When the Road Is Rough for Celeb Chefs

Celebrity chefs supposedly went out with the ‘80s. Not according to Shep Gordon.

He’s managed the careers of everyone from Groucho Marx to Racquel Welch to rock star Alice Cooper. Now he wants to manage the careers of the world’s best chefs.

Why would a chef need an agent?

Picture this. Wolfgang Puck flies off to Hawaii with 200 pounds of food. He’s going to cook dinner for a charity event--for free. But when he gets to the airport nobody is there to meet him. Puck takes a taxi, the food takes two more taxis, and when all arrive at the hotel where the dinner is to be held, he is informed that not only is there no room in the refrigerator, but there is also nobody to help him prepare the meal. So Puck ends up before dawn, all alone in the kitchen, chopping. “The whole day while I was cooking,” Puck says, “I said to myself, ‘Maybe some day if I am as big a chef as Roger Verge, I will be treated like a human.’ ”

But Verge, three-star chef/owner of the Moulin de Mougins near Cannes, also has his problems. “I went on tour with Roger last year,” says his friend Shep Gordon. “He was treated horribly. One place where he was cooking not only didn’t pay him, but when we tried to have dinner in the dining room the night before the event, the maitre d’ told Verge the help was not allowed to eat there.”

Gordon decided to end all this disrespect by forming a new management company called Alive Culinary Resources. “I told Roger I would look after him,” he says. “Once chefs step outside their restaurant they are treated as second-class citizens.”

For the past six months, Gordon, a self-described chef’s groupie, has quietly been accumulating a roster of 45 clients. “I feel like I’ve been in training my whole life for this,” Gordon says.

Verge was Gordon’s first chef client, Puck his second. Chefs are besieged with requests to do charity dinners; now Gordon will act as the middleman between chefs and the people who want their time--and food.

Consider Bradley Ogden (Lark Creek Inn, Larkspur), who does 10-12 major charity events each year and another 50 to 60 smaller ones. It’s hard for him to say no to anyone. Having Gordon around will make his life much easier.

So far Gordon’s client list includes Paul Bocuse, Paul Prudhomme (K-Paul’s, New Orleans), Alice Waters (Chez Panisse, Berkeley), Lydia Shire (Biba, Washington), and L.A.’s own Michel Richard (Citrus) and John Sedlar (Bikini). Gordon says that only one chef has turned down his offer: “It’s because her husband is an agent.’

“We like to think we are really well respected, but in fact it’s just by a really small group,” says Larry Forgione of An American Place in New York. “I’m looking forward to the relationship.”

“What I’ve stressed with the chefs is that charity begins at home,” Gordon says. “When you do charity work, do it for a charity you believe in. But don’t go to Cleveland, Ohio, for someone you don’t know.”

“Just a big thank you was fine when we were younger, trying to get ahead,” says Dean Fearing of the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, “but as we got older, monetarily things did not change. Now Shep wants to change that, the way it happened for golfers and tennis players. We want credibility too.”

But Gordon has more than just money and respect for his clients on his mind. He and the chefs are discussing creating inner-city cooking schools and making restaurant kitchens ecologically sound. “I found a corporate sponsor that will pay for all the menus to be printed on recycled paper,” Gordon says, “and I am getting the linen companies that pick up the laundry to drop food off at the food banks. That way the food doesn’t end up in the garbage.” Puck has even brought up the idea of setting up the equivalent of Hollywood’s Motion Picture Retirement Home for former restaurant workers.

This sounds like a lot, but Gordon is already delivering on his promises. He’s booked Puck to cook for the Grammy awards dinner at the Biltmore Hotel in February, and Dean Fearing to cook Southwestern food at the Rock andcq Roll Hall of Fame banquet at the Century Plaza in January. And Gordon says he is about to announce that one of the great chefs of Europe and one of the great chefs of America will team up to cook dinners for a major automotive institution as a way of promoting its newest car. “All at substantial fees,” Gordon says. “It’s what the chefs deserve.”