Sunday, November 21, 1999
Emeril is Elvis of food
Tristate fans see popular TV chef up close
BY CHUCK MARTIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ella Brennan, matriarch of venerable Commander's Palace in New Orleans, tells the story of how she hired the young man who would one day become America's most famous chef.
It was 1982, and she was faced with the unenviable task of replacing star chef Paul Prudhomme, who was leaving to open his own restaurant. Mrs. Brennan had already dismissed the unknown Emeril Lagasse based on his resume — he was too young, inexperienced and too much of a Yankee to cook in the Big Easy.
But the brash 26 year-old still finagled an interview over dinner at Commander's Palace.
“We hadn't sat there 20 or 30 minutes until my brother, Dick, got me away from the table with a phony phone call,” Mrs. Brennan says. “Then he told me: That's our guy. I said: I know.”
It was the Brennans' first brush with the magnetism, the essence, of Emeril Lagasse. More than a decade later, much of the rest of the country is charmed by the chef's passion and enthusiasm for food and cooking — watching him on the Food Network or Good Morning America, reading his cookbooks and dining at one of his six restaurants.
On tour last week to promote his fifth cookbook, Every Day's a Party (Morrow; $26), Mr. Lagasse broke attendance records at book signings in Indiana and Ohio. At a Barnes & Noble store in Indianapolis Monday, more than 2,500 shivered in line to meet their chef idol. He drew at least 2,500 fans Tuesday morning at Books & Co. in Kettering, Ohio, followed by almost 3,000 Tuesday night at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Norwood.
This is especially impressive considering Mr. Lagasse doesn't play professional sports, run for election or explore space. He cooks.
“My addiction to Emeril became serious about a year and a half ago,” says Wendy Dunn of North Avondale, while standing in line at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. “Now I watch his shows every night.”
She brought Mr. Lagasse a platter she made in her pottery studio, inscribed with “Pork Fat Rules!”
It's a favorite refrain from her favorite show.
Mr. Lagasse is huge in the food world — some will say bigger than TV kitchen grand dame Julia Child. The 43-year-old award-winning chef owns restaurants in New Orleans, Orlando and Las Vegas. He appears in weekly cooking segments on ABC's Good Morning America, but most know him as host of the wild and wacky Emeril Live — the Food Network's No. 1-rated show.
His blue-collar background, laid-back style and “anyone can do it 'cause it ain't rocket science” approach attracts viewers of all ages and skills.
“He makes cooking fun,” says 10 year-old Alex Miller of Madisonville, while waiting to meet Mr. Lagasse at Joseph-Beth.
The youngster says Mr. Lagasse has convinced him to start cooking at home. But many fans admit they don't cook at all — they tune in to watch Mr. Lagasse banter with his audience, fling spices across the stove and scream the now familiar “kick it up a notch” and “bam!”
For them, the show is better than anything on prime time TV.
Owns the crowd
The undeniable connection between Mr. Lagasse and his audience (who call him EM-ruhl) is apparent on television and in person. Monday afternoon at Barnes & Noble in Indianapolis, Mr. Lagasse — short and solid with wavy black hair and massive eyebrows — strides in surrounded by cheers and applause.
The crowd quickly falls hushed as a young boy in a wheelchair is pushed to the table where Mr. Lagasse will sign books. The boy cowers in shyness, hiding his face as he approaches his hero.
“I'm comin' over there to see you, OK?” Mr. Lagasse says.
He puts his arm around the boy and huddles to whisper, almost as if praying. Suddenly, Mr. Lagasse shouts “bam!” and the crowd erupts into laughter and more applause.
As Mr. Lagasse steps back, the boy reaches out to hug him — and more than a few of the hundreds watching wipe their eyes.
A dozen people — men and women in wheel chairs and on crutches, and one blind woman with a guide dog — visit with Mr. Lagasse for a few minutes at the table. Biblical allusions are unavoidable.
It's a touching, apparently spontaneous scene that few politicians or media personalities could pull off. But the man who cooks gumbo and pork chops on cable television does it with compelling sincerity. For the next five hours, he owns the throng waiting to see him.
Dianne Fortier of Indianapolis was the first to arrive for the book signing , having pulled into the shopping center parking lot at 8 a.m. After the store opened at 9 a.m., she held her place in line for seven hours.
“Emeril is just exciting and fun to watch,” Ms. Fortier says.
She bought all five of Mr. Lagasse's cookbooks to give to her husband (an even bigger Emeril fan) as a surprise 25th wedding anniversary gift.
Behind her, Nicole Ford and A.J. Polak of Indianapolis discuss the chef's appearance in People magazine's “Sexiest Man Alive” issue this month. “He has that twinkle in his eye,” Ms. Polak explains. “And there's something sexy about a man in the kitchen.”
Although those in the line winding through the store and out and down the street look to be about 60 percent women, the men waiting to see Mr. Lagasse are just as fervent.
“With him, cooking is not that feminine thing anymore,” says Hans Prosser of Indianapolis. “Now, cooking is a guy thing.”
Rosemary Boggs stands in line to have books signed for her 25 year-old son, Jonathan Spence, a truck driver in Seattle. “He's been a big Emeril fan for three or four years,” Ms. Boggs says. “It's made him a better cook. He used to call with questions about frying chicken. Now, he makes bread pudding with rum sauce.”
Inspired a career
The next day at Books & Co. in Kettering, the line reaches almost half-way around the Town & Country Shopping Center. Mike Brotz and his wife, Becky, of Williamsburg, Ind., rose at 2:45 a.m. and drove 50 miles, negotiating an accident on I-70, to secure their places at the head of the line at 7:30 a.m.
Some waiting fans, like 17 year-old Christy Hawley of New Paris, Ohio, credit Mr. Lagasse for inspiring them to pursue a cooking career. “It's been my life goal to meet Emeril,” says Ms. Hawley, a senior who skipped school to attend the book signing.
As the people — some wearing “Emeril” T-shirts and caps, some bearing cookies, stuffed animals and other offerings — slowly advance to the platform where he sits, they peer around shelves and stacks of books. His books.
He's so short, they whisper.
I think he's lost weight.
Women apply lipstick and adjust their hair, while men wipe sweaty palms on their pants.
Mr. Lagasse signs about 500 books an hour, but makes eye contact with, and greets, every person.
How ya doin'?
Hello honey, how are you?
Hey guy, what's goin' on?
If they offer a hand, he shakes it. If they hold up their arms, he hugs them. Quiet and less animated than on his show, he is convincingly personal — almost intimate — greeting his followers.
The exchange between idol and fan is consummated in seconds, but no one looks disappointed leaving. “He's definitely worth the wait,” says a smiling Kathy Rawlins of Dayton.
Emeril's story
She and most other fans can recite the History of Emeril. His father, John, is French-Canadian, and his mother, Hilda, is Portuguese. Growing up in Fall River, Mass., Mr. Lagasse started working at a bakery when he was 12. A talented drummer and percussionist, he turned down a music scholarship to attend Johnson & Wales (culinary) University in Providence, R.I.
After finishing college in 1978, Mr. Lagasse worked briefly in Philadelphia then apprenticed in Paris before returning home to serve stints at restaurants in New York, Boston, Maine and Cape Cod.
Snagging the executive chef's position at Commander's Palace was a tremendous break.
“When I first met him in 1983 at Commander's Palace, I saw sincerity, eagerness and a lot of energy,” says William Rice, then editor-in-chief of Food & Wine magazine and now food and wine columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
Mrs. Brennan knew when she hired the young chef he needed training in New Orleans cuisine.
“He worked like hell, we worked like hell, but it was a joyful experience,” she says.
Some also credit the Brennans for teaching Mr. Lagasse the delicate art of customer relations, which later helped the chef relate to viewers on the screen.
When he left Commander's in 1990 to open his first restaurant, Emeril's, in New Orleans, the Brennan family gave him its blessing.
In 1991, Food & Wine named him one of the top 25 new chefs in the country and the James Beard Foundation honored him as the best chef in the Southeast.
Geof Drummond, who produces the PBS series Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home, was first impressed with the young chef in 1992, while taping Julia Child's Cooking with Master Chefs in New Orleans. Mr. Lagasse related so well to Ms. Child and the camera during a show on boiling crawfish, Mr. Drummond made the Emeril Lagasse segment first to air in the PBS series.
“He had a different persona then,” Mr. Drummond says. “None of that boldness, but still a generosity of reaching out. Even then, he had something.”
His first cookbook, Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking (Morrow; $25), was released in 1993, but Mr. Lagasse was still relatively unknown outside New Orleans.
“He ate lunch at Pigall's while in Cincinnati on a book tour,” says Paul Sturkey, then chef at the downtown restaurant, and now owner of Sturkey's in Wyoming. “He sat in a corner by himself wearing a starched chef's coat, and no one knew who he was. I remember he was extremely humble and quiet, but at the same time ... serious and passionate about the book.”
As his reputation grew, Mr. Lagasse wrote more cookbooks and opened more restaurants. He had appeared on television in New Orleans for several years when the fledgling Food Network called in 1994 to ask him to host a pilot for a cooking basics show called How to Boil Water.
The show failed, but the network didn't give up on Mr. Lagasse. Later that year, he began hosting The Essence of Emeril, a traditional cooking program that soon won critical acclaim.
In 1997, ABC hired him to do weekly Good Morning America segments, and then a live cooking show he hosted on the Food Network inspired the revolutionary Emeril Live. Spiced with live blusey music, audience interaction and much yelling and screaming from Mr. Lagasse, the high-energy show has been a tremendous hit since.
This year, Mr. Lagasse signed a new five-year contract with the Food Network. But if this wild and glorious ride ends, he claims he'll just “go back and be the saute cook.”
Drawing criticism
Predictably perhaps, his popularity and success have drawn criticism from the food elite and some members of the media.
The biggest blow came last November, when New York Times food reporter Amanda Hesser wrote a story accusing Mr. Lagasse of being “more jester than cook.” After observing a taping of Emeril Live and testing his recipes, the reporter criticized the chef's cooking skills and “sloppy” presentation.
“I was really hurt when the article first came out,” Mr. Lagasse says. “But all my colleagues called ... and they told me it was just her opinion. I got over it.”
Mr. Lagasse made no changes to the show after the Times article ran. He sticks to the format and style of Emeril Live because he believes viewers are too sophisticated to tune in to traditional cooking shows.
Viewers need to be entertained and informed, he believes. “I mean, who wants to watch somebody pour stuff into bowls?” he says.
Most viewers can access recipes from his show via the Internet, Mr. Lagasse says. So he doesn't need to give them ingredient measurements while cooking — they'll get it from the show's Web site later.
But no one should doubt the chef's skills, says Anne Kearney, who worked at Emeril's in the early '90s, developed and tested recipes for his cookbooks and Essence of Emeril.
“He is very focused and intense in the kitchen,” says Ms. Kearney, a Kettering native who graduated from Cincinnati's Queen City Culinary Academy and now owns the acclaimed Peristyle restaurant in New Orleans. “That show is about fun. It's not about teaching people to cook.”
Mr. Drummond agrees and compares Mr. Lagasse's popular appeal to that of Julia Child. “I think his mission is to get people into the kitchen ..., ” he says. “I've heard people say: "Julia, you are the reason I am cooking today.' I think people have the same kind of connection with Emeril.”
Although she has withheld judgment on the show in the past, Ms. Child appeared on Emeril Live this fall. She sat, laughed and watched Mr. Lagasse cook, and later clowned with him while demonstrating the creation of her perfect hamburger.
“After the show at dinner that night, Julia paid me the best compliment,” Mr. Lagasse says. “She told me my show is a success because I'm cooking real food.”
A good listener
The woman who gave Mr. Lagasse perhaps his biggest career break describes his success more simply.
“He's a sponge,” Ella Brennan says. “Emeril soaks up information no matter where he is or what he does.”
Mr. Lagasse doesn't deny it.
“To be a good restaurateur, you have to be a good listener,” he says. “I've met thousands of people, and I've gotten some ideas for new shows. And I've gotten feedback on my restaurants.”
At Joseph-Beth Booksellers Tuesday night, he can finally see the end of the line of Mr. Lagasse has signed almost 10,000 cookbooks and appears weary. But he strokes the big “E” of his name with the same flourish on each book, and takes time to listen and talk, and to offer kids an Oreo cookie.
An almost teary young woman tells him that he inspired her to go to culinary school. He locks his brown eyes on her: “You do well, young lady.” She bites her lip and walks away.
“I've worked hard to get this far,” Mr. Lagasse says. “I remember when only 10 people would show up to these things.”
A woman in line a few feet away yells: “Hey, Emeril. Bet you didn't know you were this popular, did you?”
He laughs and signs another book.
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