Interview: "Top Chef�s" Chris �CJ� Jacobson

Chris Jacobson, better known as CJ, made it to the final five from the original 15 contestants on the recently concluded season of Bravo�s �Top Chef.� Now back home in Venice, Calif., and planning his next career move, he talks to R&I about how participating in the show made him a better chef, whether Los Angeles ever will overtake San Francisco as California�s top restaurant city, and how the existence of celebrity chefs can benefit American consumers.

By Alison Perlik, Senior Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 10/31/2007

Chris Jacobson, better known as CJ, made it to the final five from the original 15 contestants on the recently concluded season of Bravo’s “Top Chef.” Now back home in Venice, Calif., and planning his next career move, he talks to R&I about how participating in the show made him a better chef, whether Los Angeles ever will overtake San Francisco as California’s top restaurant city, and how the existence of celebrity chefs benefits American consumers.

What was the biggest lesson about the art and skill of cooking you took away from “Top Chef”?

That you can’t fake loving and having soul in your food. I think Hung [Huynh, the show’s eventual winner] displayed that. He came around in the end, but the guy was technically a wizard and he just didn’t have any soul in his food in the beginning episodes. I think you really feel that when you sit down and have a dish. When you’re having a truly great dish, you think, “Oh, wow.” There’s just something about it. No matter how contemporary the food is, you still can feel love from anything, you still can feel something that will show you a connection with the chef.

You worked as a personal chef for some pretty high-profile clients before appearing the show. Do you plan to continue in that line of work, or are you looking to get back into the restaurant game?

Right now I want to try to pursue the television thing a little bit more. I’ve got some things on my plate right now as far as that goes. But I’d love to have a restaurant someday soon. Even Dale [Levitski, a fellow "Top Chef" contestant] has asked me to come work for him at his restaurant in Chicago [opening this winter], so I’ve been considering that also.

Why pursue more television opportunities? What about the medium works for you as a chef?

One of the first things I really loved about food was its communal nature. I played volleyball professionally, and when I was in Europe I had a contract for room and board at a restaurant in Belgium. So I got to eat in the kitchen every day and see all these people come in and having three-hour lunches. It was all family-style, but the guy who they get their chickens from would come in and the guy who they get their bread from would come in. They’d all be hanging out together at this giant table. I loved that communal feel, and I really want other people in America to feel that, too. And I think I can do that [on television]. I want people to love food as much as I do.

How important has raising a broader public profile become for chefs in general? Can a chef still be considered truly successful without having been in a high-profile role such as a show on Bravo or the Food Network?

Absolutely. I think there’s a little bit of a disconnect. There are chefs who are strictly restaurant chefs, the old-school guys who would never consider television, and then on the other side there are some people who think, “I can just be a great chef and be on television and everything’s light and fluffy and happy,” which is really not the case either. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go on TV and expressing yourself and showing love for food and still being a serious chef. But I absolutely do not think that any chef needs to go on television.

How, if at all, does the broader exposure--and in some cases, celebrity status--that chefs are receiving benefit the people who actually go to restaurants?

I don’t think it really benefits the people who already are going to restaurants, but I think it creates a bigger audience of people who start thinking about food in a different way and who start enjoying food in way they didn’t enjoy it before. They realize don’t have to eat the same thing every day, and they don’t have to eat as much—that Claim Jumper’s rib meal isn’t the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In California, your home state, San Francisco traditionally has been known as the best restaurant town, but several well-known chefs such as Laurent Tourondel, Mario Batali and Tom Colicchio recently have opened or plan to open restaurants in Los Angeles. As a Southern California native, do you think Los Angeles has reached the same status as San Francisco, Chicago, New York City and other top food cities in the country?

I think it goes New York City, San Francisco and then Los Angeles. San Francisco is going to be No. 2 for quite some time because, like New York, it has all these little tiny neighborhood restaurants that totally kick ass. And they’re the closest to the bistro mentality in that they’re a little closer to all that farmland. It’s just a beautiful, fertile area up there in Northern California. A place like New York also is more of a condensed city, and when you’re a food city that helps. Los Angeles is a big, giant conglomerate of communities, so it’s tough.

What made you decide to try out for a competitive cooking show such as Top Chef?

My friends were coaxing me for quite some time, saying, “You’ve gotta be on this show! You’d be good for TV; you’ve got to do this.” When the day finally came, I was at brunch with a friend of mine and I should have already been in line at the open call. I mentioned it to him and said maybe I won't go, and he said no, you’re going. But I didn’t have the paperwork or a picture of myself, which you had to have.

He said, “We’re going to my house right now. We’re can fill out the paperwork there, and I have a picture of you.” I thought, what’s this picture going to be? So we go there and the picture he has is an 8½-by-11 picture of me in my Halloween costume from last year from work when I was dressed as a giraffe. I handed them the picture at the audition and they’re like, “Are you kidding me?”

Why do you think they picked you?

I had a sufficient background—everyone who’s been on the show hasn’t reached their apex of chefdom, but they’re well on their way to becoming something—and also, I can speak, I have a good personality, and I have a story.

Did you get what you hoped to from the experience?

I got way more than I thought I would. First of all, being around different types of chefs and seeing the way they cook from all different sorts of backgrounds improved me as a chef tenfold. It also was a great experience because I got to see how I matched up against these people, people who have worked in all these great restaurants. I’ve worked in restaurants, too, but not for 10 years or 14 years in restaurants [like some of the others]. So it was good to see how I stacked up against my peers, and it turned out that I stacked up pretty good. It was great for my confidence.

Being on the show also showed me that you can be working sauté at some great restaurant for a few years, but you’ve got to be a little more dynamic as a chef. You’ve got to be able be caught in weird situations and come out all right, and I think that’s somewhere I showed resilience.