Spotlight on Asian Chefs
The San Francisco Bay Area is fortunate to have a diverse group of very talented chefs specializing in Asian and Pan-Asian cuisines. But getting recognition for their talents isn’t always so easy. Like food products and everything else, there’s active competition for media attention and it’s tough to stand out from the crowd.
It’s all the harder for those who grew up in an Asian culture where calling attention to yourself and promoting your achievements are considered inappropriate. So, as an Asian person in public relations, I recommended and volunteered to orchestrate a media session for the Asian Chefs Association.
We held our event at the beautiful Ghirardelli Square restaurant, Ana Mandara, whose chef-owner Khai Duong, a founding member of the chefs’ group, offered a private dining room for our half-day seminar.
The goal was to give the chefs an overview of public relations. Basically, there are just two steps: first, understand the media and what they want by studying what’s on TV and in the newspapers. Second, provide the media with information they can use in the most polished and professional way possible.
Carolyn Jung, food editor of the San Jose Mercury News, described what makes food news for her newspaper, while news anchor Barbara Rodgers of San Francisco’s CBS 5 talked about how TV food news differs from print. Where Carolyn is developing rich stories around people and culture and the art of cooking, Barbara is looking for timely, hard news angles that are visually interesting to her viewers. Carolyn also reports on hard news — especially on major food issues like legislation banning foie gras or the latest studies on mercury in seafood. These stories appear on the front page of the newspaper in the main section.
In addition to her anchor duties, Barbara hosts a TV segment called Quick & Easy Cooking, where chefs are invited to do short cooking demonstrations. Her advice to chefs? Keep it simple because time flies on TV. And have ready some talking points about the dish, such as personal anecdotes, nutritional information or a wine pairing suggestion.
Good food photography is critical for Web sites, press kits and other promotional materials, so next on the program was food photographer Leo Gong. Leo presented a progression of photos showing the development of a single food photograph, from the very first shot with “stand-in” food, to the final, luscious result with the “hero” food in place. Leo and food stylist Karen Shinto prepared the sequence to illustrate how food photography is an evolutionary, artistic process.
Next I spoke about public relations and simple things chefs could do on their own without a PR agency. I provided a handout on press releases — how to format them and what information to provide, as well as advice on how to be prepared when media call. I also explained how chefs could piggyback on the work of PR agencies. Often, agencies are looking for chefs to serve as spokespeople for products or to provide recipes for Web sites, newsletters, brochures and other product-related collateral. Sending your press releases to these agencies will keep your chefs top of mind for these bonus visibility opportunities.
Having been the director of a national culinary center and a recipe editor for many years, I also presented a session on recipe writing. Chefs may be good at cooking, but as a group, they are notoriously poor recipe writers. That’s because they are focused on preparing food that tastes good. Period. Recipes, on the other hand, are road maps that enable someone else to replicate the food prepared by the chef. When the media ask for recipes, it’s critical that the recipes provided by chefs have been written accurately in proper recipe style and then tested to ensure they will work.
Finally, Phil Siegel, principal of MediaWorks, led the chefs through a fun and informative TV media training session. Three chefs brought ingredients to demonstrate a simple dish. They were videotaped once, then again after the training. During the training, we focused the chefs on streamlining the demonstration to fit a small window of time (two to three minutes of total time is common for TV), and to deliver a message, whether it was about his restaurant, the Asian Chefs Association or as a spokesperson for a food product. After Phil’s masterful training, the chefs were considerably more polished and focused.
It was a long half day, but jam-packed with information and everyone seemed totally engaged. For me, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet some amazing chefs who specialize in Asian cuisines and to use my more than 25 years in the business to help them to think about how to present themselves and their culinary accomplishments to the media. Business cards were exchanged and we disbanded, all of us having expanded our network significantly.
INSIGHT: Today’s media is bombarded with so much information it’s hard to cut through the clutter to get attention for a restaurant, a chef or a food product. To be successful requires respect and understanding of the media’s needs, and a focused and dedicated effort to communicate your message.
