Popular Chefs in the United States are plenty, each with their own style of cuisine and each boasting a range of cook books and tie-in television shows. They include the self-tutored Ina Garten, who came to culinary prominence when she hosted the Food Network program Barefoot Contessa; Julia Child, famous due to the publication of her bestseller Mastering the Art of French Cookery and its subsequent television tie-in, The French Chef; and Emeril Lagasse, celebrity chef, author and presenter of the Food Network favorites, Emeril Live and Essence of Emeril.
On the other side of the Atlantic, British and French chefs are very much in vogue. The likes of Heston Blumenthal, proprietor of the world renowned Fat Duck restaurant, an establishment that boasts three Michelin stars and is located in the English village of Bray, Berkshire, have moved food into uncharted territory. He is renowned for his uniquely scientific approach to the preparation of his dishes, insisting on the importance of research and development in the culinary process. The fruits of his labors include a vacuum jar that increases the size of the bubbles in dishes such as his aerated chocolate soufflé dessert. He is also known to be a proponent of extreme temperature cooking, a technique he publicized in his Search of Perfection series, where he blasted a Bresse chicken at 165 degrees Fahrenheit (73.8 degrees Celsius).
Television chef Gordon Ramsay is best known on both sides of the Atlantic for his TV series Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. His abrasive style and liberal use of Anglo Saxonisms has meant that his renown is based more on his ill tempered authoritarian style than his three Michelin stars and array of cooking shows. He is also the proprietor of a chain of American restaurants. These include Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel in Manhattan New York; Gordon Ramsay at the Cielo in Boca Raton, Florida; and Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, California.
There is also a species of chef that are know solely for their work on television and in the media and who have never owned a restaurant nor worked as a restaurateur. These include the following American television chefs: Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, and Jeffrey Smith, whose show The Frugal Gourmet ran on the PBS network for 261 episodes.