Learn How to Create Success By Studying Chanel No 5 Marketing

How to achieve fame and fortune are often wrapped in mystery as if they just magically happen because of talent alone. Actually, they often occur because a product has been successful marketed. 

And no one markets better than the House of Chanel. Now, for the first time, they have released a video that explains how (and why) Chanel become a legend. 

Top Chefs, like leading fashion designs, also understand that it is NOT ingredients that sell, but the experience they generate with them. No one praises the salad greens, they praise, intead, the evening, the memory of dining at ..... (?)

POST NOTE, October 8: For further evidence that major marketing rebranding is afoot, check out the following:

Disney's "I Am a Princess" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUGnu0gXtn4

Louis Vuitton's shift to a no-logo logo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qhl0_HUMYc

 Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012  

A New Wine Movie to Premiere at 2012 Napa Valley Film Festival

On November 7, 2012 the Napa Valley Film Festival will launch its second year as a must-attend event. That gotta-be-there feeling is especially true this year as the Festival will be screening a new wine film, SOMM. 

SOMM (slang for “sommelier”) follows four very talented young sommeliers as they get ready for the grueling, notoriously difficult Master Sommelier exam. 

The exam, which only 200 people in the world have ever passed, requires a stunning knowledge of everything to do with the pairing of wine and food on a global level.

The film is well worth seeing for it serve as a reminder that the life we desire always takes dedication and courage to achieve. In short, never drink alone or in ignorance!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012  

France Premieres New Culinary Film LES SAVEURS DU PALASIS

Opening in European film festivals (and soon we hope in the U.S.) is a stunning new food film, Les Saveurs du Palasis, based on Daniele Delpeuch’s experiences as Francois Mitterrand’s personal palace chef. 

We should say loosely based, for as always, there are additions and subtracts from the actual story. But be that as it may, you will surely be intrigued by the female lead.  

We first meet Hortense Laborie, (the character based on Ms. Depeche’s amazing life) in Antarctica. Yes, Antarctica, not Paris, where she is cooking for a group of appreciative but very isolated scientists. At first glance it does not seem she could possibly have walked the glided corridors of French presidential power.

But she did and often (at least initially) without support. She was a woman unwelcomed in a professional world of men. She did not wear a towering toque nor a chef's white jacket. Yet she worked, created and finally won the respect of her many male colleagues.

It is a marvelous film - a visual feast for the eyes and with good reason. The film’s culinary presentations were created by top professionals - Chef Gérard Besson (formerly at Le Coq Héron), Chef Guy Leguay (previously at The Ritz) and Culinary Stylist/Chef Elisabeth Scotto (of Elle Magazine).

From the beginning the film’s director Christian Vincent wanted the French actress Catherine Frot to play the role of Hortense, knowing she was perfect for the role.

She was exactly the same age as the character, with a genuine, practical side that suited the role perfectly. Her persona is natural, believable in either a country market or a palace kitchen. 

Today Daniele Delpeuch lives and teaches in her beloved Périgord region, where she promotes traditional cuisine and indigenous ingredients including truffles, truffles, truffles – oh, how we love them.

If you are in France, consider studying with her – you will marvel at the dishes you create and the conversations you will have.

But whether or not, your feet land on French soil, be sure to see this film when it comes to your neighborhood. It truly captures the spirit, the flame and flavor that is the craft and magic of French cuisine.  

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012  

Old Is New in Food Ads and US Politics

It seems the world is a swirl with crisis and violent protest when peace would serve us all so much better.

Yet hate and prejudice are sadly nothing new. Great writers from Twain to Tolstoy have documented the lost such actions create.

Now even major food producers are asking consumers, through humor, to remember and consider the cost of hate and blind bias. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (and Kraft Foods), however, don’t have the final word on this subject. Americans have heard during the current election season a constant (but weakly documented) attack on the many benefits of mature government.

Maybe the best response to such a shortsighted barrage, a la The Scarlet Letter Mayonnaise Ad, is this memorable scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian:

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012 

911 Remembered

It was a day of horror that none of us within the Hospitality Industry will ever forget. Hundreds of our colleagues, whose only crime was to go to work to create, to serve, were killed for no reason except to justify hate. 

Yet as time passes it is so easy to remember only the pictures that broke our hearts of falling steel and explosing flames and forget the faces. 

We must not forget our many friends and colleagues who worked within the Towers. Each and every one of them had a name. Catherine Hernandez has not forgotten.

She has said this, "My father, Norberto, was a pastry chef at Windows on the World in Tower One.

"For ten years, he made many fancy and famous desserts, but the sweetest dessert he made was the marble cake he made for us at home...

"Whenever we parted, Poppi would say, 'Te amo. Vaya con Dios.'

"I want to say the same thing to you, Poppi. I love you. Go with God." 

If you can, call for a silent moment this September 11th and ask your staff to pause for a minute or two to remember these remarkably talented members of our Industry - how much they loved what they were doing and how we each have a responsibility to carry their legacy forward into a better world, one that we are creating by what we do each and every day. 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012