Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Cooking Star [America, Get Ready To Meet Nate Lippy]

Posted Sep 16, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Sep 17, 2009 at 01:57 PM

About a year ago, I started hearing about a young chef named Nathan Lippy. I didn’t know much about him, but I was curious enough to find out more after I was invited in November to a night of cooking at a penthouse in the Skypoint tower in downtown Tampa.

I wasn’t sure why I was interested at first. He’d never run a restaurant and hadn’t written a cookbook - the traditional ways up-and-coming cooks get noticed. Here was a 28-year-old guy with some formal training and some cooking chops. He had a manager and a publicist who assured me that the “rock ‘n’ roll chef” was going to be big. I hear that on a fairly regular basis, but the worst that could happen was that I’d spend the evening taking in some choice views of downtown Tampa at sunset.

That night was somewhat of a coming-out party for Lippy, who cooked a series of tapas dishes for a group of about a dozen people. He was nervous; that was clear. But his food showed real promise and he seemed like a nice guy.

I kept tabs on him throughout the year through his publicist, Nancy Kipnis, and checked out his online home, where he starred in short cooking videos. Every now and then, I’d hear about a cooking demo he did or a video he was working on. It was interesting to watch his progress.

Here’s the first video I saw:

(For more of Lippy’s videos, click here.)

In June, Lippy and I had lunch at Jimbo’s Real Pit Bar B-Q in Tampa to talk about how he got to this point in his career from his childhood growing up in Brandon. I saw how the waitress responded to him almost immediately without knowing anything about him. He had this “it” thing that people loved and he knew how to work without coming off cheesy and smarmy.

This Sunday, a story I wrote on Lippy runs in the Getaway section. In it, I write about how he’s part of a new generation of cooks who are bypassing the traditional paths to food stardom in favor of connecting one-on-one with their fans through blogs, social media and video.

I also chatted with Michael Smith, senior vice president of marketing and creative services for Food Network. During a half-hour conversation, Smith walked me through the evolution of how the network has found and nurtured new talent, many of who are not classically trained the way people like Emeril Lagasse or Mario Batali were.

Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

* “The process of finding talent has evolved a lot because the kind of programming we make has changed. In the beginning, the network was catering to gourmet, foodie, food expert kind of people. They tended to want to see traditional restaurant chefs and people with food training or cookbook authors.”

___

* “In the mid to late ‘90s, most of the people on the network were either cookbook authors or restaurant chefs. One of the things we learned in doing market segmentation research was that there were other segments of the food market we weren’t hitting. We were getting the connoisseur or the gourmand type person, but there were a lot of people… we kind of call them ‘family feeders’ or ‘pressed-for-time moms’ – people who just have to get food on their table for kids seven days a week. The kind of people who were actually reading ‘Better Homes & Gardens” or ‘Redbook.’ Middle America.”

___

* “We found Rachael Ray in mid-2000. She had tapped into that vibe before we tapped into it. She had come up with this idea called ‘30-minute meals’ and she was teaching classes at a Wagman’s grocery store in Albany, N.Y., to moms.

“We learned about her through Al Roker, who was producing shows for the Food Network. He had seen her on a local news show and they had her on the “Today” show one morning. She started a change in direction for us away from the restaurant chefs and more to the accessible home cooks. I think the lesson then was if we’re going for ordinary home cooks, then it could be anyone. Not necessarily a cookbook author or a restaurant chef. It’s just anyone who’s a passionate home cook who is relatable to the everyday mom. Also as the profile of the network started to increase, people started coming to us, so we didn’t really have to search. Agents would come to us. People who produced shows for us would bring people to us. We got unsolicited tapes.

“People realized you didn’t have to be Emeril Lagasse to be on the network. That opened the gates to us getting contacted by a lot of different people.”

___

* “When the network began, you had to have a very high level of exepertise. That has gone down a little bit. You don’t have to have a super super expert. But you do have to have a passion for food and be very comfortable with it.”

___

* “The other thing we’ve learned: People watch the network now more for the entertainment value of it than they do for the information value. They’re not writing down recipes as much as they are having a good time. So, you have to be an entertainer and have a really engaging TV personality.

“To say anyone can do it… I think anyone who is entertaining and engaging can do it. It used to be you had to have super-high culinary chops. What separates the people we try out on-air versus those we reject is really that je ne sais quoi magical personality factor. Either they have it or not. Almost everyone who sends tapes in or is recommended to us through friends or production companies, they know how to cook or they’ve worked in restaurants or they like to cook a lot at home or maybe they’ve been a writer. Whatever it is. They all seem to have an expertise.

“But it’s rare to combine the food knowledge and the fact that they have a larger than life TV personality.”

___

* “Brian Boitano [star of the new series “What Would Brian Boitano Make?”] is someone who is passionate about food. He may not have been a food professional or his career, but he loves to entertain and cook and he has it as his hobby. And then he’s got this great personality. Really engaging guy.

“Jeff Corwin [host of “Extreme Cuisine with Jeff Corwin”] has a really good track record of being an engaging TV personality from all the stuff he’s done for Animal Planet over the years. Likewise, he’s always had a food interest. Beyond the animal thing, he always had a food thing and an interest in food history, so he wanted to do a show that showed a different aspect of himself.”

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* “The Neelys were found by Paula Deen’s company. Her sons Jamie and Bobby had a show called “Road Tasted” where they would go around to various restaurants, and they happened to go to Memphis to sample a BBQ restaurant and it happened to go to their restaurant. They were taping a sample with the Neely’s and they found them so personal that they said they should have their own show.

“Gordon Elliott, the producer who found Paula, shot a demo with them and sent it to us, and that was that.”

___

* Claire Robinson, who does “5 Ingredient Fix,” was discovered by Irene Wong, who used to produce Giada’s show. It was a friend-of-a-friend thing with someone who knew she was working at a cooking school and was really funny.

“I’m really excited about Claire, who I think is similar in many ways to Rachael Ray.... which is a comparison that is unfair to both of them. Claire has that personality and she jumps off the screen with a smile that is really infections. And she makes quick, easy meals that have five ingredients or less. We’re really excited about her for the future.”