Celebrity chefs

[bellinibobble]

Oh my god, this is the thread for me. My other half and I absolutely love joking about celebrity chefs when they’re on tv. I was actually thinking of starting this same thread I have no gossip but many comments.

I love to hate Jamie O, some of his recipes are my go tos, but he pisses me off so much. It’s probably because his recipes require every piece of equipment in your kitchen and so it takes forever to wash up. The constant ‘wazzy wazzy woo woo’. Or the bad service you always seemed to get in Jamie’s Italian restaurants. Or when he came to Rotherham on his turkey twizzler crusade Gennaro on the other hand.. adore him.

Nigella is an icon. No debates. Absolutely love her shows when it shows her raiding the fridge at 1am in a silky nightie.

Nigel Slater’s Wikipedia page is an eye opener. He’s so pompous, cracks me up when he posts on twitter about the foxes in his garden or something though. I always read his tweets to my other half and say guess who - he nails it every time. His ‘simple suppers’ are absolutely ridiculous, but we watch him anyway.

Rick Stein and his gingham M&S shirts, god love him. He really is Alan Partridge come to life but his long weekend shows are classic, love his unPC comments, always going on about “the Greeks” and “the French”. We got engaged in one of the cities he went to, so we went to the restaurant he visited to celebrate and it was fantastic - so we owe him. Glad to hear he’s a nice person in real life. His son looks like a total dick though.

Did anyone watch Gordon, Gino and Fred? Loved that show. Gino is hilarious, and one of his recipes is my favourite ever pasta dish.

Delia. What a queen. She makes Mary Berry and her terrifying fingers look common as muck

Gregg Wallace.. sigh. He’s such a goon on Masterchef. His factory shows and the shopping ones are just not as good compared to his pure comedy value on MC. #ButteryBiscuitBase John Torode is irrelevant. Thanks for the ‘John the Toad’ comments. I’m stealing them

Thoughts on Hairy Bikers? If you’ve not tried their sausage casserole, you’ve not lived their Baltic tv show was great and they’re actually likeable chefs. I’d be gutted if they turned out to be awful people.

The absolute god tier of celebrity chefs however has to be Miss Ina
She was the first ever TV cooking show I watched religiously. I love her and Jeffrey’s relationship, you can tell they absolutely adore each other and that’s so cute. Her house in the Hamptons is to die for. I love how she cracks eggs and throws the shells in the sink, no doubt for some minion to clean up after her. When she gets her gay friends round to do floral arrangements to match the ‘casual’ linen napkins you know it’s gonna be a good episode. Every recipe has soooo much booze and about ten sticks of butter She is my fancy bitch role model, when she says ‘store bought is fine’ you know it’s not really fine, and I always buy in the GOOD VANILLA for baking. Her lockdown content has been perfection and she has so many celebrity friends. If I could have dinner cooked for me by any celebrity chef, it would be her. I would be in awe

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to get this off my chest

 

[April Ludgate]

One of the Secret Celeb Gossip threads has lots about Jamie Oliver and his alleged serial cheating, can't remember which number it is.

I went to Rick Stein's cookery school in 2018 and loved it. Expensive, but if you have decent kitchen skills it's so worth going. The staff all have lovely things to say about him and his ex wife Jill, who has a lot to do with the shop, school and restaurant in Padstow. They do not like the son Jack though. Apparently he's arrogant, not a particularly good chef and when he's filming he leaves the kitchen in a terrible state and expects the cookery school chefs to clean it up the next day.
I met Rick Stein and Tom Kerridge at Pub in the Park last year- can highly recommend it. The food was incredible. They were both really friendly, happy to talk to everyone and have pictures taken. Rick Stein bought me a gin and tonic!

I also have a friend who was on the production team for one of James Martin's programmes in the early 2000s. She said he was a total bellend. Apparently they filmed one show next to a marina/dock and he turned up on a jet ski....

 

[TeaLover49]

My sort of thread.
I miss cooking (as I'm in a care home), but my late husband was a wonderful cook and I have a huge notebook, full of 25 years of recipes, of his. My daughter now has book and (bless her) tries her hardest to make a good meal to bring for me.
Favourite chefs/cooks;Keith Floyd, Hairy Bikers, James Martin, Rick Stein. I cannot stand Mary Berry (too twee for me) or Nigella.
I seem to watch the Food Channel all the time and can imagine what everything tastes like.
Anyone here watch Diners, Drive-ins and Dives with Guy Fieri? There was some tea about him but not sure if true or not. But I still watch the show because its interesting to see other chefs cook.

 

[April Ludgate]

This is my new favorite thread!! I am obsessed with watching Marcus Wareing pull faces at the contestants on masterchef the professionals he comes across like the biggest bellend ever. Love Monica Galetti though I watched her in a show about hotels and she seemed lovely. I’ve met MPW and he is really nice and funny!

She is nice. Her restaurant is round the corner from my work, so I see her all the time.
Yottam Ottolenghi is also a very nice man. At my previous job I worked in an office that was under some railway arches. He had the two that were next to ours. They used one for all the deli style foods he has on his website, and the other was his test kitchen. He used to bring us things to try all the time and ask us our opinions. One Christmas, he catered our staff party for free and gave us each a little parcel of food. Delicious spiced nuts, a mini Christmas cake and passionfruit jam. Really lovely!

 

[April Ludgate]

Thinking about it, I haven't ever seen a woman chef work for him. Sounds like you know more, care to share...?


He is arrogant I think, though have no direct, or indirect experience. Him and Gregg Wallace, the greengrocer, can both get in the bin as far as I'm concerned.

Gregg Wallace is my number one most hated person on tv. Followed closely by Stacey Dooley. I cannot stand the way he talks and his inane comments about food, which he clearly knows nothing about.

 

[SmeatonsStar]

Ooh, my new favourite thread! I worked in PR in the tv chef / cook world a little while ago between jobs and so got to see how they are off camera to an extent. The ones that spring to mind are

Nigel Slater - totally eccentric but charming

Matt Tebbut - lovely but all over the shop

Gregg Wallace - vile, so, so vile

Gordon Ramsey - switches his personality on in front on the camera - a total charmer off screen

Nadia Hussain - incredibly stand-offish and the only person whose food I’ve seen be rejected by the crew. Needed so much input from the food technologists but then ignored their advice!

Ruby Tandoh - Rude to ‘the staff’

James Martin - seems quite laddish but had all the time in the world for the crew and others

Paul Hollywood -

Marcus Wareing - Thinks he’s the king, definite misogynistic vibes from him

Phil Vickery - very giggly in an odd way

Angela Hartnett - The best - everyone wanted to be her new best friend!

 

[DigiDuino]

I was briefly a runner on a Scottish show that had cooking guests occasionally, met a few I didn't know/aren't really famous.

The big one was Gordon Ramsey (5 years ago or so now!), he was genuinely lovely! Sat talking to everyone for ages, while the show was filming I was sent out to get everyone water and he was sat outside waiting to get mic'd up and ready and we ended up having a lovely conversation.

At the end of the evening I was waiting on my taxi outside the studio and he stopped to check I was sorted before he left himself. Total gent the entire evening!

 

[Lalalalaaaaaa85]

I matched on Tinder with Stein’s son Charlie years ago. We chatted on and off but never ended up meeting up and then I met my boyfriend so shut all my dating stuff down. That’s all I have to bring to the table here I’ll go back to lurking

 

[265]

Be affraid! Be VERY affraid!

 

[FreakyFriday]

Glynn Purnell has a cheesy knob Not my experience, a friend's.

 

[Shady Pines Ma]

I only have 2 experiences but both super positive.

1) Was lucky enough to go for a business lunch and Murano - Angela Hartnett's flagship. The food was AMAZING and we were wondering if Angela herself was in. We started hearing lots of laughter coming from the kitchen and one voice was definitely her. She then comes out onto the restaurant floor clearly in a fab mood and starts talking to all the diners and larking about. She took a picture with most and even gave my boss's bald head a rub! She was ACE.

2) Went to a Nigel Slater book signing at Leadenhall Market (which is next to my work) as my mum LOVES him and it was part of her Christmas present . I know it was a public event but my God he could not have been ANY sweeter. He appeared actually quite shy (and was kinda scruffy - sorry Nigel!) but he had a huge queue and took time for everyone. He was even answering gardening questions and taking pics and seemed genuinely thrilled that people were interested in his work. The Waterstones people were trying to hurry it along and he told them he was happy to run-over. He was exactly how I hoped he'd be!

Also someone I worked with told the tale of having what was essentially a lock-in after service at Le Gavroche and Michel Roux Jnr sounds a riot!

 

[Abr1010]

I did a private cookery day with the late great Gary Rhodes about 13 years ago.
He was BRILLIANT - lovely lovely guy.

 

[LucyLastic]

I had a cookery day and dinner with James Martin a couple of years ago - I loved every minute. I didn't think he was arrogant at all, he was just like he is on the TV, big, blokey, affable and easy company. His food wasn't bad, either. There were about ten of us there, and we all had a great time, learned a lot and came away with some really great memories.

 

[Gingercream]

Ahh I love Ina Garten! She’s the cooking equivalent of a warm hug

 

[Ponponpon]

Doesnt Gordon Ramsey allegedly have a thing for drag queens, or did I imagine that?

Personally, I haven't heard that one. I heard he's rather rough with prostitutes mind.

 

[Bagpuss20]

My husband recently confessed that until a few months ago he though john Torode was actually called Jonty Road.
Gregg is known as that jumped up greengrocer in our house.

 

[petitspois]

I completely agree Gregg Wallace should be put in the bin. Why he needs to shout at everyone the whole time kills me

 

[Pinkblush]

Could watch nigel slater all day. Very down to earth and unassuming. No ego or show boating.

I also like hairy bikers recipes and their style if delivery/presenting in terms of cooking advice and recipes.

Met gary rhodes many many years ago and he was really nice. I mentioned being rubbish at a particular dish and he asked for my email address and sent me a detailed step by step recipe. And it worked!!

 

[Gingercream]

Tom Kerridge: Female chefs don't have 'fire' to make it to top level -

"They are out there; it’s just whether it’s the industry for them. I’m not sure, at that level," the BBC chef said at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

www.independent.co.uk

So he likes women in the kitchen to look at and to banter with but doesn’t think they make good chefs

 

[depository]

We used to holiday in Cornwall years ago. My dad has met Rick Stein a fair few times and has always said lovely things about him.

I always think Simon Rimmer comes across as a decent guy. Just a hunch though, I don't know anyone who can confirm.

Simon Rimmer seems to think he invented pulled pork. Surely that can't be right