Plotting to Shoot the Chef

Culinary producer Christopher Styler escorts you behind the often chaotic scenes of television cooking shows.

Chris Styler
Posted: February 18, 2009

When I graduated from Johnson & Wales University with a degree in culinary arts, my 19 year old self thought I would be taking a fairly straightforward path: 1) work in restaurants, 2) get very good at working in restaurants, and then 3) open a restaurant.

Early on in my career, I was sidetracked, enjoyably so, by a stint in the test kitchens of the nascent Food & Wine magazine, then under the direction of Food Arts' founding editors/publishers Michael and Ariane Batterberry. I learned how to put down on paper what was happening on the stovetop, in the mixing bowl, or under the broiler. It's a skill that has served me well over the years as an author, co-author, and collaborator working with chefs like Roberto Santibañez, Daisy Martinez, and Dave Lieberman. The two facets of my work life—wielding a chef's knife in commercial kitchens and a keyboard in my home office—were all I needed to keep me happy in my profession. Until I met Lidia.

Lidia Bastianich (Felidia and others) had already written one book (with Jay Jacobs), La Cucina di Lidia, when I set out to help her with her second, Lidia's Italian Table. By the time the book went to press, Lidia had inked a deal for her first television show, which shared a title with the book and was produced by Geoffrey Drummond and Nat Katzman of A La Carte Productions (www.alacartetv.com). I remember very clearly the conversation I had with Lidia as the show took its first steps toward becoming a reality. It went like this:

Lidia: "I would like you to be the culinary producer for the show."

Me: "Lidia, this is a very big deal, and I have no experience in TV—I think you should hire someone with experience."

Lidia: "No one I could hire knows my food as well as you do. You're the guy."

That was pretty much that, and I went on to serve as culinary producer for the first 91 of Lidia's shows. Along with all the other things I can thank Lidia for, giving me the push toward becoming a culinary producer tops the list.

In the high-budget high-pressure ordeal that is a cooking show shoot, the culinary producer is at the hub of a rapidly spinning wheel. The CP does more than ensure that all the food arrives on the set at the right time in its proper state of preparedness. In my experience, he or she helps shape the shows from the ground up, contributes knowledge of what makes a cohesive, interesting show, and points out procedures and ingredients that the director should be sure to capture on tape (or, more correctly nowadays, capture digitally).

Ideally, a culinary producer is familiar with the recipes being prepared on camera and the style of cooking of the host(s) preparing them. The smoothest shows I have worked on were those in which I was involved in writing the companion book. It's helpful if the recipes are tested and written before the shoot, but that's no guarantee of success. Neither is having all the raw ingredients, prepped ingredients, and "twins" called for in the script. It's merely a nice start. The true acid test for culinary producers is how quickly they can think on their feet. A thought may suddenly pop into the talent's head (or the producer's, or the director's), and how long it takes to follow through on that thought makes or breaks the rhythm of the show and the concentration of the host. As I tell every new kitchen crew I work with as I thumb through a binder filled with the scripts, notes, recipes, shopping lists, and prep lists for 26 shows, "It took me six weeks to put this together. Most of it will go out the window five minutes after the cameras start rolling."

The locations for the series I have worked on are as varied as the content of the shows. On the shoot for Daisy Cooks! (hosted by Daisy Martinez and airing on PBS), our "back kitchen" was spacious, featuring a row of stainless-steel work tables and a battery of professional cooking and refrigeration equipment. Our digs were so posh that the three of us in the culinary department took care of the two-show-a-day schedule with enough time left over to prepare lunch for nearly two dozen crew members and visitors and even send them home with doggie bags after we wrapped each day.

That was the exception. Usually the back kitchen is an improvised affair. For the Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home shoot, our back kitchen was Julia's laundry room, with one cutting board set atop the washer and another on the dryer, two 6-foot folding tables, and a tiny home range and refrigerator/freezer. (For that shoot, you could have relegated me to the driveway with a Styrofoam cooler for refrigeration and a cutting board balanced on both knees for prep space. The opportunity to have morning coffee with Julia Child before the rest of the crew showed up and to work one-on-one with Jacques Pépin far outweighed any creature comforts.) For the second season of Joanne Weir's Cooking Class, our kitchen was located a floor below the set (aka Weir's home), in the apartment of a group of 20 something guys. Taping 26 shows in 11 days meant I could dispense with the Stairmaster portion of my workout for a couple of weeks after.

Every shoot has its moments; some shoots are one long moment. Savor the Southwest, which was shot in Prescott, Arizona, featured Barbara Fenzl as host for the 13-show series and a different guest chef for each episode. While it made for a great series, working with a chef for only one episode made it difficult to fall into any kind of rhythm. That and the fact that the brother-sister team I hired as assistants showed up for the first two days and never again. (I can't really hold the siblings responsible, though; it's hard to make it to work when you're incarcerated, as they reportedly were.) My HQ on that shoot, a corner of a garage in the house which served as location for the shoot, was thoughtfully enclosed with a double thickness of floor-to-ceiling duvetyn—partly to afford me some measure of privacy and concentration but, largely, I think, to keep my rapidly fraying nerves from scaring off the guest chefs. Without A La Carte's steadfast crew, Fenzl's support, and the several chefs who arrived with a prep crew or even fully prepped food in tow, I may well have been a goner.

Even when the kitchen is real, events can be surreal. One of my earliest stints as CP came during the first season of America's Test Kitchen. One episode dealt with cooking poultry and called for 41 chickens and turkeys in various stages of brining and roasting as well as finished examples of different roasting methods. Each bird needed to make its appearance on the set at a specific time. It's impossible to fake the look of a chicken right out of the oven—like a new car driven off the lot, a roasted chicken loses value the minute it comes out. On a huge whiteboard stationed outside the kitchen window, I kept track of when to put in and take out of the oven these three dozen-plus birds. Next to each bird was a notecard indicating the time it was due on the set. The tricky part was that those times changed as the taping of the show progressed, with some segments taking longer than expected and others taking less. It was one person's responsibility to stand next to the board with an eraser and a marker and, for four and a half hours, slide the times up or down, based on what was happening on the set. To this day, when I walk into my sister's house on Thanksgiving and smell the turkey roasting, I have a nagging feeling that there are another 40 birds somewhere that need tending to.

I love culinary production because of these challenges, not in spite of them, mainly because it reminds me of my days in restaurant kitchens. Working with different lighting, sound, and camera crews is similar to working with members of a kitchen crew who come together over time to make a sum that is greater than its parts. (That was never more true than on those shoots with a crew under the leadership of the late Dean Gaskill. Gaskill was as fine a director of photography as there is ever likely to be and an even more remarkable human being.) And there is, every day of a shoot, that feeling of working in a busy restaurant at peak rush—that feeling of drawing on all your skills to stay on top of things and not slip into the weeds. And just as in a restaurant kitchen, everyone on a television shoot comes with a story. If you keep your ears and mind open, you can learn a lot during a shoot—some of which actually has to do with television.

How can you wiggle in? Aside from the obvious venues—cable and broadcast channels—there are other means to get your foot in the door in the field of culinary production. If your local television station is on the smaller side and does regular cooking features, it's unlikely to have someone on staff who handles the cooking segments. Volunteer (at first) to work as liaison between a segment producer and whichever chefs/authors have been booked. Help plan the segment, do the shopping and prep, and be present at the station for both the run-through and segment itself. Contact local production companies who may have done cooking shows to see if there's an opportunity there. Lastly, don't overlook new media possibilities, especially the growing area of Web casts.

Besides the challenges and rewards inherent in this kind of kitchen work, you never know where it will lead. As she is fond of relating, I hired Daisy Martinez to work (on season two of Lidia's Italian Table) from a notice posted on the bulletin board of New York City's French Culinary Institute. It was during that shoot that Daisy, like Lana Turner at Schwab's Drug Store in Hollywood, was discovered.

TV: How to shine in four minutes

When asked to demo a dish on television, it's a good idea to act as your own culinary producer. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Most likely, you are appearing on television because you have something to promote, not because the station's viewers have been writing frantically that they'd like to learn how to clean a leek. Keep what you are promoting (new book, new restaurant, new alliance with local farmers, or whatever) in mind when choosing a dish to demonstrate.

Let the message you deliver flow naturally from the dish you are demonstrating.
Keep it absurdly simple and focus on getting your message across rather than on getting your chiffonade perfect.
Before the cameras start rolling, prepare a stunning plated version of your dish (this is called the "hero shot"). It used to be that television hosts were fairly hands-off during cooking segments. Now they are encouraged to help with the prep, stick a spoon into something to taste, ask a slew of questions, and so on. If, with all that "help," you don't get to the end of your dish in 4 1/2 minutes, you will at least have your pre-made hero to show off.
Run through the dish several times prior to your segment, using the actual ingredients and equipment you will be using. Resist the urge to feel self-conscious and talk through it, making sure you have the main points covered and don't lose track of your message points. Keep a timer running for good measure—five minutes feels like 20 seconds when the cameras are rolling. Several bigger and/or national shows—the Today Show among them—require a rehearsal the day before. With a few run-throughs under your belt, you'll show up looking like a pro.
Send a note or e-mail—the same day your segment was shot—to thank the segment producer or whoever it was that booked you, organized your spot, and helped with the logistics.
Realize up front that most people will not re-create the dish you are preparing on television nor will they most likely remember what it is the next day. Don't take it personally—it's just the way it is. But people do appreciate tidbits of information that they can use in their everyday kitchens. "Oh, you like the pasta? The chef from Chez Nico, who was on Morning in Memphis the other day, mentioned that a little juice from a jar of olives is a quick way to perk up any tomato sauce."
If you find yourself in front of a camera or a radio microphone on a regular basis, or if you land yourself a spokesperson gig, you may want to consider formal media training. Speaking from experience, it is a worthwhile investment in the future. Here are three of the nation's top media training firms: YC Media Contact: Kimberly Yorio (kim@ycmedia.com; 212-609-5009); The Lisa Ekus Group Contact: Lisa Ekus-Saffer (Lisaekus@Lisaekus.com; 413-247-9325); Culinary Communication 101 Contact: Steve Dolinsky (steve@stevedolinsky.com; 773-552-1377).

CULINARY PRODUCTION: Two cardinal rules

There are two rules that are posted on the refrigerator door during every one of my shoots. The first I call the "Jacques Rule," as it was developed during my stint on Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home. I learned it the hard way, by unwittingly breaking it. The second is simple common sense.

1) Always keep on hand some of every ingredient in its unprepped, uncooked, untampered-with state. Never shell all the shrimp, string all the snow peas, or bone all the chickens. You can never anticipate what the host will want to do during a scene. If it isn't in the script, it will most likely end up on camera. If you do string all the snow peas and the host decides to demo that technique, I will guarantee you that every supermarket, greengrocer, or produce stand in a 20 mile radius of the location will sell nothing but prestrung snow peas. It's one of the fixed laws of the universe.

2) Never dump anything used in any segment of the show before the director wraps the entire show. You may be done with a segment, but not until the show is wrapped are you in the clear. Technical difficulties or bumpy spots on the talent's part may not rear their head until well after a scene has been shot. It's better to face these situations with the backup prep you so wisely prepared than another trip to the supermarket.