From Grub Street New York: The business of being a chef has expanded enormously in the last 25
years. Once upon a time, it was considered a working-class trade. Now Gordon Ramsay has 27 restaurants and five TV shows. Alain Ducasse has
authored eighteen cookbooks; Nobu Matsuhisa has five. Batali acts,
Colicchio sells Diet Coke and fly-fishes for AmEx, Charlie Palmer hawks
home décor in Sonoma. But which chef has his hand in the most pots
around the globe?
To decide, we narrowed the field to men and women who operate
restaurants in the U.S. and then compiled a list of all their
traditional food projects (restaurants, cookbooks), self-promotional
activities (TV shows), and offbeat activities (recipes for
online-dating sites, flavor sprays). Since we consider operating
restaurants to be more important to a chef's empire than his ancillary
product deals, we assigned each of these activities a point value and
weighed them according to significance. Restaurants got four points;
leading TV roles, three; cookbooks, two; and everything else counted as
a single point. The top twenty high-scorers are listed below with
highlights from their careers. Actual totals appear in the first four
columns, while the overall score according to point value is tallied at
the end.
Who's the king of all chefs, and who's a merchandiser? Decide for yourself in the comments.
#1 Gordon Ramsay: With both the most restaurants and starring
roles on TV, it’s not surprising that Gordon Ramsay has gobbled the
most points. Overextension has its limits: To stave off bankruptcy this
summer, he cut costs by slashing staff by 15 percent and rescinding
ownership of hotel restaurants in L.A. and Paris.
| Restaurants |
TV Shows |
Cookbooks |
Misc. |
Score |
| 27 |
5 |
17 |
10 |
167 |
#2 Alain Ducasse: Ducasse’s global empire includes a
professional culinary school, a cooking school for amateurs, a chain of
hotels and châteaus, four country hotel-estates (with restaurants), and
a publishing house to churn out the most cookbooks of the group.
| Restaurants |
TV Shows |
Cookbooks |
Misc. |
Score |
| 26 |
0 |
18 |
12 |
152 |
#3 Wolfgang Puck: Certainly not the only chef with a “Shop”
section on his website, he shills salad spinners, coffee, cooking
spray, soup stock, and a food-sealing system.
| Restaurants |
TV Shows |
Cookbooks |
Misc. |
Score |
| 22 |
0 |
7 |
18 |
120 |
#4 Joël Robuchon: All that fawning on
Top Chef Vegas,
and no tchotchkes to sell for it; Robuchon concentrates on nineteen
fine and casual restaurants from Paris to Macao and has authored
sixteen cookbooks.
| Restaurants |
TV Shows |
Cookbooks |
Misc. |
Score |
| 19 |
2 |
16 |
1 |
115 |
#5 Nobu Matsuhisa: Matsuhisa is credited with three acting roles on IMDb, for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Casino (1995), and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002),
in which he played Mr. Roboto. If he opens another Nobu in the U.S.,
New York City will consider the restaurant a chain and will require
posted calorie counts.
| Restaurants |
TV Shows |
Cookbooks |
Misc. |
Score |
| 22 |
0 |
5 |
12 |
110 |