Are you a fan of the PBS TV show “A Chef’s Life“? Lots of people are. The star of the series is Vivian Howard, a young woman who is immensely talented in the kitchen but who is also immensely talented in front of the camera. (That’s not actually a picture of her. I’m very wary of posting pictures of celebrities without permission.) I’m sure that part of her popularity comes from her willingness to be filmed in the midst of various crises, where she often does not maintain her cool. She also often says something that I say: “What was I thinking?” She’ll come up with a menu for some big event and then realize that she has put herself and her long-suffering staff on the spot, trying to make and plate some menu item that is completely impractical given the situation. It all seems completely genuine and unstaged, and I believe that it is. I am typically very sympathetic to the fixes she lands herself in, and she doesn’t have the option that I have of deciding at some point to cut an item or two. If it’s on the menu or the program, she has to do it, no matter what.
With the popularity of the show, her restaurant in the bustling metropolis of Kinston, NC, has seen greatly increased business. People are making special trips to the town just so they can eat her food. (Actually, I wanted us to go there when we went to NC for Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t doable with all the other things on the schedule.) Great, you say. And it is. I’m sure she’s making more money than she would have without all this publicity. (I don’t have any real understanding of how the people who star in the various cooking/lifestyles shows get paid.) But . . . with increased publicity and popularity comes greater stress and responsibility. If you know that the couple over there in the corner has flown in to Raleigh-Durham from Chicago and then driven the 100 miles or so from there to your restaurant just to eat one meal, it’s pretty overwhelming. If the people who come in from the area have one not-quite-up-to-snuff dinner, they’ll say, “Oh well, the staff must have been having an off night. We’ve have plenty of great meals here, and we’ll be back.” But to have someone’s whole experience of your business stem from a once-in-a-lifetime trip? No wiggle room there. Vivian’s most common word in describing this situation is “stress.”
Plus, fame brings its own price. If you’re a fan, and you’ve made a special effort to sit in that dining room, then you want to meet Vivian, and get a picture with her, and have her sign the menu. But she’s BUSY. She’s running a kitchen. And she’s not necessarily camera-ready. Still, people can’t be just waved off. So out she goes. And Ben, dear sometimes-snotty Ben, her husband, has ended up doing tasks that he doesn’t care for, such as answering Vivian’s fan mail, and being pulled away from the creative side he loves, such as choosing wines to go with the food. And working with your spouse under high-pressure situations doesn’t always result in marital harmony. As Vivian says about the situation, “It sucks.” All you can do, she says, is say that you’re sorry and try to do better the next day.
Season 2 ends with a two-parter in which Vivian, Ben and several senior staff members go to New York City to cook a luncheon at the James Beard House. This is a tremendous honor, but also a tremendous source of Vivian’s old friend, stress. She doesn’t help matters by, once again, choosing to make things hard on herself. Soft-boiling 100 eggs and scooping them out onto the plates without breaking the yolks! And something goes wrong, as it always does in situations such as this. The fryer stops working for some mysterious reason, and although they figure it out later, at the moment they have to improvise in order to serve the fried fish entree. It gets done, and the meal as a whole goes well. But then, just as the meal ends and Vivian wants nothing more than to put her feet up and drink a glass of wine, she has to go out a schmooze with everyone who came to the lunch.
Everything comes with a price. It’s easy for those of us who aren’t exactly household words to long for a wider outreach, and there’s nothing wrong with that desire. But it’s a key to happiness to realize what doesn’t bring it. It might be exciting, and profitable, and stretching to become famous. But the world is littered with unhappy celebrities. The ability to form good relationships and work within your own limitations contribute w-a-y more to happiness than does the number of “likes” on your Facebook page or obligations on your calendar.
(Note: This series is now in season 5, I believe. Well worth watching, still!)