Remembering Anne Burrell

Cooking shows, Food Network and the gamification of life.

I grew up with a Food Network that found its roots in the PBS “how-to” shows of the pre-cable era, which all basically sprang from the Julia Child-fueled belief that home cooks can (and should) make good and even great food regularly.

The early Food Network stars were PBS transfers like Ming Tsai and Sara Moulton or rising stars like Mario Batali (Italian peasant food turned highbrow), Bobby Flay (grilling, chilling and southwestern by way of the American Stock Exchange) or Alton Brown (former music video director turned gastronomic scientist), Ina Garten (your Hampton’s summer fantasy host), and Sandra Lee (who turned a home shopping empire into something “semi-homemade”). I’m leaving people out. The point is that the network was full of “how to” shows. It had one game show, the import from Japan known as Iron Chef, which celebrated kitsch and exoticism over competition.

Well, things change. MTV went from showing music videos to game shows and reality shows. Food Network went that direction with a show called The Next Food Network Star, which gave us Guy Fieri. Then it put its biggest star on an American version of Iron Chef, which upped the competition factor at the expense of dubbed dialogue and exotic ingredients of Japan’s kitchen stadium. On that show, Anne Burrell served as a member of Batali’s team. Her look and style made her a star but she was a real New York City restaurant chef who, like Batali, had worked under Lidia Bastianich.

Burrell built the kitchen at the long defunct Centro Wine Bar in the West Village and she was always, throughout her career (game shows and all) a serious part of the New York restaurant scene. She innovated in the kitchen and she really liked people. When The Scholar Wife ran into Burrell on the street. the celebrity chef made time to stop and talk.

The idea of restaurant chefs as good people took a shellacking over the years. If you go back to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential he describes an industry full of misfits and people who cannot succeed in other environments because they are alcoholics, drug addicts, sex addicts, thieves and control freaks. Every time Bourdain seemed to get it together, and he had a whole world rooting for him, he’d stumble again. Somehow, CNN still advertises the suicide victim as a heroic figure who can teach you the path to fulfillment through travel and adventurous dining.

Through the 2010s, restaurant owners became stars and some of their restaurants suffered for it. Flay’s Mesa Grill and Batali’s Otto both turned salty. Batali had two scandals (stealing tips from workers and claims of sexual harassment) and left New York, giving up his restaurant empire to his business partners in the Bastianich family. April Bloomfield closed The Spotted Pig under similar circumstances. Flay would rather have restaurants in casinos and sports venues than in Manhattan.

Through it all, Anne remained a consummate New Yorker, vibrant and engaging on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. In the television cooking world, competition shows dominate. Stars are made. Yes, cooking is made to be gamified. Put a few talented chefs together, constrain their time and ingredients and watch them struggle. You don’t learn much watching, but it’s entertaining.

There are plenty of places to find recipes and even learn techniques online, which is why Food Network had to pivot in the first place. But what we’ve lost is that these shows used to also teach taste and refinement. Molto Mario taught how to appreciate Italian foods and wine. Brown taught the science behind a proper cocktail, including how to drink one (quickly, while it remains cold). Bourdain brought us the raw and wild despite his background in steakhouse fare.

Now, as we get back to Anne, we can’t ignore that a lot of her fame came from game shows. That she enjoyed the theatricality was clear from her Iron Chef America appearances and that translated into other combat cooking shows like Chopped. But her big show was different than the others.

Most of the competition shows feature celebrity chefs who are trying to make it in a tough business where skill doesn’t always win out or pay off. The contestants are hoping for a five or six figure payout they can invest in their business and maybe some dining room-packing fame. A lot of well-regarded and acclaimed chefs fail even after winning these shows.

The Worst Cooks in America, which has 28 seasons behind it, features contestants self-selected for their kitchen failings. These are regular people without knife skills or taste. They set things on fire. They drop food, brush it off and toss it back on the pan. They overcook steak and undercook pasta. They use peanut butter in odd ways. The professionals were brought in to coach and teach the contestants and to judge their progress.

But Worst Cooks pushed Food Network towards its original mission, which is to spread the idea that everybody should be able to execute quality meals at home, without reliance on expensive specialty stores. It’s about believing that people have a right to high quality, healthy food and that the best way to help them enjoy that is to teach them how to make delicious meals at home. Some of the best moments were not when the apprentice cooks learned a new skill but when they learned to appreciate the new dish — when they suddenly recognize that a pasta is brought to life by adding Anne’s “big fat finishing oil” at the end, that the lemon on top of a filet of cod isn’t just a garnish and that knife cuts matter to how a dish comes out, even if you try to pass off some sloppiness as “rustic” later.

When people asked Bourdain how to improve their home cooking, he didn’t advise them to ingest opiates in Thailand. He told them to get a good set of knives and some squeeze bottles while adding shallots to their grocery list. That’s the kind of practical advice Burrell offered, with her signature flair and true-to-her sayings (“browned food is good food!”)

As I was rounding out this post, the scholar wife provided more details. Burrell was considering giving up food television and cooking competitions. At 55 she had financial independence and a still-new marriage to enjoy. She didn’t need the grind of filming game show seasons and showing up as a surprise judge or contestant whenever called on. She had a young marriage to enjoy and other ambitions.

The night she died, she had been practicing improv at The Second City New York, recently opened in Brooklyn. The comedy club referred to her as a “friend and student” which shows her amazing dedication to her craft and creativity. She had already succeeded at hours and hours of essentially improvised television. She had celebrity and could have asked Second City for stage time for a one person show and it would have been granted. Heck, she could have done it at Town Hall, if she wanted. Instead, she went to learn and to work with others.

Whatever happened to cause her death at so young an age, I will remember her as a charismatic teacher who represented the last of what made Food Network good: a commitment to better life through honing skills, from cooking to improv.