Jacques Pépin (author and TV personality), Tim Love (The Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, The Love Shack, The Woodshed Smokehouse), Spike Mendelsohn (Good Stuff Eatery and We, The Pizza), Ming Tsai (Blue Ginger)

COOKING ON TV
The idea of television is exposure. When hundreds of thousands of people are watching me on PBS and I do a book, it sells. Jacques Pépin

There are the cooking shows that Jacques and I do, and then there are reality cooking series that are more entertainment-based. Both are good – there are still people who want to learn to cook, but reality shows have a much higher Nielsen rating. One of the reasons I left the Food Network – which is awesome and I owe my career to – is that they wanted entertainment. They wanted me traveling and wrestling alligators, but they were going away from true cooking shows. Do you make a killing from a Food Network salary? Do you make a killing from Public Television? No. Indirectly, however, these shows got me deals for books, knives, spices, and a line at Target, plus speaking engagements. Ming Tsai

With TV you create opportunities. If you cook tremendous food and have a 50-seat restaurant and it’s fairly full most of the time and your local community loves you, TV creates opportunities to show more people what you can do. Tim Love

Young chefs who are aspiring to be TV chefs or celebrity chefs can’t skip the classic training. That’s my biggest pet peeve with kids. I tell them all these opportunities are going to be here for them, this is what the business is these days, and they need to take their time, learn the basics, and gain experience. If I didn’t have my classic training and all those years working really, really, hard long hours, I don’t think any of my restaurants would be successful and I wouldn’t be able to deliver. Spike Mendelsohn

GETTING STARTED
Get on local TV to build a reel. You’re never going to get on the ‘Today Show’ if they’re not seeing you do TV somewhere. Once you start building a reel, then you can have a PR person – it can be your wife, your girlfriend, your brother, it doesn’t have to be an official PR person – say check out this reel, so you don’t have to do it yourself. The other way to get your name out there is to do charities. Say yes to every charity so you can start building a reputation that you’re a very nice person, who makes good food and donates lots of time to charity. Ming Tsai

To do a show you need money. People say to me, ‘I have a really good idea. I’d like to do a book or a show,’ and frankly, I say, ‘Do you have three-quarters of a million dollars? Because if you have that money I will find you a producer and you will do a show.’ It may not be good, but you will do a show if you have the money. Certainly for TV it always amounts to this – can you raise the money? Jacques Pépin

DEVELOPING A TV PERSONA
I was not known within the industry and once I got the chance to be on Top Chef I took it really seriously. I thought it was a great opportunity to brand myself and put myself out there. There were about 16 chefs on the show and I wanted to stand out and make myself a little more dramatic – I had one chance and I had to make the best of it. For me wearing a fedora all the time and playing up the character a little bit was something that I wanted to do and ended up working quite well. Spike Mendelsohn

You are who you are. You really cannot escape yourself. Some are going to like you, some don’t, some don’t really care one way or the other, some detest you. Don’t try to be what you are not because it really doesn’t work out. To a certain extent you can feel it when people are not comfortable with who they are. It’s a funny thing to say that the camera doesn’t lie, but it’s true. Jacques Pépin

When I started on Food Network, I was horrible. Media training was like night and day for me. I learned to act as if I were talking to one person, making sure that I got that person’s attention for the entire half hour. But at the end of the day, you still have to cook. If you can’t cook, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, who are, or how good your accent is.” Ming Tsai

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