Have you seen the billboards around town bearing the black and white picture of Colonel Harland Sanders and the subtext, “The original celebrity chef”?
Really, now. Big claim.
And a tough one to back, too, given James Beard and Julia Child were on TV long before Sanders sold his brand to John Y. Brown, Jr. and Jack Massey in 1964. Even later in that decade when Kentucky Fried Chicken was the hot restaurant food in the U.S., none of the Hollywood swells on the TV show “What’s My Line?” even recognized the cornpone character.
Yet even Louisville’s Edward Lee, a rising celebrity chef and co-owner of 610 Magnolia, says the crispy ol’ Colonel really is one, too, in a video posted to the Interwebs.
Cranking up the nostalgia machine in hopes of generating some newfound awareness for the flagging chicken brand, the video (further installments will follow) includes Lee preparing some of the Colonel’s own recipes “discovered” last year in a vault at its Gardiner Lane HQ. (Either that story is worthless as a pile of KFC cracklin’s or curators of the Colonel’s effects need white canes. Read my previous take on this discovery. )
The video was shot in 610’s Wine Studio kitchen, outfitted for the filming with period pictures of the Colonel and Kentucky Fried Chicken signage. (Methinks those won’t be hanging on the walls when next you visit.)
If you can imagine such a thing as a cooking video bereft of annoying catchphrases and gushing cleavage (Lee is a soft spoken man after all), the video is a pretty straightforward recipe demo that plays like an audition tape for a future TV gig for Lee (not criticizing, just saying). The chef bounces quickly through a potato pancake recipe of the Colonel’s without giving ingredient details since, to get those, you have to fetch a copy of the Colonel’s PDF autobiography and cookbook (available for download only at the KFC Facebook page. I started reading it last night and, while always an interesting story, those who know his story won’t find anything new.)
I have to admit that when I learned Lee was loving up with the fast-food giant, an “I’ll be damned” parted my lips. Others around town have thought nothing wrong with the Lee and KFC love up, saying the hardworking restaurateur should reap a financial reward when offered.
Others still, including some in the chef community, are calling him a sellout who preaches the virtues of local and sustainable food one day, and on another, takes part in a PR campaign for a company that is virtually symbolic of the commercial brutalization of poultry.
I wanted to ask him about that personally, but the normally frank and forthcoming Lee, who’s allowed me dozens of interviews before, declined a request for an interview:
“Would love to, however on this one I do have to defer to the PR team at YUM as it is their baby,” he wrote in an email. “I will say it is a really cool piece of Southern and American history. … We’d have to get some kind of approval to do any interview regarding the Col. Sanders Book.”
Well, I didn’t really care to talk about the book. I wanted to talk to you about promoting it, Ed.
But that’ll happen about as soon as KFC goes back to making gravy the Colonel’s way. And I understand.
Several chefs I talked to believe Lee’s partnership with KFC could be as detrimental to his career as celebrity chef Rick Bayless’s ill-fated friendship with Burger King.
A dramatic prediction, but I have my doubts.
Bayless, chef-owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago, was a much more visible and significant figure on the American culinary scene in 2007 when hired to help the burger chain develop recipes and pimp its products. Long story short, his restaurants never suffered, but his reputation was besmirched.
Lee, on the other hand, is merely modernizing some of the Colonel’s own recipes, not fooling with KFC’s grub—at least not yet. Filming it in the Wine Studio’s kitchen (610’s kitchen isn’t terribly photogenic or roomy) where there aren’t pressure fryers and breading bins at least keeps Lee’s and KFC’s brands visually separate.
His endeavors on Iron Chef (he won) and the tragically catty Top Chef (was a finalist) show he’s eager to build a national reputation, but I don’t see how experimenting with the Colonel’s recipes furthers that mission.
The bigger question for me is: What’s in it for KFC to use Lee? Why call on a Brooklyn-born, Korean descendant fine dining chef to drive attention to what the Colonel quaintly refers to in his book as “southern country cookin’”?
Why does an international fast food chicken chain choose a Louisville chef of solid culinary creds—but let’s be honest, much as I admire him, not a Bayless Chicago-chef fame pedigree yet—to represent it on this level?
It’s not as though its marketing budget is tight and it couldn’t afford a costlier cook.
So why?
Would chefs of greater renown not sign up to shill for the Colonel and KFC, or was no one else asked to do the job?
I gather I’ll learn those answers in the future, but not soon.
Meantime, enjoy the money, Ed. You’re a heck of a shrewd businessman, so I’m sure you didn’t come cheap. Heaven knows you and your ilk work hard enough as it is, so take the money and enjoy it. Life isn’t all about 80 hour weeks.
May as well nab some low-hanging fruit while it’s ripe.
Steve Coomes is a Louisville restaurant industry veteran turned food writer. In his 22-year career, he has edited and written for dozens of national trade and consumer publications including Nation's Restaurant News and Southern Living. A past restaurant critic and food feature writer for Louisville magazine, he pens features for ...
