Here’s a SF Chronicle food article on the celebrity chef trend. “The restaurant has become a pop culture icon”, with lots of people eating out lots of the time. Various people connected to the “foodie” industry have differing opinions on why chefs have become all the rage. Mimi Sheraton, former NY Times critic, says it’s just an extension of our need to create celebrities. It’s celebrity that’s the trend, not chefs in particular. If you take a look at how those survivors of reality TV are being treated, you can see her point. Julia Child worries that chefs and diners will forget that it really should be about the food, not the cachet of a TV show. Examples of various restaurant-related TV and movie characters, such as Monica on “Friends”, are given to illustrate how glamorous the profession has become. But, alas, Jack Tripper, the struggling chef from “Three’s Company”, and those waitresses from “It’s a Living”, perhaps the pioneers in this “new” trend, are overlooked.