Garten had no formal training; she taught herself culinary techniques with the aid of French and New England cookbooks. Later, she relied on intuition and feedback from customers and friends to refine her recipes. She was mentored chiefly by Eli Zabar, owner of Eli's Manhattan and Eli's Breads, and food-show host and author Martha Stewart. Among her dishes are cœur à la creme, celery root remoulade, pear clafouti, and a simplified version of bœuf bourguignon. Her culinary career began with her gourmet food store, Barefoot Contessa; Garten then expanded her activities to several best-selling cookbooks, magazine columns, self-branded convenience products, and a popular Food Network television show.
Early history and career
Born Ina Rosenberg in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Stamford, Connecticut, Garten was one of two children born to Charles H. Rosenberg, a surgeon specializing in otolaryngology, and his wife, Florence.[1] Encouraged to excel in school, she showed an aptitude for science and often won top honors in local science fairs. Garten's mother, an intellectual with an interest in opera, refused her daughter's requests to assist her in the kitchen and instead directed her to concentrate on schoolwork. Garten described her father as a lively individual with many friends, and has commented that she shares more characteristics with him than with her mother.[2] At 15, she met her future husband, Jeffrey Garten, on a trip to visit her brother at Dartmouth College.[1] After a year of exchanging letters, they began dating. After high school, she attended Syracuse University with plans to study fashion design, but chose to change her major to economics. Shortly thereafter, she postponed her educational pursuits to marry.On December 22, 1968, Rosenberg and Garten were married in Stamford, and soon relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She began to dabble in cooking and entertaining in an effort to occupy her time while her husband served his four-year military tour during the Vietnam War; she also acquired her pilot's license, according to an interview she gave to the Raleigh News & Observer.[3] After her husband had completed his military service, the couple journeyed to Paris, France, for a four-month camping vacation that Garten has described as the birth of her love for French cuisine. During this trip, she experienced open-air markets, produce stands, and fresh cooking ingredients for the first time.[4] On returning to the U.S., she began to cultivate her culinary abilities by studying the volumes of Julia Child's seminal cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.[4] Her weekly dinner party tradition began taking shape during this time, and she refined her home entertaining skills when she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C., in 1972.
In Washington, Garten worked in the White House and took business courses at George Washington University, eventually earning an MBA,[5] while her husband worked in the State Department and completed his graduate studies. Originally employed as a low-level government aide, she climbed the political ladder and was assigned the position of budget analyst, which entailed writing the nuclear energy budget and policy papers on nuclear centrifuge plants for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.[6][7]
Strained by the pressures of her work and the serious, high-power setting of Washington, Garten once again turned to cooking and entertaining in her free time, constantly arranging dinner parties and soirées at her home on the weekends. Meanwhile, she was buying, refurbishing, and reselling homes for profit ("flipping") in the Dupont Circle and Kalorama neighborhoods.[6] The profits from these sales gave Garten the means to make her next purchase, the Barefoot Contessa specialty food store.
Barefoot Contessa
Barefoot Contessa store
Garten left her government job in 1978 after spotting an ad for a 400-square-foot (37 m2) specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, New York. The store was named Barefoot Contessa. "My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn't me at all," she told The New York Times four years later.[8] She made a hasty decision to purchase the store after traveling to view it, and moved to New York to assume ownership and management. The store had been named by its original owner in tribute to the 1954 film starring Ava Gardner; Garten kept the name when she took over, as it meshed well with her idea of an "elegant but earthy" lifestyle.[dead link][9] As of 2006[update] Garten had not seen the film.[10]After a month of training with the original owner, she took over full ownership and management of the shop. Barefoot Contessa became extremely successful in short order, bolstered by Garten's sophisticated but simple dishes, her self-branded line of gourmet coffees (manufactured by Eli Zabar), and party catering services.
While doing much of the cooking herself, she employed local chefs and bakers as the business grew, including Anna Pump (who later established the Loaves & Fishes bakery and Bridgehampton Inn). Within a year, she had moved Barefoot Contessa across the street from its original location to a larger property. However, it soon outgrew this new location; in 1985, she relocated the store to the newly vacated premises of gourmet shop Dean & DeLuca in the prosperous Long Island village of East Hampton. East Hampton was a year-round community in contrast to Westhampton's beach season atmosphere, and provided a larger, wealthier demographic.
At East Hampton, she expanded the store from its original 400 square feet (37 m2) to over 3,000 square feet (280 m2), over seven times its original size. In this new, larger space, the store specialized in delicacies such as lobster Cobb salad, caviar, imported cheeses, and locally grown produce. The store quickly became a landmark gathering place for the affluent New York town, to such a point that, in 2003, director Nancy Meyers chose to use the store as one of the settings for the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton film Something's Gotta Give.[11] The shop was also praised in the press by celebrity clientele such as Steven Spielberg and Lauren Bacall. In 1996, after two decades of owning and operating, Garten again found herself seeking a change; she sold the store to two employees, Amy Forst and Parker Hodges. Unsure of what career step to take after selling the store, she took a six-month sabbatical from the culinary scene and built offices above the shop. There, she studied the stock market and attempted to sketch out plans for potential business ventures. Her website, Barefoot Contessa, became high-profile at this time as she began offering her coffees and a few other items for purchase online.
The store was permanently closed in 2004, when the lease expired on the property and negotiations failed between Garten (the owner of the building in which Barefoot Contessa was housed) and the new owners.[12] It has been reported that her refusal to meet lease negotiations was actually a method of reclaiming control of the store after Forst and Hodges lost business to Citarella, a new competitor.[13] Ultimately, she did not reopen the shop, and instead retained the property for potential new tenants.
Barefoot Contessa cookbooks
Her cookbooks avoid an encyclopedic format, and are modeled on coffee table books. With many color photographs, including a full-page picture facing each recipe, some critics argue that this method sacrifices space that could be used for recipes. Nevertheless, her cookbooks have received positive reviews; in 2005, fellow chef Giada De Laurentiis named Garten one of her favorite authors.[15] As of 2008[update], Garten's cookbooks have sold over 6 million copies combined.[16] As of 2009[update], she has published a total of six cookbooks, adding Barefoot in Paris: Easy French Food You Can Make at Home (2004), Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again (2006), and Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics (2008). Garten's latest book, Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That?, will be published in October 2010.
Barefoot Contessa on Food Network
See also: Barefoot Contessa
After the success of The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and Barefoot Contessa Parties!, Garten was approached by Food Network with an offer to host her own television cooking show. She rejected this proposal several times, until the London-based production company responsible for the popular Nigella Bites was assigned to the deal. She acquiesced to a 13-show season, and Barefoot Contessa premiered in 2002 to a positive reception. The program focuses on hearty, guest-oriented food, and Food Network found a popular hostess in the "calm, Rubenesque" Garten.[17] The press began comparing her television presence to that of her mentor, Martha Stewart, but with a softer edge and more nurturing, comforting manner. Barefoot Contessa has approximately 1 million viewers tuned in per episode, and has posted some of Food Network's highest ratings.[1][dead link][18] In 2005, the show was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in the category of Best Service Show.[dead link][19] In 2009, the show and Garten were once again nominated for Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Best Culinary Program and Best Culinary Host, and Garten won her first Emmy in the latter category.Personal life
Family, religion, and marriage
Garten is known to guard her private life closely, and declines to take part in Food Network charities and activities. Her family of origin is shielded almost completely from the spotlight; unlike her friends and colleagues, they are not featured on Barefoot Contessa. However, her road to fame and personal life were explored in the Food Network series Chefography, an hour-long documentary similar to the A&E program Biography. The show featured candid interviews with her husband, close friends, and former clients. No members of her family of origin were interviewed for Chefography.Garten is Jewish by birth and heritage, as is her husband, but rarely refers to her religion and ethnicity. It is showcased only through the inclusion of classic Jewish cooking in her television show and cookbooks, when she makes such dishes as rugelach, challah, and brisket.
Her husband, Jeffrey Garten, went on to become the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade and dean of the Yale School of Management. He is now the Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business at Yale. He can also frequently be spotted on her cooking show, assisting his wife with menial tasks or sampling the dishes she has created. They divide their time between Manhattan, East Hampton, and Paris.
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