DFW celeb chefs seek the recipe for success

Tiffany Derry remembers exactly where she was when she got the call. So does Tre Wilcox.

Sweating away in their respective kitchens, the talented executive cooks were both searing steaks and painting sauces onto plates in virtual obscurity. But when Hollywood finally came calling, they were more than ready to vault into the ranks of America's young, charismatic celebri-chefs.

In fact, they had been constructing this moment, like a delicate soufflé, for years.

Because in today's "Top Chef" universe, success is not measured merely by the number of four-star kitchens you have cooked in or culinary-school degrees that hang on your wall. And you don't just stand around with a whisk in your hand, waiting to be discovered.

Success boils down to a few key ingredients: Talent, personality and sheer determination to be a star.

Wilcox and Derry are just two of North Texas' ambitious TV chefs who regularly turn up on food-competition and reality shows on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, Bravo or Oxygen. Casey Thompson (Brownstone), Catherine Ruehle (Sublime Bakery) and Blythe Beck (Central 214) are also among the area's growing roster of cooking all-stars whose faces are almost as recognizable as their food.

No local chef wears her desire to become a ready-for-prime-time food star more unabashedly than Fort Worth's Ruehle. "I started out with a three-year plan of being on the Food Network, and I did it." She's appeared on four Food Network Challenges, plus Style Network's Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? and WE's My Fair Wedding.

"So, yes," she says, "along the way I would agree that I have been courting a certain level of celebrity."

That included hiring a PR-marketing specialist, who helped generate local coverage of Ruehle's amazing cakes, plus a media kit with head shots and a video reel. Next up: appearances on local morning shows; some telegenic baking for a MidFirst Bank commercial; and eventually pitches to key casting directors at the Food Network. All the while, Ruehle built her fan base on the Internet, and through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (3,000 friends, including Yoko Ono, follow her).

It also doesn't hurt that Ruehle is always camera-ready for a close-up.

"Today, it just doesn't seem enough to be a good chef," says Karine Bakhoum, founder of KB Network News, one of the country's largest PR-consulting firms specializing in the luxury-hospitality field. "You need to be a whole branding package, which means you have to be good looking and have a dynamic personality and be well-spoken, even outrageous, all so that one can capitalize on all the media out there, especially television."

So today's top chefs must know their way around a sound bite as well as a kitchen. And they're just as likely to have an entourage of publicists, literary and television agents, business managers, hair and makeup stylists and wardrobe consultants as they are amazing recipes in their chef's coat pocket. How else do you become the next face of Viking ranges and Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil?

There are pitfalls along the way to grasping celebrity's brass ring, to be sure.

"It's that distracting shiny medal," says Dallas chef Stephan Pyles, one of the original public television chef darlings with his program, New Tastes From Texas. "Certain young kids are getting involved just for the celebrity and the moneymaking endorsements they seek -- rather similar to someone going off to Hollywood to make millions as a star. There are a lot more actors out there than movie stars, and the same can be said for chefs."

But the notion of becoming America's next culinary rock star is hard to resist.

"I have to admit it: I do like being on camera," says Wilcox, 34, who grew up in nearby Duncanville and created consistently dazzling fare at Dallas' celebrated restaurant Abacus. But it wasn't until he appeared on Season 3 of Bravo's Top Chef, and later Top Chef All-Stars, that he fully realized his special ability to sell his cooking chops on television. "How America takes you on a show like Top Chef becomes such a powerful branding tool," he says. "That level of near celebritydom makes people, many of them viewers of you on the show, want to eat at your restaurant and buy your cookbook."

Derry, who grew up in Beaumont but seemed perfectly at home on the set of Season 7's Top Chef and now All-Stars, is even more direct.

"I know that just being in a restaurant is not necessarily all there is for me," says Derry, who on Wednesday to head to the Bahamas in the waning episodes of Bravo's current season of Top Chef: All Stars. "National status has grown really important. I've got to stay out there and active, on Facebook, posting pictures, Tweeting.... I need to continue to do those things in order to maintain that high level of visibility."

Power of television

Not every young and promising local chef has embraced the pursuit of multimedia stardom. Arriving in Dallas-Fort Worth five years ago, 29-year-old Matt McCallister started out as a humble salad-line cook at Pyles' flagship restaurant. Three years later, he had risen to executive chef. Instead of appearing on any number of cooking shows, McCallister, in March, begins a series of internships as a line cook in some of the country's most elite kitchens, including Chicago's Alinea, McCrady's in Charleston, S.C., and The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

"I've always had the greatest respect for the artist who managed to keep the focus on their art itself, rather than indulging in the cult of personality," McCallister says via e-mail. "You don't have to look far to find potentially great artists who have self-destructed because they lacked the discipline to keep the focus on their craft, rather than on themselves.... For myself, I need to minimize the 'celebritization' and maximize my effort to learn my craft."

Julian Barsotti, executive chef at Nonna, one of Dallas' most highly touted Italian restaurants, echoes many of McCallister's sentiments.

"I do think some people are seeking the profession of cooking based solely off of what kind of media exposure they can get," says Barsotti, 30, whose restaurant lacks any Facebook presence. "For many of these celebrity chefs, it does seem to be about getting their 10 minutes of fame. If I were asked to go on [the Food Network's] Chopped or any of those other competition shows out there, I absolutely would not do it. It's not the avenue in which I want to reach people."

Veteran North Texas chefs such as Pyles, Tim Love, Dean Fearing and Grady Spears all have appeared on local and national television shows since the mid-1990s. But these days, when Americans spend more time watching cooking shows than they do actually cooking, they agree that a chef's potential exposure is ratcheted way up.

"Oh, I know what these new chefs are feeling today," says Fearing. "Because the starmaking power of television is simply amazing."

And though he never aggressively pursued any kind of celebrity status, Spears, one of the original chefs at Fort Worth's Reata and now the owner of Grady's and Clear Fork Station in Weatherford, has spent a considerable part of the last 15 years publishing cookbooks and spreading his cowboy cuisine mantra on shows from Good Morning America and the Today show to even Donny and Marie. Spears will soon co-host, with Louis Lambert, a PBS show, Big Ranch, Big City.

"There is no doubt our industry has become incredibly media driven in the last 10 years," Spears says. "My goal in doing all that television and getting all that notice, was never, ever to be famous. I've just always wanted to run and operate a good restaurant."

Love -- of Fort Worth's Lonesome Dove, Love Shack, Tim Love Catering, along with his Tim Love Collection of sauces, spice-rubs and cookware -- has done the entire gamut of celebrity-making television appearances, from the local morning programs, to Iron Chef and Top Chef Masters. But he is wary of the persistent lure of television, especially the reality-show competitions.

"With shows like Chopped, you risk bringing in people who are not the highest caliber of cooks," says Love. "If you are seeking celebrity status, then choosing the food world is the wrong way to go. As far as I'm concerned, the goal is not to get on television but to keep butts in your restaurants' seats."

Fearing doesn't believe that a chef who wants to actively supervise a kitchen, let alone a namesake restaurant, can accomplish that while also chasing celebrity.

"Trust me, it takes so much time to do television, you simply can't stay in your restaurant," says Fearing. "I remember going back and forth between doing my Entertaining at Home show and tending to the restaurant, and it just about killed me."

To its credit, the new generation of celebri-chefs is aware of these traps.

Ruehle, who is scheduled to appear on her fifth Food Network Challenge at the end of March, says every time she is cast on a Challenge, she must leave Sublime for a Denver set for at least a week. "To step away from my business, that often is definitely a big undertaking," she says. "And all this television exposure could definitely get me to grow, grow, grow. But it could also spin out of control."

Wilcox warns that any chef whose entire culinary reputation is based on a television persona is "stuck."

"They may never get back to being in their own restaurant again," he says. "So they have to be on television to remain popular. Suddenly, it's all that defines you."

Adds Karine Bakhoum, a national restaurant and chef consultant: "In today's world, with social networking and on television, any chef can be a star for 15 minutes, but the proof will always be in the pudding of going to the chef's restaurant and seeing how good their food really is."

A fine blend of both

But today's new breed of chef believes they can have it all -- a veritable gumbo of marquee restaurants, signature foods on grocery shelves and TV stardom -- maybe even a cooking show on Oprah's new network.

"I really want to be surrounded by the enthusiasm of a live audience and have them interact with what I'm doing," says the 28-year-old Derry, who made her name locally as executive chef at Dallas' upscale Go Fish Ocean Club eatery, which closed last November. "It would be great to bring that sort of show to the Oprah Winfrey Network because I could bring a younger aspect to their audience."

Derry recently signed with Baltz & Co., one of the nation's most prestigious public relations and career-marketing firms, whose clients include A-list New York chefs Masaharu Morimoto, Marcus Samuelsson and Fort Worth's Love. She is getting ready to co-open her first Dallas restaurant, Private Social, sometime in August. But she also can't wait to find her next television vehicle.

"I knew all the time while I was cooking at Go Fish that I really also wanted my own cooking show," she says. "I love being on the line in a restaurant, and I love being on television, so I want both of them to make my career a success."

Wilcox hopes to parlay his Top Chef exposure to a boffo launch, in the next two months, of Marquee Grill in Highland Park Village. The Grill, his first eatery, will feature elegant Texas cuisine.

But Wilcox won't be settling in too long either. "After I run the kitchen at Marquee for about a year or so," he says. " I really want a shot at Iron Chef America."

Ruehle hopes to be cast on as many as four more Challenge episodes this year. Food Network Magazine recently published a feature on her baking prowess. She has also signed with FinePrint Literary Management, a prestigious literary agency in New York, which has just begun shopping her cookbook proposal to publishers. There are even murmurs of Ruehle hosting her own Food Network show based on the cookbook.

"I seem to be a good fit for food television," says Ruehle, "Mostly because I always come to win, to have fun and I know how to play along with the show's producers, to help them make the show happen. I like the camera, and the camera seems to like me back. I honestly love the process of being on television so much -- I could easily see doing it every day."

Social media, meanwhile, has broken down the resistance of even the most skeptical of longtime North Texas chefs. Fearing has a personal and restaurant presence on Facebook, and he is considering a couple of television projects. Pyles has close to 5,000 friends on three Facebook pages, and he recently Tweeted from a molecular gastronomy conference in Madrid.

"Even I have to admit there is now room today, because of such a growing audience for food, for a chef to become famous by being charismatic, telegenic, articulate and entertaining -- having more of those qualities than pure cooking talent," says Pyles. "Whether one likes it or not, we have to make room for that kind of chef in this market."