The mere fact that chefs are headlining national touring shows that have more in common with vaudeville than anything in a professional kitchen says a lot about our bulging national obsession with chefs and food. This duo is booked for 11 cities into 2012, from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Austin, Texas.
"Chefs have been elevated to celebrity as they've become, in many ways, the new artists of our moment," says Bryant Simon, a Temple University history professor who studies American culture. "But this is where celebrity and art collide. We consume their personalities more than their art. More people know them from TV than the tastes they create, because so few of us can afford it."
As a pair, the chefs just might be the Smothers Brothers odd couple of chefdom - Ripert the silver-haired idol of French gastronomy who quotes the Dalai Lama on Twitter, Bourdain the brashly opinionated No Reservations TV host whose iconic tell-all book, Kitchen Confidential, launched his career as an irreverent food world personality 12 years ago.
Turns out they're great friends - Ripert introduced Bourdain to his current wife. And the chefs have promised a night of unscripted and "sometimes shocking" banter on everything from sustainability to fast food, least-favorite Food Network personalities (of which Bourdain has many), and Top Chef, on which Ripert has been a judge and on which his former 10 Arts chef de cuisine, Jen Carroll, was a memorable chef-testant.
"Clearly I'm not the 'good' one here," says Bourdain. "Eric's got a reputation to protect. And he's funny. But the bottom line is this: There's not going to be a giant blender and a T-shirt cannon, so we better provide some damn entertainment."
