Chef, artist and professional bon vivant
Bob Blumer is one of today’s most imaginative food personalities.
Whether he is taping his Food Network show in his gleaming
Toastermobile, or concocting new recipes in his own kitchen,
Blumer transforms common ingredients into wow-inspiring dishes
through whimsical presentations and unusual cooking methods
that have become his culinary trademark. His artful approach
to cooking, confidence-inspiring instructions, and contagious
enthusiasm have endeared him to a loyal following who tune
in to his weekly half-hour show, frequent his cooking classes
and appearances, and collect his books.
Bob’s culinary career started like an accidental gas
explosion in 1992. During a break from his job managing and
traveling the globe with musicians, he channeled his passion
for cooking and his knack for living well beyond his means
into The Surreal Gourmet: Real Food for Pretend Chefs (Chronicle
Books, 1992). More than just a cookbook, it is a guide to
better living, and the first book to recommend “music
to cook by” for each recipe. The San Francisco Chronicle
called the debut "an instant classic and possibly the
wittiest and most sensible how-to cookbook of the decade".
It was also a year-end recommendation in The New York Times
and The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and was picked by
the Book of the Month Club and Better Homes & Gardens
Book Club.
Unceremoniously thrust onto the talk show circuit, Bob made
TV appearances on 3 continents, including all major U.S.
network morning shows (to date he has made over 400 TV appearances).
At the same time, he met and was befriended by some of the
country’s most respected chefs. Through practice and
osmosis, his cooking skills caught up with his enthusiasm.
With his new-found self-confidence and a license to devote
all of his creative energies to the world of food, Bob embarked
on a culinary path of inventing innovative dishes, demystifying
the classics, and converting urban food myths into functioning
recipes, all using ingredients from the local grocery store.
Three years after the release of his first book, Bob proved
that anyone with a dysfunctional kitchen and mismatched
place settings can throw a killer dinner party with The
Surreal Gourmet Entertains: High-fun, Low-stress Dinner
Parties for 6 – 12 (Chronicle Books, 1995). In that
same year, he began writing a weekly column for Salon.com,
a monthly column for Men's Health and a bi-monthly column
in WineX (a GenX wine magazine). One of his favorite jobs—if
you can call it a job—is conducting celebrity cover
interviews of hipster wine oenophiles like Tori Amos and
Jason Priestley for WineX. During many of these interviews,
he cooks for the interviewee and allows the lucky guest
to plunder his burgeoning wine collection. Bob is also
a regular contributor to Cuisine (an international award-winning
New Zealand food and wine magazine) and has contributed
features to Maxim, Food Arts, Smoke, Wines & Vines,
Canadian Living, and Seventeen.
Bob’s third cookbook, Off The Eaten Path: Inspired
Recipes for Adventurous Cooks (Ballantine Books, May 2000)
features a blend of practicality and eccentricity, packed
with recipes, anecdotes, culinary adventures and his own
whimsical food-related illustrations and object’s d’art.
To promote the book, Bob embarked on an ambitious 30 city,
three month odyssey in a Toastermobile—an Airstream
trailer he customized with a $50,000 stainless steel professional
kitchen, and topped with two eight-foot slices of toast.
The tour was covered extensively in local and national media,
including features on CNN and in People magazine. The book
won the most innovative cookbook award at the prestigious
World Cookbook Fair in Perigueux, France. And the Toastermobile
became the mobile kitchen featured on his Food Network show.
Bob’s interest in food and wine pairing drew him deeper
into the world of wine. He has traveled extensively in many
of the world’s wine-producing regions, and since 1999
has been a judge at the prestigious Los Angeles County Fair
and the San Francisco wine competitions. He has also written
many wine-related stories, including one documenting his
ten days as a grape picker at the legendary Domaine de la
Romanée-Conti, and a first-person account of running
the Médoc marathon—a 26.2 mile race in Bordeaux,
France that winds past 24 picturesque chateaux, where the
pit stops are stocked with grand cru wines and fresh Atlantic
oysters.
Bob’s 4th book, Surreal Gourmet Bites: show-stoppers
and conversation starters debuts in October. He is currently
taping 26 new episodes of his Food Network show.
When he is
not traveling in his Toastermobile, Bob lives in the shadow
of the Hollywood sign and cycles daily in the
canyons near his home.
Maryedith Burrell's visit with
Bob for BizTravel.com
