and Martha Stewart in the category of Service Show Host. Nine days later, a profile by freelance writer Kathryn Matthews went out over the Knight Ridder wire service, noting that Ming is “tall with broad shoulders, boyish good looks, and surefire confidence in the kitchen.”
Commenters on the fan forum section of the Food Network website gushed: “Ming is a talented babe with a great personality”; “He looks hot in that one pair of shorts he wore when he went to Hawaii.” And from an Asian fan: “I’m very proud of you and your heritage.”
—
In the two years since Tyler had first appeared on In Food Today, he had faithfully come every time the network called. But none of his on-screen work gave him what Bobby, Mario, or Emeril had—his own show. Tyler came to understand that each had a compelling and easy-to-digest personal story to tell about his relationship to food and cooking. Mario had spent time cooking in small Italian villages. Bobby was the urban dude who knew how to start a party with a grill and some peppers. Emeril was a blue-collar guy who had put in the time to learn New Orleans cooking but stayed loyal to his mom, Hilda, back in Massachusetts.
Audiences, Tyler noted, felt bound to chefs with good back stories the way sports fans root for athletes. Success on-screen is not just about cooking the lightest soufflé, doling out the cleverest shortcuts, or even being the best-looking. Lou Ekus could teach someone how to have an ease on camera, but that wasn’t enough. You needed a story that touched people.
Tyler pondered his own story. Money was scarce when he grew up, and as a toddler, he was allergic to milk, chicken, and many other foods. After his grandmother died, Tyler got his hands on her box of home recipes. Tyler’s mom needed help around the house, so he taught himself to cook like Grandma. He followed the interest born from that recipe box and earned a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales in North Carolina. When he was named executive chef at Cafeteria, a booming new restaurant in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, he brought his grandma’s recipes with him. Cafeteria had a sleek all-white design, model hostesses, a techno soundtrack—and Grandma’s meat loaf on the menu.
Diligent about networking, Tyler was at a cocktail party celebrating Food & Wine magazine’s annual “Best New Chefs” issue when he spotted Eileen Opatut and took the opportunity to chat with her. He had no “Bam,” nor the unique look of Ming. But he had a box of recipes. Tyler told his story. “And those,” he said, concluding his life story in food, “are the same recipes I put on the menu of Cafeteria.”
Eileen’s heart swelled. Even as this handsome young man with a cute smile and big brown eyes was cooking at one of the hippest restaurants in New York, he was thinking of his beloved grandma and dishing out her home-style cooking. Eileen cherished her own grandmother’s recipes and it occurred to her that a lot of people probably did the same. Tyler’s story conjured nostalgia for a simpler time when kindly matriarchs cooked comfort food for their extended families and everything was right with the world.
Eileen’s oldest daughter was going to school with a child named Yuki O’Brien—half Japanese, half Irish. How would Yuki connect with his heritage? Maybe, Eileen mused, Yuki’s parents had a Japanese grandmother’s recipe for beef soup, or an Irish grandmother’s recipe for biscuits. Those old recipes were bonds to the old country, to a dimly remembered way of life that gave people identity in the present.
Here it was again: the right personality meeting the right executive who is in the right position and the right frame of mind at the right time. Eileen called Tyler at Cafeteria. “Listen, Tyler. We want to give you a twenty-thousand-dollar development deal.”
Tyler was thrilled. He was being paid what nearly everyone in the restaurant business is paid: peanuts. He’d been working in restaurants since he was fifteen years old. He had had one New Year’s Eve off in the last decade. He got Christmas or Thanksgiving off, but never both. This was okay money and a promise at the big time. He resigned from Cafeteria immediately.
“We’ve got this concept where you would travel around the country and help everyday people out with their food emergencies at home,” Eileen explained at a meeting. “And it’s something, you know, right now, we got a working title, it’s like Food 911. Like, you call 911, the cops show up. You call Food 911, and you show up.”
Food 911 was set to debut around the same time as Bobby’s new road series, FoodNation, another effort to bring sunshine to the schedule. In anticipation of the big, dual launch, Bobby and Tyler were summoned to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas to help present the upcoming season to advertisers. Standing outside the hotel with Tyler, Bobby dispensed some advice. “Take a look around. ’Cause there’s a couple of chefs, and I’m not gonna mention their names, they were on the network at a very early point, that weren’t invited here be
cause of their antics, their prima donna attitude. Everything had to be about them. If you notice, they’re not here right now? Just notice that, all right? The network wants you to be here, then you need to be here.”
Tyler nodded.
“You see all this?” Bobby continued, “you see all these limousines? You see these big parties? You see these airline tickets? You see all this stuff? Like the exposure you get? It’s a gift. Don’t ever blow it. Don’t ever, ever, ever blow it.”
Bobby had learned from the best about how to treat people when you are a famous food person. Shortly after he opened Mesa Grill, Julia Child had come to the restaurant. Before she sat down to eat, she went into the kitchen and shook everyone’s hand, from the dishwasher to the chef. She exhibited grace. Bobby watched and learned.
A few years later, Bobby had dinner with Julia in New York. She ordered an upside-down martini.
“Ms. Child, what is that?” Bobby asked.
“Well, it’s a lot of vermouth and a little bit of gin,” she answered with a laugh.
—
When, after months of waiting, Food Network finally received the edited and dubbed episodes of Iron Chef in the spring of 1999, Eric, Eileen, Matt, and the others were beside themselves with glee at the campy results. “Oh my, the chef trained in America is adding dried mullet roe,” went the dubbing of one character. “What more can you expect from a man from the land of freedom?”
Somehow the Japanese, consulting with Matt on their voice-over actor choices, had managed to imbue the dubbing with exactly what Eric had wanted, the comedically wooden quality of Mothra. The edits, also done with the help of copious notes from Matt, who spent weekends studying every second of every tape, maintained the logic and high drama of the original. Fuji and he had produced a sweet-bitter confection that tickled the taste buds and left a craving for more.
—
The combination of debuts and new seasons of Iron Chef, Good Eats, and Ming’s, Tyler’s, and Bobby’s series were part of an official “relaunch” of the network set for June 1999. For many of those hired over the past two years—Eric, Eileen, Bruce, Bob, and Heidi among them—it felt like a launch. They had never seen Reese barking orders, or Robin Leach stumbling onto a set drunk, or an explosion in Kitchen Central. A former stripper no longer kept the books. The first show of the relaunch was a special episode of Emeril Live, taped in front of a thousand people in Chicago. Despite all the changes, Emeril was still the king—and he knew it. In one 1999 broadcast, he led off the show saying, “I’m Emeril Lagasse—in case you just landed on the planet.”