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Salaries and "profits" from restaurant are two different things......

I think a better title would have been food celebrities as opposed to "Celebrity Chefs..."

I read through the first page of responses on the article and it blows me away how many RR lemmings there are. I am so reminded of a woman who worked for me from Biloxi. She set her TIVO to record Oprah and Dr. Phil every day we were out of town and continually quoted the two. On another forum I used to spend a lot of time on, there was a woman who continually quoted "The View".

Thank gawd I quit drinking kool-aid when I stopped going to band camp.

If Oprah endor

moral of the story.. dont believe everything you read. I work for a celebrity chef and his restaurants alone make him more than $1.5 mill a year. not to mention his book sales, endorsements, television shows and guest apparences.. and guys give RR a break!!!

Shes doing her thing, and doing it well. Go Rachel! /the sky's the limit and the ovens the transport to get you there : o

@FFC: LMAO over here...Awesome.

PerkyMac said -- "I wish Oprah would touch me!"

Dear Lord, please give me strength to ignore that comment and not say anything.

I agree with hold the mayo and others as to why Martha Stewart is not on the Forbes list, as she is a decorator, designer, etc in addition to providing recipes.
RR may not appeal to a lot of the people who would frequent a food board, but she is probably recognized by more non-foodie types than anyone else on that list, and has more commercial potential (a higher "warm and fuzzy" quotient than say, Tony Bourdain), hence the higher numbers.
I'm just sayin'.

How much of "their" restaurants do these chefs actually own? Even JGV has partners in "his" restaurants. Very few, if any of the top chefs likely own the majority of any one restaurant. No one is immune to a failed restaurant, so why should any smart chef put up too much of his own money? Sure, the chef is the draw, but someone else is putting up the vast majority of the cash, so the lion's share of any profit will USUALLY go to the money guys.

In RR's defense, and I'm not a huge fan, she has always said she's not a chef, simply a cook and someone that likes food. It's nice to see someone succeed the old fashioned way by working hard, learning as much as possible, without an expensive traditional education. That aside, Wolfgang still makes that much? And Bobby Flay isn't bringing more in on the restaurant side? Maybe it's time for him to expand....

This has to be salary from food-related activities. Todd English and Vongerichten probably award themselves a relatively small salary from their corporation, in the hundreds of thousands, and not in the millions. This say nothing about how much money their companies make or how big their expense account is...

Cyberroo, Martha got her start from a catering (and therefore cooking) perspective, not lifestyle. She definitely counts as a chef.

I'm always leary of "lists" or any type of statistics as they can be manipulated in so many ways. I concur with the earlier comments about questioning the criteria of the data.

As to RR, she definitely disdains being called a chef. She's a cooking celebrity. They mistitled the list when they included her. I like her shows but watch only very occassionally. I don't feel many cooking shows really go into the type of cooking I like, but watched many of them over the years. I'm surprised at who is missing on the list as well...where is Morimoto?

i think they should have done the report on the top earnings of chefs that don't have TV shows, or actually, don't base the scale on their TV salaries... then let's see who is on top. only by estimate restaurant earnings. that would be an interesting survey