Rachael Ray is promoting her new book, "Just in Time!"
(Globe Staff Photo / John Bohn)
In front of the fireplace at Toro in the South End, the crowd at one of the communal tables is carrying on. Guests are throwing back cava, tipped high over their mouths from glass porrones. Owner Ken Oringer is running back and forth from this table to the kitchen with heaping plates of haute tapas. This isn't an ordinary celebration, it turns out. The group is eating with TV cooking personality Rachael Ray.
The saucy, catch-phrase-spouting Food Network star is in town to promote "Just in Time!," her latest book on quick cooking (her 14th), and to groupie for her husband, John Cusimano, whose band the Cringe is playing at the Revolution Rock Bar in the Financial District. Ray, standing just to the side of the action, is clutching her cellphone and chatting with one of the band's backup singers about her beloved pit bull, Isaboo.
As it happens, we have plans to meet the following morning for brunch. When I sit down with Cusimano and Ray at XV Beacon, I'm expecting Ray's cheerleading television personality, the raspy-voiced go-getter cook who drops food on the floor and giggles at her own jokes. In person, she's not a kid's birthday party clown, but rather street-smart, sarcastic, bossy, and witty.
Ray orders a grapefruit without the sabayon sauce that accompanies it - "nothing fancy," she says - along with a well-done three-egg Denver omelet (ham and cheese). The Dunkin' Donuts huckster tells the waiter to keep the coffee coming. Cusimano orders wiener schnitzel and we talk about dogs. She cooks for Isaboo and let's her sleep in the couple's bed.
She's a die-hard Red Sox fan, and in 2006 she threw out the first pitch from the real mound, with some real heat, right into Jason Varitek's mitt. She's funny, quick to smile, and really listens. She doesn't utter a single "yum-o," "delish," or "heads-up guys."
Ray says that her mom's last name, Scuderi, means donkey cart (she's Sicilian on her mother's side, Cajun on her father's) and that's how Ray is happiest working. "I'm not comfortable relaxing." Last year she edited her lifestyle magazine and shot 285 TV episodes. She does "30 Minute Meals" and "Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels" for the Food Network. On a third show, "The Rachael Ray Show," part of Oprah's production company, she cooks and dishes with celebrities. Last year she was ranked number 66 on the Forbes
In the seven years since she joined the Food Network, Ray's message - that people should "be able to cook even if they don't have tons of time or money," she says - has made her a household name and sold millions of books and magazines. At the same time, the seemingly ditzy 39-year-old with the suburban mall clothes and limitless exuberance has polarized the food world.
It seems nobody is ambivalent about Ray. On the Internet, she is widely criticized for dumbing down culinary technique and shamelessly plugging Nabisco and Dunkin'. Her worst critics use her name as shorthand for what's wrong with America's food culture, mocking her smile and her tendency to turn everything into burgers. The spelling of her first name and all of the affected expressions - EVOO, sammies, stoups - annoy them. Do they know she's published a list of her own "Rachael-isms," which includes "How good is that?"
To her millions of fans, Ray is a lifesaver, a trusted virtual pal always there for a pep talk and to help put good food on the table. And it's not just home cooks who turn to her. Celebrity chefs like Mario Batali and Oringer are fans. "She's so energetic, she loves what she does, and she brings people together through food," says Oringer. "That's what we all live for."
Some critics may be surprised to learn that Ray knows her way around the kitchen. When she's not on TV, she says she's throwing pots and pans around at home. She and Cusimano live in a lofty apartment on 12th Street in New York's Greenwich Village, where they grill on a roof deck that has elaborate vegetable gardens.
Off the air, she shops at the neighborhood gourmet stores and the Union Square Greenmarket and seems much more excited about oil-cured olives and Roman chicory than a sugar coated munchkin. "I only go out if I have to," she says.
Her husband prefers to stay at home. "Once she starts in on a cuisine," he says, "she ruins me for restaurants. Italy is done. France is done. There's nothing left." The two use what they call a "36-hour rule" for staying in the city. "If we have more than 36 hours off we go home," she says, which is a rustic cabin in the Adirondacks near Lake George. Before she began her TV career, she worked as a buyer for a gourmet store in suburban Albany and rented the cabin for $550 a month. When she started teaching 30-minute meals to reluctant cooks at the store, she became a local celebrity. That led to a cookbook, an appearance on the Today show, and eventually the Food Network.
As soon she could afford it, she bought the cabin, reupholstered the furniture, laid down stone paths, built fire pits, and put in an outdoor fireplace.
To tape "The Rachael Ray Show," she's driven from Greenwich Village in a hybrid car to a studio near Grand Central Station. There's a waiting list of 120,000 people to fill the audience of 120 seats. Last Thursday morning, I watch as Ray, almost too hoarse to talk, first puts on a smile and chats cheerfully with actress Jennifer Garner. Then she goes right into her TV cooking persona. She gets behind the stove to whip up braised short ribs with Parmesan polenta and pomegranate gravy. The meat browns, the polenta bubbles, and the "30-minute girl" seems to go giddy with thoughts of meat falling off the bone. "I should do more long cooking," she says, then plates her meal.
"That's dinner!" she screams. "It doesn't get any better than this!"
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
