Anthony Bourdain, Marco Pierre White, Michael Ruhlman (as Moderator), The Role of a Chef, 2008

In lieu of a registration fee, paywhatyoucan donations can be made to CCAP: With the exponential rise of public attention focused on cooking, the meaning of the chef profession has changed. At the 2008 StarChefs International Chefs Congress, culinary author Michael Ruhlman moderated a chat between two very different food personalities. Marco Pierre White arguably began the era of chef publicity with the 1990 publication of the gritty White Heat cookbook, memoir. Anthony Bourdain won the industry over with his talent and candor, but he admitted that he hadnt worked as a chef for nine years and was entrenched in the undignified business of television. White, a former quintessential bad boy chef who spoke in flowery terms about the romance of food, stood in contrast with the irreverent Bourdain, who always had a finger on the pulse of the culinary world and enough perspective to laugh at it. The two argued over the expectation that the chef whose name is on the r