Food TV Shows For Chef Eric Ripert and Gourmet Magazine’s Ruth Reichl

This fall, PBS will unveil two food oriented shows, one with celebrated chef Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin and the other featuring Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl.

Adventures With Ruth will debut on October 17, and will combine food and travel. The 30m show will show Reichl traveling the world visiting cooking schools with celebrities such as Frances McDormand and Lorraine Bracco. WGBH in Boston produces the series with American Airlines sponsoring the ten episodes which will also air on Gourmet’s TiVo channel and on American’s in-flight channel.

Avec Eric, Ripert’s show, will also fall under the category of more serious about food and less about the standard issue cooking competitions that dominate the airwaves.

Each episode opens with a behind-the-scenes look at one aspect of Le Bernardin—the haute seafood eatery’s saucier station, for instance—and closes with Ripert creating a masterly but manageable dish in a home kitchen.

Avec Eric represents Ripert’s first regular foray onto the small screen. Though he certainly doesn’t lack for presence, and though his culinary chops trump those of just about anyone else on TV—he has held on to his four New York Times stars for 14 years, longer than anyone else now cooking in the city—he has been slow to pick up the toque of celebrity chef. He’s doing so now, he says, because he believes his seasoned team is up to the task of handling the restaurant during his absences. “You don’t become a chef to become famous,” says Ripert, who enrolled in culinary school at 15 and landed in the kitchen of Paris’s La Tour d’Argent two years later. “You become a chef because you like cooking.

Chef Eric Ripert: Celebrities: Wmagazine.com.

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