667 Celebrity Cookware
By all accounts, Emeril Lagasse is an all around good guy. He's chubby and funny and very New Yorky when he goes on camera to show you how to cook some exotic dish or sell you a machine or vessel to make your kitchen life easier.
Since we have become (or maybe always were) a culture of celebrity worship, it's only natural that celebrity chefs (and Martha) should dominate the world of cookware. But it's tough to find a plain old pot or pan these days. And how much are we paying to see Emeril's or Wolfgang's or Joyce's or Martha's mug on the label?
--There's a hand made pasta shop around the corner. The stuff they sell is very down-home Italian but terribly inconsistent. But at its worst, it's still better than Ronzoni and similar. And, yes, it's even better than Barilla.
By all accounts, Emeril Lagasse is an all around good guy. He's chubby and funny and very New Yorky when he goes on camera to show you how to cook some exotic dish or sell you a machine or vessel to make your kitchen life easier.
Same thing with Wolfgang Puck. A jolly German-esque guy who brightens your tattered old recipe book or offers you a machine to make your kitchen life easier.
Both of these fellows are regulars on the shopping channels. Each has a bunch of restaurants. These are guys you like.
Then, there's Martha, who is not terribly nice, but also offers a line of kitchen tools and machinery, mostly through Macy's these days. But she got her start at K-Mart. (Yes, the elegant Martha started peddling her name brand wares at K-Mart.)
How about Joyce Chen. There are thousands of people who believe she invented the wok.
Since we have become (or maybe always were) a culture of celebrity worship, it's only natural that celebrity chefs (and Martha) should dominate the world of cookware. But it's tough to find a plain old pot or pan these days. And how much are we paying to see Emeril's or Wolfgang's or Joyce's or Martha's mug on the label?
And what's next in the merchandising pipeline? How about celebrity toilet seats. There are enough endorsers available. Since the celebrity cookware is the product of famed and supposedly excellent users of cookware, so should the toilet endorsers be famed and excellent users of toilets.
There would be great demand for a potty with the faces of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney below the water line. Tiger Woods' commercial comeback is right there waiting to happen. Bernard Kerick can use some extra bucks to pay off those legal bills. How about Prince Akio Toyoda? Or for the IRA crowd, Prince Charles? Osama Bin Laden wouldn't be a bad choice either. Plus, when sending the royalty payments, you'd at least know where to find him.
Shrapnel:
--When you're hungry and plan to eat out, you always land at a restaurant that serves tiny portions on big plates. When you're not all that hungry and plan to eat out, you usually land at a place that serves huge portions on relatively small plates. At least at the latter you can take unused stuff home and leave it in the fridge where it turns into something unidentifiable after you've left it there for awhile.
--There's a hand made pasta shop around the corner. The stuff they sell is very down-home Italian but terribly inconsistent. But at its worst, it's still better than Ronzoni and similar. And, yes, it's even better than Barilla.
--The big current trend in pasta is whole grain. No matter how well made, this stuff is awful. Pasta wasn't meant to be whole grain, is perfectly healthy and good in its original forms and if you don't overdo it, won't kill you.,
I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2010
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