Anybody planning on grilling today? Celebrity chef Bobby Flay is. But why should Memorial Day be any different? Flay spends half his life over coals or gas jets — or at least it sure looks that way on TV.
With his signature Southwestern cuisine, Flay, 46, owns 10 restaurants, including Mesa Grill and Bar Americain in Manhattan. And he’s a constant presence on the Food Network, where’s he’s hosted no fewer than seven shows. The latest is “Food Network Star,” where starting Sunday he’ll serve as competition judge, a good fit for his no-nonsense New York demeanor.
But his true love is grilling outdoors — he’s hosted “Hot Off the Grill,” “Boy Meets Grill,” “BBQ with Bobby Flay” and “Grill It! With Bobby Flay.” So in honor of Memorial Day, we cornered the New York born-and-bred grillmeister to find out how a high-school dropout and one-time Wall Streeter found fame over the flames.
Does it bother you when people question how much time a TV chef actually spends in his restaurants?
I always think of myself as chef first. It’s what I get out of bed thinking about. And unless I’m on a plane or something, I’m at my restaurants every day. That’s what grounds me.
How did you first get into the food world?
I dropped out of high school, and my father said to me, “Go get a job.” And I did. I was a busboy at Joe Allen in the Theater District, a restaurant my father was a partner in. But it was only a temporary job, two weeks as a substitute for a guy who was away.
Did you look at the chefs and think, I want to do that someday?
Nope. Not at all. I just thought it was cool that somebody was paying me to do something. I was literally walking out of the restaurant after my two weeks were over and the chef asked, “Do you want a job in the kitchen?” And I said sure. That was basically it. I wasn’t exactly enthralled by it. But three or four months later I remember just waking up and being excited about going to work.
You were cooking?
Salad station. I’d clean lettuce, make salad dressing. A lot of prep work. I used to make this curried dressing for this curried chicken salad. Gallons of it. After about a year, I decided to go to culinary school and went to French Culinary Institute in SoHo. I was in the very first class, in 1984. I learned basic French technique there, which I use every day.
After working for a few years under chefs like Jonathan Waxman, you left restaurants in the late ’80s to work on Wall Street. Why?
All my friends were getting rich working on Wall Street. It was kind of the golden era down there. I was 21 and making $200 a week cooking. So I took a break and worked at the American Stock Exchange as a clerk. I sat in these bleachers overlooking the floor, answering phones and giving hand signals for 300 calls of IBM or whatever to the broker on the floor. I tried it for six months, but it so wasn’t for me. No creativity to it at all.
Now back in restaurants, you were named executive chef at Mesa Grill, where you eventually became a partner. What led to the leap to TV chef?
The Food Network was born in ’93, a 24-hour network about food. Everybody in the business figured they’d run out of things to talk about in a week. That obviously didn’t happen. At the time, I was getting some accolades for my restaurants, and I was a guest on some of the early shows.
My first shoot was for “Chef du Jour,” which was basically an audition show. You’d shoot five shows in one day, and they would think about you for a show at some point. I was terrible, really nervous, having a hard time speaking. But six months into it, I pitched them an idea for a show called “Grillin’ and Chillin,’” and they bought into it.
With the popularity of the Food Network and other cooking shows, it seems a lot of young people are chasing after the glamour of the culinary world. What’s your advice to those hoping to be the next TV celebrity chef?
Learn how to cook. Too many people go to culinary school now to be on TV. If that’s what you want, go to acting school. There’s no substitute for knowledge. It doesn’t happen in a year at culinary school. It takes years, learning from chefs. At that point, you begin to hone your skills and shape who you are and what your cuisine may be one day. Once you become known for something, then consider being an authority figure on TV.
Is that part of your advice to wannabe chefs competing on “Food Network Star”?
I’m the host of the show. But more importantly I feel that I’m a mentor to these contestants. It’s imperative to me that the food be incredibly important to who they are. If they’re just there to be on TV, that’s not good enough and I’m gonna make sure they don’t last.
mkane@nypost.com
The coal truth
Here at @work, we usually solicit advice on careers, not kebabs. But it’s the start of grilling season, we’re talking with a Weber master — and do you really want to be thinking about work today?
We didn’t think so. Here are Flay’s pointers for holiday grilling.
DO: “Stick with what you know, recipes that you have grilled many, many times before. This is not the day to try some new “adventurous” recipe. One of my go-to menus is spiced-rubbed ribeyes cooked to medium-rare and topped with a grilled cherry tomato relish. I like to end with some type of grilled fruit: peaches, pineapple or nectarines, brushed with butter and sprinkled with a little brown sugar.
DON’T: The biggest mistake people make is flipping the food before it is ready. Leave the food alone. When it is ready, a crust will form, and it will naturally release from the grate. Then you can flip.