In a few short years, the wide-spread perception of chefs has gone from that of a stressed-out cook yelling at lackeys in a boiling kitchen to a 3-hat genius balancing photo-shoots, soufflés and interviews. From Julia Child’s revolutionary ‘The French Chef’ series in the 1960s through to cult shows like Iron Chef and prominent television personalities such as Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver, we’ve long been fascinated by the wizards of the kitchen. Yet, the past 5 years have seen an unprecedented explosion in the popularity of these culinary champions.
We’ve also seen a shift in the focus, which has now widened to include professionals in the culinary arts and amateurs. We’ve come a long way from the traditional “meat and 3-veg”, but have we taken the fine-cooking movement too far?
The Rise of the Foodie
You know the type; they’re the ones sitting at that popular new café with iPhones snapping every dish on the menu, micro-blogging about how the sea-salt encrusted bacon on homemade rye with heirloom Haas avocado mash is the best thing to happen to Darlinghurst since Clover Moore was re-elected.
They are capital-F “Foodies”, and they are changing how we view food. Once, we had to rely on Terry Durack doing the rounds before we knew if a restaurant was worth a visit; nowadays, we can jump on any one of a thousand home-grown blogs to find out. This independent trend has also spilled over into kitchens worldwide, where DIY chefs cook everything from uber-extravagant five-star cuisine to traditional recipes made with a twist. These days it’s rare to be at a party and not meet at least one person who writes a food blog, and this has forced everyone else to raise their standards, creating a new social status of ‘foodie elite’. Dinner parties are now part social-mixer, and part display of talent; gone are the days of laying down some cheese and a stack of Jatz. Inviting friends over for dinner has become an opportunity to shop for exotic ingredients, dive deep into the cookbooks and behave like a MasterChef contestant, which leads us to the next point.
The MasterChef Effect
The rise of cooking competitions like MasterChef has turned next-door neighbors into suburban Wolfgang Puck’s overnight. Take Poh Ling Yeow from MasterChef Australia’s first season, for example. After being selected from over 7,000 applicants, Poh made it into the final round before losing out to winner Julie Goodwin. However, the loss didn’t hold Poh back, and she soon signed a deal with ABC to do a cooking series (Poh’s Kitchen) and publish cookbooks. Poh epitomizes the dream of being plucked from obscurity and becoming a much-loved celebrity, and her story inspires hundreds of thousands of amateur chefs around the country. The MasterChef Effect doesn’t stop there; MasterChef and similar shows like My Kitchen Rules are boosting revenues across the entire Australian food industry as people rush to buy greater quantities of exotic ingredients and dine out at the best new restaurants. In 2010 Coles supermarkets reported a 1400% spike in sales of ‘unusual’ ingredients, and restaurateurs, caterers, importers of gourmet ingredients, and cookbook publishers are all seeing the benefits of our fascination with food.
Is Cooking Becoming the New Business Card?
The rise of the celebrity chef and famous foodie has changed how Australians eat. While it has opened up our taste buds to a galaxy of new flavors and textures, it has also added an edge of competition around everything from the humble sandy to a 5-course meal. These days, keeping up-to-date about the finest ingredients, new restaurants, the best food blogs, and food fads has become a status symbol, almost like a business card. If we put too much pressure on having to keep up with the Joneses, then we may lose our love of food altogether, so it’s important to remember that no matter whether you’re shaving black truffles onto a confit of exotic mushrooms or lying back with a container of sweet & sour pork, the important thing is to enjoy it!