Stop the Insanity — Celebrity Cookbook Overload

October 18, 2011 By 9 Comments
CelebCookbooks-Rszd

Recently, I went into my local Barnes & Noble and was greeted with this sight that got me thinking…

CelebCookbooks Rszd Stop the Insanity Celebrity Cookbook Overload

Dis­play of “Best­selling Cook­books” in Barnes & Noble.

I never really noticed the plethora of “celebrity” cook­books until recently. It seems like every celebrity not only must do their nor­mal 9to9 (acting/singing/”reality show”/etc.) but they also must have a fash­ion line, a fra­grance (or more in the case of a few celebs), a beauty line, a book and, if their agent/manager can fina­gle it, a cook­book fol­lowed by a food/drink line, cookware/bakeware/homewares line, and so on and so on.

I  would see the occa­sional celeb cook­book (and I use the term “celeb” loosely since I also am includ­ing real­ity stars in that mix) and I never really paid it any mind. Lately, it seems there is more celebrity cook­books and I’m sorry – these indi­vid­u­als are not “celebrity chefs” no mat­ter how much they try to uti­lize that moniker. How­ever, the “def­i­n­i­tion of a celebrity chef” is a rant for another day. Also, I have to state for the record that I firmly believe that that are celebs that are pas­sion­ate about cook­ing and actu­ally prac­tice what they preach (Ms. Patti Labelle is one that walks the walk and talks the talk – same with Ms. Dolly Par­ton and, of course, Cook­ing Channel’s Debi Mazar and Gabrielle Cor­cos who had a blog and online cook­ing show long before it was “trendy”) but this “dis­cus­sion” isn’t about them because their recipes and actions speak volumes.

Recently a well known celebrity went on a national morn­ing show to hawk their lat­est cook­book. Dur­ing the demo, I noticed that this celeb didn’t appear to really know her own recipes or the sto­ries behind it. It was then a light­bulb clicked in my recov­er­ing pub­li­cist mind – she must have had a ghost­writer or fam­ily mem­ber put it together. This celeb had a rel­a­tive with her and that per­son caught the fum­ble and ran with it for a touch­down but I resolved then and there to NOT buy that spe­cific cook­book nor review it and, tech­ni­cally, it also made me ques­tion that celebrity’s integrity because while she’s on there hawk­ing this cook­book and say­ing she put her heart and soul into it, by all appear­ances, clearly she didn’t.

I totally get brand­ing and endorse­ments but, if you col­lab­o­rated with some­one, be hon­est. Your fans and the audi­ence would absolutely appre­ci­ate the trans­parency. This isn’t a one time sit­u­a­tion – it seems to be a many time sit­u­a­tion and she’s not the only celeb – many oth­ers are guilty of this as well. I won’t even address the whole “house­wife” drama where they put out cook­books one, after another, after another and the recipes not only leave much to be desired, but in the case of one of the book, as noticed by a dear friend, some of those “recipes” weren’t even writ­ten by that celeb but were taken from a well known cook­book with no credit, adap­tion, nada. (And, for the love of all things Julia Child, I have to say that if net­work suits give one of these house­wives a cook­ing show instead of a tal­ented chef or cook that knows their way around a kitchen, I’m really going to won­der what is wrong with the net­work and per­haps flip the chan­nel – permanently)

I have heard time and time again about how celebri­ties use ghost­writ­ers to write their nov­els, etc. and I’m sure that there are many recipe devel­op­ers that were behind the mak­ing of a celebrity cook­book. The pub­lish­ing com­pany puts the celeb’s name on it and sales are high and all involved are happy. Does that make the celeb the next Martha? In my opin­ion, def­i­nitely not. Martha Stew­art has a pas­sion for cook­ing, enter­tain­ing, etc. and has built her media empire on it. The celebrity has a dif­fer­ent legacy, in my opin­ion, and while I appre­ci­ate that some have the pas­sion for it – many often don’t and see it as yet another rev­enue tool – cour­tesy of their agent/manager/etc. They go on pro­mo­tional tours for this spe­cific cook­book and, at the end of that media blitz, it’s over and onto the next brand­ing oppor­tu­nity. There is a lucra­tive busi­ness in brand­ing – there’s no deny­ing that. If you talk to many celebrity chefs, you will see that they have a clear plan – cook­books, house­wares, linens, etc. But those celebrity chefs also deliver, in my opin­ion, and many often uti­lize their own lines in their day to day dealings.

I’ll jump off my soap­box now before I get TOO ranty – but I’m curi­ous to see what you think.

Are you YAY or NAY for Celebrity Cook­books and would you pur­chase them before you pur­chased one from an actual food per­son­al­ity (whether it’s from OWN, Food Net­work, Cook­ing Chan­nel, PBS, Bravo, etc.).

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Thoughts On This Season of Food Network Star And Why I Won’t Watch

June 20, 2011 By 1 Comment
FNS-7

FNS 7 Thoughts On This Season of Food Network Star And Why I Wont WatchThe first sea­son of Food Network’s “Next Food Net­work Star” had me at hello and, for the next few sea­sons, I would watch it with­out fail. Sure, I know the fans thought that some of the Food Net­work Celeb Chefs were being “harsh” in their crit­i­cisms but tv is a harsh busi­ness (hell, enter­tain­ment is hard – PERIOD!) I liked the con­cept, would roll my eyes appro­pri­ately at the “drama” that was edited for max­i­mum dra­matic impact and, all in all, enjoyed the show. There were a cou­ple win­ners that had me a bit baf­fled, but I sup­ported their efforts. There are some I actively rooted for (Chef Aaron for one), some that had some seri­ously good fash­ion sense that mer­its a nod of the stiletto (Ser­ena Palumbo, Lisa Garza) and some that were SO pas­sion­ate about their love for food and cook­ing that they also got their own shows even if they didn’t win (i.e. Kelsey Nixon, Jef­frey Saad, etc.)

The long and the short of it is – I enjoyed Next Food Net­work Star – until now.

On the night of the pre­miere, I was under dead­line and set the DVR. Well, thanks to that lovely Pandora’s Box of Dis­trac­tion – Twit­ter – I noticed that my time­line was even more active than usual about the newly branded “Food Net­work Star” aka #STAR. Hmmmm… what has every­one in a tizzy, I won­dered. Appar­ently there was WAY more drama this sea­son and peo­ple were loos­ing their minds over a few of the Cheftes­tants… so I resigned to put my writ­ing to the side and see what the fuss was all about…

As expected, they go through the usual Cheftes­tant intros which, IMO, had even more ego fluff­ing than usual – some I was fully aware of and have noticed around the var­i­ous chal­lenges, etc and some had that des­per­ate “Look at me! Pick Me!” type of look that could make a viewer wince in embar­rass­ment. I went back to writ­ing while keep­ing one eye on the screen and that’s when I saw it – a Cheftes­tant, Penny, decided that she was going to have a show “STILETTOS IN THE KITCHEN” – I about lost my dag­gone my mind and imme­di­ately deleted the show from the DVR. (Side­note: I have had more than enough drama deal­ing with Cook­ing In Stilet­tos copy­cats and vari­a­tions for some time now and have the headache to prove it. Do peo­ple NOT do their research??). One thing that really both­ered me was that there already is a fab Stilet­tos In The Kitchen and you can even find her book, Stilet­tos in the Kitchen (The Mod­ern Girl’s Guide to Being Domes­tic God­dess) Thoughts On This Season of Food Network Star And Why I Wont Watch, on Ama­zon. What the hell were the Food Net­work Pro­duc­ers think­ing by not even researching?

After hear­ing quite a few com­ments the next day, some­one for­warded me Penny’s Face­book Page and, lo and behold – no more Stilet­tos in The Kitchen – her Face­book page was called “CHEF IN STILETTOS.” Well, there already is a Stiletto Chef - Top Chef’s Can­dice Kumai (who can cook cir­cles around Penny, be gra­cious, rock a KILLER stiletto and is far from snarky – thanky­ou­very­much!). All in all, the lack of orig­i­nal­ity on a culi­nary point of view just really pushed my buttons.

So, with all that I have heard from this sea­son from mus­ings from fans and friends alike, clearly, I am not miss­ing much. 3 shows in and Penny is play­ing the role of vil­lain to the hilt – (and c’mon – she can’t blame all of that on edit­ing. It’s well known that the cam­era takes what you give, includ­ing your con­fes­sional dia­tribes. View­ers are not fooled). Lis­ten – I’m fully aware that shows are edited for that dra­matic fac­tor (Real House­wives any­one?) but I also know that as more of these “shows” are put together, the con­cept of “real­ity” can be lost in trans­la­tion. There are shows that are faux scripted, there are shows that have pro­duc­ers manip­u­lat­ing the out­come, and, yes, there are shows that have jumped the shark and lost all con­cept of real­ity. I can think of a plethora of other chefs that would have been great on Food Net­work Star, i.e. Bren of Flan­boy­antEats, Alex Lopez – the Food Diva, Jaden of Steamy Kitchen – way too many to mention!

So, for this sea­son, I’m going to have to take a pass. I’ll get my recaps over at Food Net­work Humor and, per­haps, maybe the pro­duc­ers will think before they cast next sea­son and look for more peo­ple that are “authen­tic” instead of drama queens.

What are your thoughts on this season’s Food Net­work Star?  Are you watching?

(Photo cour­tesy of Food Network)

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How Barnes & Noble Broke My Heart For The Last Time

November 20, 2010 By 3 Comments

Ever since I was young, I have been enam­ored by books – I could read day in and day out, even sneak­ing my books and a flash­light to bed in the hopes of find­ing out just what was going to hap­pen to Laura Ingalls or some other book I hap­pened to be obsessed with.  My mother will tell you about the time that one of the nuns at Holy Cross called her con­cerned because I pre­ferred to read on the play­ground at recess.  Look­ing back, I real­ize that it was either read and enjoy MY time or con­tem­plate smack­ing one of the many annoy­ing boys in my class – what was safer, in your opin­ion?  Thought so.  Any way you look at it, read­ing was my win­dow into other worlds – and through recre­ational read­ing, I was able to actu­ally expand my horizons.

Cur­rently, there’s a like­li­hood that you will find not only an e-reader loaded with some of my favorite authors but also the lat­est issue of Fine Cook­ing or some other culi­nary mag­a­zine in my often over­sized and stuffed to the brim purse – just in case I have a sec­ond to steal away. On my com­mute, I lis­ten to e-books when I don’t feel like lis­ten­ing to Danny Bona­duce “life-coach”, the lat­est rants from Chio and don’t even get me started on Philly radio.   In today’s day of com­put­ers and con­stant work, read­ing – at least for me – is an escape and some­thing I don’t do enough of.    

[Read more…]

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Anthony Bourdain Might Be Onto Something

July 16, 2010 By 2 Comments
Like many, I’m cur­rently engrossed in Anthony Bourdain’s lat­est book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valen­tine to the World of Food and the Peo­ple Who Cook Anthony Bourdain Might Be Onto Something and he might have an idea that I believe cur­rent school dis­tricts might want to pay atten­tion to.
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Grow­ing up, I have to con­fess, I didn’t do much cook­ing, if any.  My first recipe I remem­ber mak­ing on my own was a home­made lasagna made from a recipe off of the side of the pasta box.  My par­ents gave praise but look­ing back and remem­ber­ing my con­coc­tion of spices that I “added to the recipe,” I think my par­ents were being WAY too kind (much like when my friends and I regaled the par­ents with Bar­bie Cabaret Shows that I think I charged admis­sion to and they sat through patiently).  I remem­ber some other kitchen exper­i­ments that were attempted over the years and I’m pos­i­tive now that per­haps my idiot fiancée was cor­rect in his assump­tion that my cook­ing skills were *ahem* a bit chal­lenged (well in his words I was the worst cook to ever come near a stove but then again, he wasn’t so great either!)  Over the years, it was eas­ier to call take out than rather try to put together some­thing more chal­leng­ing than a box of mac & cheese and I admit that it wasn’t until I really started to develop an inter­est in cook­ing that I learned that I do, indeed, have a skill set for cook­ing and even some­times bak­ing.  Does that mean I’m going to open a restau­rant or some­thing along that lines – not in the least.  I leave that for the more sea­soned and trained professionals.
 
One thing I DON’T remem­ber from grow­ing up is tak­ing a cook­ing class.  While I’m sure my high school had Home Eco­nom­ics at some point or another, per­haps it was one of those elec­tives where I chose to take Span­ish (or per the direc­tive of my father – Latin) and I just didn’t see the need for learn­ing how to cook, properly vac­uum or sew.  At the time of grad­u­a­tion, I wasn’t think­ing of any­thing out­side of pos­si­bly being an enter­tain­ment lawyer (trust me, I got smarter as I got older and learned – hell to the no!) and lawyers don’t cook – they don’t have time.  I also remem­ber think­ing high school didn’t pre­pare us for much of any­thing – sure we could read and write and pos­si­bly add 2 + 2 and get 4 but I didn’t real­ize that Alge­bra would be vital for bal­anc­ing a check­book or Chem­istry would be much like cook­ing.  Long story short, I prob­a­bly could burn water if I tried.
 
Anthony Bour­dain talks about the need for chil­dren to learn to cook and how cook­ing received a bad rap.  Many of the boys wouldn’t dare take home ec due to ridicule and the stigma, while girls were expected to thrive in their “house­wife train­ing” class so, there­fore, many girls decided to protest.  If the boys didn’t have to take it, why shouldn’t the girls and the school dis­tricts caved, many not requir­ing their stu­dents to take home eco­nom­ics.  He pro­poses a manda­tory cook­ing skill set for chil­dren to learn that way they can fend for them­selves when they get older rather than rely­ing on restau­rant din­ing and takeout. 
The pro­posed culi­nary skills that chil­dren should learn include: 
  • Proper knife skills
  • How to roast a chicken
  • How to make a vinaigrette
  • How to shop for and select produce
  • How to make soups and stocks (there­fore adding fru­gal skills to the table)
  • How to filet and cook a fish
  • How to cook veg­eta­bles properly
Of course there is way more than that but I think he might be onto some­thing.  These are all skills I’m learn­ing NOW and I’m well into my 30s.  Some­where, Julia Child is lis­ten­ing and nod­ding in agree­ment, I think.
 
What skills and tech­niques do you think today’s chil­dren should learn that you did not know grow­ing up?
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Barnes & Noble.com: EPIC FAIL!

November 4, 2009 By 3 Comments

First of all, can I tell you how red in the face I am – seri­ously I’m livid.  It’s my birth­day for cryin’ out loud and I shouldn’t have to wage war AGAIN with Barnes & Noble’s inept cus­tomer ser­vice cen­ter for their idiocy.

Some back­ground.  I’ve been a loyal B&N cus­tomer for YEARS.  I’ve held the mem­ber­ship faith­fully.  I buy a TON of books, DVDs, etc.  I often enjoy the website’s inter­views, etc. and make a point to buy all my mag­a­zines there.  Need­less to say they make a good sum of funds off me.  I’ve noticed that recently my orders have been *ahem* shall we say slow.  Now one of the perks of buy­ing a cer­tain amount online is “Free Super Saver Ship­ping” which you could set your clock by – 3 busi­ness days or so and *boom* it’s in my hands.  Which is great like when I want to review Jaden’s fabu new cook­book “Steamy Kitchen” and I am look­ing for­ward to the UPS guy knock­ing on the door with that gor­geously shot book (yes I leafed through a copy in the store – I couldn’t wait).  I also ordered the Foodie Hand­book by the one and only Pim.  Can we say I’m crazy stoked about both of these books – both of which I put back in antic­i­pa­tion of the order com­ing to my mailbox. 

Well – it’s two weeks later and, guess what – not one but TWO orders are “lost in the mail”.  That’s my orig­i­nal order AND the order that they issued as a replace­ment for the first one that is “M.I.A” from a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in NEW JERSEY – the next flip­pin’ state over.

When I called with con­cern at the end of the week last week to find out what the heck is going on because well, you just can’t get track­ing from their inept dis­trib­u­tor ARGIX DIRECT, they informed me that there were a few com­plaints and that the replace­ment would ship out via UPS to me from now on as I’m a mem­ber who has been with them for years.  The B&N oper­a­tor was very under­stand­ing and also told me that she was hav­ing prob­lems per­son­ally with this dumb as rocks (my descrip­tion – NOT hers) ARGIX DIRECT.   She assured me it would ship out post haste and I again waited patiently for the lit­tle present to come to the door.  Now, mind you my Sephora order came and that I ordered SUNDAY NIGHT via UPS.  The UPS here in Philly rocks!  Love them (which, if you know me is quite the event because UPS in Orlando and New Hamp­shire seri­ously sucked!)

Well, I get an email from B&N which tells me that it reshipped my replace­ment order and *wait for it* it went via ARGIX DIRECT via US MAIL.  AGAIN – from New Jer­sey – next state over.  Shipped out and *boom* guess what – it’s lost in the mail again and we can’t find ANY track­ing info for it because B&N and/or ARGIX dropped the flip­pin’ ball.  What hap­pened to “Ms. Lys – we’re going to ship it to you ASAP through UPS so you won’t have this prob­lem again“

Need­less to say, I lost my patience today when I had to talk to this gal “Cecile” or what­ever who not only told me my address was wrong (news­flash – I changed it imme­di­ately when I moved and it’s on all my receipts so check your flip­pin’ screen dummy because the gal prior to you knew the right address) and then told me “ohhh – it’s got to be lost”.  When I told her I just renewed my mem­ber­ship and I wanted it can­celed and refunded – no go.  She begrudg­ingly refunded my order cost for both books and I told her that we’re hav­ing a hell of a breakup.  This is no Ross/Rachael Friends Breakup – this is the real deal as in don’t call me, don’t email me, lose my damn num­ber we are O.V.E.R.  Seri­ously – OVER.  Which is sad and hurts me deeply because I really did love going to B&N and brows­ing the aisles.  Now, it’s all Bor­ders & Borders.com which is 20 min. out of the way for me but to prove my point, I’ll do it. 

So Barnes & Noble – I don’t believe a word of what you say any­more.  Clearly, while I know you are “cut­ting costs” by using this sup­pos­edly cheaper ARGIX DIRECT ser­vice, you just lost a very loyal (and prof­itable) cus­tomer.  I’ve put up with your lack of chang­ing mag­a­zines, lack of stock in the Ply­mouth Meet­ing Store, etc. because to me B&N has been a part of my shop­ping loy­alty since I was in col­lege.  I just can’t sit by and say “Oh it’s okay” because really it’s not.  What you are doing to cus­tomers is dis­ap­point­ing.  So, here’s where I tell you pub­licly (and my read­ers) – do NOT buy the mem­ber­ship – it’s not worth it.  And, that’s money I will never see again but I’m sure you will need that $25 because you will lose more cus­tomers than me by year’s end if you keep this inept ship­ping dis­trib­u­tor.  Clearly, ARGIX has proved itself to be use­less in my eyes not once but TWICE.  Go figure.

So excuse me while I head over to BORDERS to go buy the Foodie Hand­book and Steamy Kitchen at FULL PRICE because, you know what, Bor­ders has NEVER did me wrong like you have Barnes & Noble.  And I’m sure they will wel­come my busi­ness (and wal­let) with open arms.

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The Break-Up: Sur La Table — It’s Over.

January 9, 2009 By 8 Comments

I rarely, RARELY, ever speak ill of what I regard as my cook­ing Mecca – that being Sur La Table. How­ever, after what I went through last night, Sur La Table and I are break­ing up.

I’ve dis­closed before that when I get their cat­a­logs, I pore over it like it’s the lat­est issue of Vogue. I bought my Global knives there. I first fell in love with (and later took home) my Caribbean Le Creuset pieces via Sur La Table. Sur La Table has been my “online go to spots” for research here for Cook­ing in Stilet­tos. Not to men­tion, the price dif­fer­ence between here and Williams Sonoma is astro­nom­i­cal. Sadly, the near­est Sur La Table is 3 hours away. They haven’t built one in Orlando yet (and, last I heard, it will be QUITE some time). And, when I travel, I always research where Sur La Table is and if I have time to go, often leav­ing room in the suit­case to store the good­ies I find. The Sur La Table in New Jer­sey knows me well.

I placed a sub­stan­tial order on their site yes­ter­day, namely being the Lotus San­i­tiz­ing Sys­tem that I’ve talked about here before, a mar­ble pas­try board that I needed this week­end, a donut cut­ter that Diana @ The Chic Life rec­om­mended some great deals on bak­ing sheets and the apron I’ve been lust­ing after. I would have added more but I thought “eeeh – I still have the remain­der of the gift card that I need to use at WS. I’ll per­haps use it on the Bre­ville Cord­less Blender I’ve been eyeing.”

The key fac­tor to this drama is that I needed the pas­try board for this week­end. See, the Mar­ble Pas­try board at Williams Sonoma is $129.00. I was hes­i­tant to buy it but fig­ured I had to. You can’t find a good mar­ble pas­try board here in OTown at a decent price. At Sur La Table it was on sale for $32. That’s a HUGE dif­fer­ence. So, know­ing that, I fig­ured I’d upgrade to overnight ship­ping and have it sent to the 9to5. It was an extra $25 but I felt it was worth it with what I would have spent at Williams Sonoma. I couldn’t ship it to my house because we’re hav­ing prob­lems at our apart­ment com­plex with deliv­er­ies – namely UPS leaves the stuff on the truck, marks it deliv­ered and we don’t get it until 2 – 3 days after. We’ve com­plained and UPS gives every­one the same excuse, “We’re sorry – it got mixed up with the Dis­ney pack­ages”. I’d rather not have ANYTHING shipped there if I can avoid it.

My gut instinct, how­ever, kept bug­ging me last night and I called Sur La Table to check on the sta­tus of the order. I nor­mally would get a track­ing num­ber by evening. Williams Sonoma does it. Barnes & Noble does it. Other retail­ers do it. It was now around 8 and I had received nada, nil, nothing.

By chance, I encoun­tered Char­maine in the call cen­ter. All started off okay until she told me “Well, it should be shipped tomor­row.” Wait a minute – overnight means OVERNIGHT! Then she tells me that their overnight is, tech­ni­cally, two days. Well con­sid­er­ing that my ship­ping is about $50, we need to rec­tify that mess quickly – as in can­cel. She told me she couldn’t do ANYTHING and that I’d have to do it at 8:00 but there was the chance that the order could be filled and shipped by that time. To make the sit­u­a­tion every worse, I found that the woman was rude, con­de­scend­ing and just pissed me the hell off.

Yes, I flipped into cable cop mode whereby I told her to let me speak and then I’ll let her speak. Do. Not. Inter­rupt. Me. She goes ‘Well you inter­rupted me!’ Wait another flip­pin’ minute – I paused, recounted the con­ver­sa­tion in my head, could not not recall one inter­rup­tion, refused to put up with her atti­tude and shut. her. down. The next thing she heard was “Char­maine, I want to speak to your Super­vi­sor – NOW“.

Her super­vi­sor, Theresa, and I had a “Come to Jesus” talk. It was more than the ship­ping con­fu­sion (a nor­mal def­i­n­i­tion of overnight vs. their def­i­n­i­tion) or the need for this pas­try board. The rea­son for the “The Break Up” is and for­ever will be the crappy cus­tomer ser­vice exhib­ited by Char­maine. Theresa assured me that she would address Charmaine’s issues imme­di­ately and that she would do what she could to can­cel my order. How­ever, to be safe, I should call Cus­tomer Ser­vice in the morn­ing. She did every­thing she could on her end to try to help the sit­u­a­tion which, thanks to Char­maine, esca­lated well beyond what should have been done. She was beyond pleas­ant – DID NOT INTERRUPT ME and under­stood that I seri­ously was see­ing red. While I can get cranky, this was worse than when I shut someone’s cable off and they called me the “C” word. (They were steal­ing cable – where does that make me the bad guy for doing my job, right?)

This morn­ing, I had a quick break from the daily duties where I could give Sur La Table a quick call to make sure the order was can­celled. I wanted that money refunded stat. I resigned myself to the fact that instead of using that Williams Sonoma gift card for a por­tion of the Bre­ville blender or the Emile Henry Pie Plate or other good­ies I wanted, I HAD to spend it on that pas­try board and then take a hit for an addi­tional $100.

Well, Sur La Table’s rep, Jes­sica, answered the phone and I told her to can­cel the order. She told me I’d receive it on Mon­day and I told her “No. Just can­cel the order.” She talked to her super­vi­sor and again asked what she should do. Again, I had to tell her to CANCEL IT! She told me that if it had been placed at 1:00 EST it would have been sent but I placed it around 3:00 EST. OK – where does it say that on the web­site? It doesn’t. While I admit that I am blond, I do tend to notice these things and, if I had seen it, I wouldn’t have placed the order. Plain and sim­ple and Sur La Table and I would have been fine. The con­tin­ued lack of fol­low­ing a clear and explicit com­mand was astound­ing. What part of CANCEL THE ORDER does Sur La Table not get? No part of expla­na­tion by a CSR on their part can over­ride Charmaine’s actions. That’s the main issue.

Long story short, due to Charmaine’s actions, I just can’t sup­port Sur La Table any­more. So, it’s my deci­sion that until fur­ther notice, I’m not going to rec­om­mend them, fea­ture their prod­ucts here on Cook­ing in Stilet­tos, give them any link love on either of my sites and their cat­a­logs will go unopened. The two new Sur La Table cook­books I was plan­ning to buy will not be pur­chased. I will buy only from other online retail­ers i.e. Fantes, Cooking.com, Chefs, Jacobs Kitchen, Dean & Deluca, etc. I will pur­chase that Lotus Sys­tem through Chefs. I will send cus­tomers locally to Le Gourmet Chef, the Pre­mier Out­lets, Crate & Bar­rel and Williams-Sonoma. What was Sur La Table’s loss is now other culi­nary retail­ers’ gain.

Sur La Table not only lost a sub­stan­tial sale, but a long time fan and cus­tomer. Quite sim­ply, I am heart­bro­ken because they truly were my favorite store.

This con­tent is pub­lished at Cook­ing in Stilet­tos. Thank you!
share save 171 16 The Break Up: Sur La Table Its Over.
Filed Under: Guilty of Idiocy, Rant, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma

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