Tales of a Food Stylist

About author / Lauren Braun Costello

The competent cook; food stylist; cooking instructor; graduate French Culinary Institute. To die for dish? Maple glazed bacon wrapped roast turkey. Yep, bacon wrapped.

How does Emeril make all that food for Good Morning America so early in the morning? Well, matter of factly, he doesn’t. Most chefs of fame and stature do not have the time to arrive at a network at 5:00 AM to prepare a chicken caesar salad. Instead, a food stylist arrives before dawn – possibly preparing much of the ingredients the night before – to make magic. I am one of those unseen “ghost chefs” who works behind the scenes on live TV shows, taped segments and photoshoots.

How It All Began
Immediately following graduation from the French Culinary Institute in New York, I had a brief but significant meeting with the job placement officer there. I informed her that I had launched a catering company, but I was eager to work as a freelancer to make extra money and gain valuable experience. A job posting had just crossed her desk that afternoon for a two-day position assisting renowned health-conscious chef Michel Nischan at a press event for Stonyfield Farms yogurt. It paid only $100 for a full day’s work, but that was $100 more a day than I would make sitting at home. I called the company’s head chef and got the job.

Michel Nischan was very good to me, and I owe my entire entrée into the styling world to him. We met; he liked my work, and trusted me enough to send me the very next day to CNN. The task was to make a taco for a live news broadcast about healthy airline food (Michel was then the head chef consultant to Delta’s Song division). Not knowing the proper protocol, or what was really expected of me other than to follow the recipe and present it well, I arrived at the CNN studio wearing shorts and flip flows with a shopping bag of food in hand.

Another chef from another airline was there as well, wearing chef’s whites (chef’s jacket and checkered pants) with two massive coolers packed with prepared branded food. Unphased by all these clues, I proceeded to assemble Michel’s taco on the nearest available flat space – which just happened to be the anchor’s desk. A younger and not yet famous Andersen Cooper asked me what I was doing, as if to politely implore, “must you do this on my desk?” Even with all these missteps, the live segment was a hit, the food looked good, Michel was pleased and I had successfully completed my first live TV food styling job.

Michel sent me to many other networks to represent his work. I prepared vegetable maki photographed for the Boston Globe, which was picked up the International Herald Tribune. Then when Michel’s first cookbook hit the stands, he asked me to work on his satellite media tour. This was the real launch pad for my food styling career.

A Whirlwind Tour
A satellite media tour (“SMT”) is quite a ride. It enables a person or product to “tour” up to several dozen media markets around the country in one morning, from a single location. When Michel wanted to promote his book, we were stationed in a studio in New York, and he was patched into one after the other of several news markets across the country. If you live in a smaller city (for example, Wichita or Akron come to mind) you may have seen a split screen of your local news anchor talking to someone who is joining them “live via satellite” from another location, such as New York or LA. That’s a satellite media tour.

For a chef, an SMT is quite a difficult task, especially if he is going to demo a recipe at each stop. Sometimes, there are as little as two minutes in between each interview, so someone as to help swap out the old demo ingredients and equipment for the new. Also, someone is responsible for the look and feel of the plates, platters, equipment and food. For Michel’s SMT, that person was me. Michel’s public relations team was pleased with my work, so they called me for other jobs, for example an SMT for Splenda.

In the media industry, one successful job most definitely leads to the next. Over the years, I have worked for Sandra Lee (of Food Networks’ Semi Home Made), the Sonoma Diet, the Tony Danza Show, CBS This Morning and The View. Recently, I styled the food for a major pharmaceutical ad, and I served as the culinary producer for Michel’s new TV show, Pure and Simple on the Lime TV network.

Faking It
Don’t believe everything you see on TV. Whether for TV or still photography, food styling always has an element of illusion, if not deception. Once I was asked to do a live segment for Bacardi with nutritionist-to-the-stars, Oz Garcia. We wanted to show lots of frothy frozen drinks made with the product. Fox & Friends wanted to do the segment outdoors next to its studio on West 48th Street in New York.

With no option for electricity (and no real desire to haul a blender across town at 5 AM), I vigorously stirred yogurt with water to make what looked like a piña colada. No one had to drink it – it only had to look like a frothy, delicious piña colada for TV. With a slice of fresh pineapple planted on the rim and a tall straw in the glass, no one ever knew. When the segment was over, one of the pages asked if he could sample the drink. He was summarily disappointed when I informed him what the concoction really was.

Other tricks of the styling trade can be equally unappetizing. Brown shoe polish can make blotchiness on a roasted turkey disappear. Spraying four-hour old filet mignon with Pam makes it look red and juicy all over again on set. Even though I have never done it, my colleagues tell me that mashed potatoes make the best looking ice cream in ad campaigns. So do not be discouraged if your Thanksgiving turkey does not look like the one in the ad. Looks are not everything – as I guarantee that yours tastes better!

In an upcoming article, I will offer some tips on how you can style food at home to look like it comes from the pros!