The business of chefs on Bloomberg TV

Carey Polis of The Huffington Post writes about the latest installment of Bloomberg Television’s “Titans at the Table,” which features celebrity chefs Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Tom Colicchio and Rachael Ray.

Polis writes, “As part of Bloomberg Television’s ‘Titans At The Table’ series, Batali, Flay, Colicchio and Ray all joined host Betty Liu at Manhattan’s Upper West Side location of PJ Clarke’s for an early dinner. They spoke about their brands, passions, goals and, of course, controversies.

“In the clip above, the four ‘titans’ discuss what it’s like being both chefs and television stars. They have no time for the haters — which all of them have. Flay argues that flack comes mostly from the food industry, and it isn’t the rest of America that actually cares. In a different part of the interview not included in the clip, Colicchio responds to the criticism over his endorsement of Diet Coke. ‘No, didn’t bug me at all. I slept at night,’ he tells Liu.

“There are a lot of theories about why celebrity chef fandom seems to be at an all-time high right now. In an era of obsession over Instagram food photos, non-stop Twitter feeds (including Mr. Batali’s!) and navel-gazing food media coverage, it’s sometimes easy to forget that part of the reason that food as a subject is so popular is because there’s a lot of change happening in our food systems today. And these four individuals are part of that movement, whether they meant to be or not.”

Read more here. The episode airs on June 25.