Are chefs the new rock stars?
I want to first warn you that this is written from the perspective of a recovering anorexic so maybe I’m more inclined to be attracted to chefs than the average person. However, I do feel I can say objectively that chefs have found themselves at the centre of society’s current fixations. You only need to look at the success of the Disney series ‘The Bear’ to understand how extreme this obsession really is. From one perspective this could be sourced from the glamour around those restaurants who’s booking system gives Glastonbury a run for its money. Or maybe it’s the rise of ‘social media chefs’ whose popularity is based more on the shirtless nature of their videos than the food itself. Yet somehow, I’m left unfulfilled by either explanation.
So, what is it about the chef that’s so alluring? Is it the food or the apron? Coming from someone who once dated a chef, I’d say it’s both.
Food is basically foreplay. It’s one of the many pleasures you might experience in the run up to sex. There’s a reason why the classic date is known as ‘dinner and a movie’. From this we can deduce quite simply how a chef invokes an almost instinctive sexual attraction. Then there’s the apron, and everything that goes with it. Like Carmen from ‘The Bear’, the chef I was seeing was tattooed, unconventionally attractive, and addicted to any substance that wouldn’t prohibit his cooking abilities. I found this fascinating. He provided the ‘bad boy’ I was told I needed to experience before finding the man I would finally ‘settle down with’.
Besides the fact that he was a chef at the hip new restaurant that just opened up on my road I knew absolutely nothing about this boy. Our relationship was solely nocturnal. I’d swing by the restaurant around 9pm, he’d give my friends and me free wine and dessert, and we’d sit waiting for the restaurant to close looking down at the paying customers who clearly longed to be a part of our fun. If the chefs were the rock stars, we were the groupies, and we loved it. The restaurant was perfectly designed to feed into this fantasy. Chefs were lined up behind the counter so customers could watch their performance. They were given a stage which reconstructed the basic principles of any restaurant I’d known before. Their visibility and elevation eliminated the all-important status of the customer, reducing them to an admiring audience. And like all concert halls, there was a backstage. Being allowed backstage was like being given access to the most exclusive club in London, except the booze and drugs were always free (surprisingly there was always very little food).
By the time the restaurant closed we would already be plastered; and so began the routine that was that summer. We’d party endlessly into the early mornings, feeling like something out of ‘Almost Famous’. Their whole world was mesmerising; they functioned on a different time-zone and spoke a different language. I remember waking up one morning in his bed, he was ordering bread and anchovies for the restaurant at a scale that, although I can’t exactly recall, was defiantly large enough to almost induce a complete panic attack in my anorexic brain.
But this infatuation goes deeper than just a love for partying. Chefs capture our attention much in the same way as a musician. Both achieve something that we as the audience are not only in awe of but are also a part of. Whether it’s a crab tagliatelle or a guitar solo, chefs and musicians hold a rare capacity to create something that captivates and controls our senses, and, when done successfully, can place the performer at the forefront of our desires. The world that chefs and musicians inhabit is just far enough out of reach that it pulls us in, but it’s their talent that makes them so undeniably attractive.
So, have chefs truly replaced the rock star, and if so, why? I’m not saying musicians are no longer sexy, I’d take Harry Styles over Julius Roberts in a heartbeat. However, what I can say is that in a world where those in the public eye share the all-encompassing fear of being ‘cancelled’, musicians have become far more inclined to stick to the right side of ‘politically correct’. In doing so, musicians have given chefs permission to steal their ‘bad boy’ status and with it their hordes of fans just dying to get a glimpse of their rebellious antics.
Now a bit of advice for anyone on the verge of dating a chef. Ask yourself, how do you feel when the aprons off. If there’s a slight disappointment, don’t worry your not alone. This just means you’ve fallen for the rock star lifestyle of ‘sex, drugs, and flat breads’.
Esme Gordon-Craig