Reinstein: Would you like an autograph with that?-
Metrowest Daily News/ Dec. 25, 2005

"We’re just cooks."

So declares Ming Tsai, owner and executive chef of the award-winning Wellesley restaurant, Blue Ginger. But Tsai does not merely cook. In fact, Tsai presides over a small multi-media empire: he’s authored two cookbooks, produces and stars in what is now his second television cooking show, and has a product line of his own at Target. Want to know more about Ming? Check out his Web site (Ming.com), or November’s Boston Magazine -- that would be the issue with Ming on the cover.

"I’m a chef first," Tsai, maintains. "I’m not trying to be famous."

All of which may be true. But more and more, chefs of Ming Tsai’s undeniable caliber are becoming very, very famous, and Americans, it would seem, are eating it up. So how and when exactly did chefs themselves become the biggest thing on the menu?

Food historians generally agree that the first bona fide celebrity chef was Marie-Antoine Careme (1784-1833). He was known as the "chef of kings and king of chefs." He wrote several encyclopedic works on French cooking, but his most lasting accomplishment is still in evidence today: Careme is credited with creating the standard chef’s hat, the toque. In the Paris of his day, he undoubtedly would have had his own cooking show (Careme Cooks!) had television, rather than the guillotine been the newest big thing.
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