Tom Colicchio: I Owe My Celebrity Chefdom to Cocaine!

Well, not really, but we can never resist parodying tabloid headlines.

This is what he really said in David Kamp's The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, which, with its dishy stories and Julia Child “stiff cock” anecdotes, quickly became our favorite food book of the year:

“I think chefs and restaurants became what they are today because when people finally woke up from the cocaine buzz of the eighties, they had to find another form of entertainment. The club scene was dying out, and restaurants became the new entertainment, the new opiate.”

The book also contains Chef Colicchio’s heartwarming reminiscences of being at a boozy meeting of Chefs from Hell, Unicyclists, and Acrobats—an informal club that also included superchef Thomas Keller among its members—“and laughing so much I actually threw up.”

But that’s not all. You’ll also find the answer to why Thomas Keller, who used to be Chef Colicchio’s boss at Rakel in New York City, will never be a guest judge on Top Chef—“Colicchio says he was ousted by Keller in a ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ situation, even though the two were good friends.”

And if you order in the next ten minutes, you’ll also be privy to Chef Colicchio’s admission that “the possibility of even a single failure ‘scares the hell out of me. I wake up every morning asking myself, “What the hell am I doing this for?” he says. “Do I need another restaurant? Do I need a restaurant in Dallas? Christ!” But at a certain point—I don’t know if you get addicted to the deal, but you start chasing these deals.’”

Revel as you watch Chef Colicchio bitchslap Alice Waters over a pig in Oregon! Marvel as you discover the genesis of Craftsteak! Ooh and aah at Chef Colicchio's comparisons of the 90s culinary scene to the Harlem Renaissance!

And as a special bonus, you’ll get an account of legendary New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne’s drunken dinner “at the starchy Cosmopolitan Club[, when] Claiborne, soused again, broke a lull in the conversation by suddenly blurting out, ‘When I die and they autopsy my brain, do you know what they’ll find?’ After a nervous silence, he answered his own question: ‘Pubic hair!’ Mrs. Catledge was not amused.”

Mrs. Catledge may not have been amused, but you certainly will—Order your copy today!

Julia Child's Public Drinking Exposed!

Exposed as a myth, that is.

As you have probably gathered by now, we are making our way, delicious mouthful by delicious mouthful, through David Kamp's The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, which is full of Julia tidbits. Today's finds are as follows:

"Child's antics and locutions were so alien that many viewers presumed she was drunk, respiratorily unwell, or actually French...In fact, Child was anything but sauced on the [French Chef] show. Due to budget constraints, she and the program's producers couldn't afford drinking wine for her closing toast of 'Bon appétit!' She saluted her audience not with a real glass of wine but with a glass of water darkened with GravyMaster, a coloring agent."

"Child could also be counted on to enliven that most dreaded of public-television events, the pledge drive. 'Hello, I'm Julia Child. If this goose could lay golden eggs, then we'd be all sitting pretty,' she said in one WGBH fund-raising appearance in the mid-sixties, propping up a plucked, headless bird. 'But it c-hhan't! And that's why we need your help...'"

Come to think of it, possums, it's not only the food world that owes Julia a great debt. We were musing this morning, and it came to us that Dame Edna Everage is simply inconceivable without Julia--the height, the legginess, the bouffant, the high-pitched voice, the locution, the zaniness.

Whenever we need a private chortle, we still think back to that time in the 80s when Dame Edna had Nana Mouskouri on her show. Asking the bespectacled Greek chanteuse about her divorce, Dame Edna said, "Had a Nana split, did you?" Who else would have asked that? Only Julia comes to mind.

Julia Child's Heated Rhetoric Becomes Our Hot Quote of the Day

Julia Child has always been our kind of girl.

We just never knew how much.

Until this morning, when we came across a delightful snippet from David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula. Kamp cites a letter by Julia’s husband, Paul Child, who referred to her as “Julie.” The letter was written to Paul’s brother Charlie in 1949, from Paris, and describes Julia in the kitchen. And it contains a phrase that we have now sworn to use anytime we so much as get in the vicinity of a coffeepot or radiator. We feel certain you will do the same.

“The oven door opens and shuts so fast you hardly notice the deft thrust of a spoon as she dips into a casserole and up to her mouth for a taste-check…Now & again a flash of the non-cooking Julie lights up the scene briefly, as it did the day before yesterday when with her bare fingers, she snatched a set of cannellini [beans] out of the pot of boiling water with the cry, ‘Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.’”