Top 5 Coolest Celebrity Chefs Ever!
April 3rd, 2012
Celebrity chefs are a distinctive breed. And, let’s be honest, many are not cool. The ranks of TV cook-stars include foul-mouthed wannabes, obnoxious poseurs and confidants of Satan.
So let’s sort the wheat from the chaff with Appliances Online’s 5 coolest celebrity chefs EVER!
NB – We’re talking specimens of genuine coolness. Unselfconscious, unflappable, totally nuts. These guys are the real deal.
Anthony Bourdain
We give Bourdain kudos for a variety of things: chowing down exotic dishes from around the world, being an outspoken critic of other celebrity chefs, and dedicating his book “The Nasty Bits” to The Ramones. Has been quoted saying the Chicken McNugget is the most disgusting thing he had ever eaten – this from someone who ate warthog rectum in Namibia, sheep testicles in Morocco and the beating heart of a cobra in Vietnam. Slightly nuts, then, but it’s a fine line between being certifiably insane and having your own cooking show.
Two Fat Ladies
Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson were cool. Firstly, they were totes retro. Their cooking and lifestyle defied namby-pamby ideas about healthy eating. No recipe was complete without a slab of butter, beef dripping and two ounces of lard and Paterson ended each episode chilling out with a durry in one hand and glass of cheap plonk in the other. Second, they roared around in a Triumph Thunderbird (Dickson Wright squeezing herself into the side-car). Third, and this can’t be underestimated, these broads called themselves The Two Fat Ladies. That’s a bitchin’ devil-may-care attitude.
Technically two people – but like The Two Ronnies, these girls were basically a gestalt entity with one beating heart. In desperate need of a coronary bypass.
Keith Floyd
Keith Floyd was the definitive celebrity chef. It wasn’t just the skill with which he cooked, nor the fruity eloquence of his presentation – it was the capacity for things to go charmingly wrong, often as a result of excessive drinking. Almost always filmed with a glass of wine in hand, one episode showed him accidentally setting fire to the pilchard boat on which he was cooking.
A truly awesome gent, he was apparently a big fan of The Stranglers and punk/indie act Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. Keith Floyd, bless.
Ian Parmenter
Presenter of the cooking show “Consuming Passions”, Ian Parmenter was engaging without being over-the-top, and passionate without being annoying. Oh and he managed to wear a beret without being a douche.
Peter Russell-Clarke
Peter Russell-Clarke was basically the most awesome thing ever to wear a beard. Throughout the 80s, his show “Come And Get It” was an ABC staple, wedged somewhere between Monkey Magic, Degrassi and the 7pm News.
The program received a new lease of life when a colourful series of outtakes starring Russell Clarke surfaced on Youtube. Much use of the “C” and “F” words later, and Peter only became more adorable. Check out the segment at your leisure here. We’d caution you about the use of coarse language on the link, but who cares? – we challenge you to watch this without wanting to have the guy’s fuzzy-faced babies.
Well, that’s our pick. Stay tuned for our up-coming post – the Top 5 LEAST Coolest Celebrity Chefs. We’ve got plenty to choose from (helloooo Ainsley!) but if you have any thoughts on the subject, we’d love to hear from you!
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