“Alton Brown worked in television until about the same age, foresaw the potential for food television programming and enrolled at the New England Culinary Institute in 1994. He created and sold his show Good Eats to the Food Network in 1999 and has become one of the most popular personalities on the network, hosting a variety of shows and documentaries and writing several excellent books on food and cooking.” — The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America by Michael Ruhlman
I’ve been reading “The Making of a Chef” while going through a bout of chickenpox (old school, I know). I’m on the better end of things where the scabs are falling off.
In the middle, though, I watched FX’s The Bear for my sick-day binge. One of the characters went to CIA (Culinary Institute of America). It’s a line or two in the show — Michael Ruhlman wrote a book or two about what it’s like to go through CIA.
In The Bear, Sydney (the character who went to CIA) has worked in top kitchens and has the foresight to see that she doesn’t want to do that for the rest of her life. She tries to open a catering business and her path eventually leads to applying to the sandwich shop in The Bear.
Alton Brown was able to see how media and food would mix in the future and took the long view of it and is still on the Food Network today as a result.
If you saw how websites and food would mix, you might be able to pay for your 3-star Michelin meal with the revenue from your recipe site with a bajillion ads before the ingredients.
If you saw how social media and food would mix, you might not need to pay for that fancy meal yourself at all. It’d be comped along with the lay-down first class flight there.
Just make sure to get that Boomerang!