Emeril Lagasse Openeed Up About His Disappearance From The Food Network

When Emeril Live was canceled in 2007, it was the beginning of the end of the famous chef's Food Network career. The show was then picked up by The Cooking Channel in 2008 — but it only lasted until 2010. Emeril’s other Food Network show, Essence of Emeril, also came to an end in 2008 after 18 seasons. It wasn't looking great.

"When [Emeril Live] ended, everybody felt like it was time for a little break," the chef said in a 2016 GQ interview. "I didn't necessarily think that, but that's what everybody else thought, that maybe it was time for a break from Emeril." Still, the Food Network had a plan for him.

Executives at Food Network approached Emeril about transitioning into reality shows. The mid-2000s were the rise of the cooking reality show, remember. Food Network even had hits with seasons of Cake Boss and Man v. Food. But this particular celebrity chef wasn’t interested in the format.

"I'm old-fashioned, and I want to teach people how to cook, how to eat, how to serve, how to shop, how to drink wine, how to mix a cocktail properly," Emeril told GQ. "I didn't necessarily at the time want to get into this competition stuff." The chef instead focused on Discovery's Emeril Green, which ran for three seasons.

But the major changes with his TV shows seemingly inspired Emeril to make a change himself. He owned and ran his restaurants, of course, but he then decided to sell the rest of his brand to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2008. The profit was huge.

The sale of his old TV episodes, cookbooks, and kitchen products made Emeril even wealthier than ever. Martha's company gave him $45 million cash and $5 million in stock for the rights to all his stuff. "Being complementary and different is better than being competitive," Martha told The New York Times after the sale. But Emeril wasn't done yet.

No, Emeril didn’t stay off the air for too long. In 2013 Emeril's Florida premiered on the Cooking Channel. The show was closer to a reality show in that Emeril would visit restaurants in the Sunshine State. It was canceled after five seasons, so even though it didn't get the love of Emeril Live, the chef clearly still had a magic touch.

But while the show didn’t draw in a large viewership, Emeril did get some attention — from the U.S. House of Representatives. It turned out that people behind the scenes of Emeril’s Florida received public funds from Visit Florida, the state’s official tourism board. And we're talking about a lot of dough.

Over five years, the cooking show's producers received almost $12 million from the company. And one lawyer claimed that Emeril walked away with as much as $4 million for his time on the show. The taste tycoon hasn't commented on the case in public, but we know he couldn't have taken the situation lightly, especially given that the timing coincided with a difficult time in Emeril's personal life.

Besides the show cancellations and the lawsuit, Emeril was also suffering on a more personal level. His mentor, Ines De Costa, died in 2011. When Emeril was little, he would watch De Costa cook in her restaurants. She would also share her food wisdom with the young chef.

The two were so close that Ines was almost like another mom. "She really had an incredible heart and soul," Emeril said to South Coast Today. "She loved her family. She was an exceptional person." He was clearly devastated by this loss.

Not long after Emeril also lost his biological mother, Hilda Lagasse. He had a close relationship with her also, another one of his beloved cooking mentors. Hilda even helped him develop into the wildly successful professional chef he would grow up to be. But was it Emeril's grief that kept him out of the limelight?

After Emeril lost his literal and figurative moms, his restaurant empire began to suffer during the Great Recession. His diners were still struggling years later, too. "It's becoming a very challenging industry to become a very successful average restaurateur," Emeril admitted in a 2015 article in The Week, but it was his next comments that raised some eyebrows.

Emeril also expressed frustration with the powers that be. "The government should stay out of things," he said, according to The Week. "Pretty soon, they're going to wipe a lot of the middle restaurateurs and restaurant cooks." And despite the Martha Stewart payday, the chef was clearly worried. "I have nowhere to go, really — other than broke," he said.

Yet Emeril recovered enough to open another restaurant in 2016, but this wouldn’t be the end of his troubles. The next year he ended the lease on one of his long-term restaurants, Table 10. Some cited concerns with the building’s recent renovations as the reasons for the closure. Emeril wasn't done losing establishments, though.

The chef closed Tchoup Chop, his restaurant at Universal Orlando's Royal Pacific Resort, around the same time. And in May 2018, he also closed Emeril's Restaurant Orlando. But even with these closures, Emeril still owns 10 other restaurants. But are they also ready for the chopping block?

So far, Emeril’s other ventures are seemingly successful, particularly his longest-running restaurant, NOLA in New Orleans. It opened in 1992, two years before the start of his Food Network career. And during the time he shuttered several of his other restaurants, Emeril went the opposite direction with NOLA.

In 2017 NOLA underwent an extensive five-week renovation — so extensive that the restaurant had to temporarily close during this enormous undertaking. The establishment received a makeover to both its appearance and menus. But it was up to the public to decide if the celebrity chef had made the right gamble by investing in the location's future.

Thankfully, most people agreed that the restaurant had changed for the better. NOLA’s first level was converted into a bar area for patrons and Emeril hired chef Philip Buccieri to lead the new kitchen. Philip converted the menu to serve wood-fired pizzas and other small plates instead. So while Emeril may have shifted focus to his businesses, he hasn't given up on his television careeer altogether.

In 2021 Emeril joined MasterChef: Legends and continues to thrive in his restaurant empire. "I love people, I love being with my staff, I love learning together, I love making people happy with food, with wine, with service,” he said to GQ. Yet while Emeril has enjoyed an extremely successful transition into a full-time restauranteur, he also eventually went back on his word and jumped into 'reality' competition television.

Emeril eventually went on to judge and make numerous guest appearances on the acclaimed reality competition show Top Chef. So it seemed the New Orleans native did indeed end up helping to mod the next generation of television personality chefs, including The Chew host Carla Hall. While Emeril passed the baton onto new daytime cooking shows like The Chew, the next batch of tv cooking talent wasn't without their own set of problems.

Despite the show going on to have major success, not everyone in the press thought newcowers like Hall and once-lauded chef Mario Battali could carry an audience like Emeril once did. Critics said The Chew hosts were hyperactive and doing too much, with The New York Daily News writing that the show "often felt overstuffed, as if its celebrity crew were engaged in a speed-talking contest."

The audience doubted the show, and so did the hosts! As former-host Mario Batalli said, he was never sure everyone would get along. "I think we're still here because," he said, "even though when we met each other we weren't sure if we were gonna be able to live together, now that we've been living together for five years.”

The hosts all indeed came from different places, but according to Batali, it’s what made them stronger: "We love each other because we appreciate each others' diverse opinions, diverse backgrounds," he said. As the chefs became comfortable in each others' presences, the show started to blossom.

"The one thing that drew me to The Chew was we all have our different lanes, but we don't step on each other's toes," said co-host Carla Hall. "It's this mutual respect, and you realize when you're around different people, you actually learn more about others."

According to the show’s executive producer Gordon Elliott, a key to the show’s success is being useful, fun, and surprising. "You gotta be useful. You gotta be fun to hang around,” he said, “you gotta be unpredictable."

"We show you how we mess up and we show you how we recover,” said co-host Daphne Oz, the vegetarian daughter of daytime's Dr. Oz. "People really appreciate that realness in this age of a lot of fluff and smoke 'n mirrors and stuff." Soon, the chefs started having fun — and that's when The Chew blossomed.

Co-host Carla began to joke: "When I gained that first 30 pounds in the first three months,” said co-host Carla Hall, “I simply wanted the show to be canceled!" Things were looking up after the rocky start, and ABC was reaping the benefits by way of ratings.

Attracting over 3 million viewers per day, The Chew gave Dr. Oz a run for his money in the daytime TV department, though eventually, viewers started to tire out. "There were 327 pasta recipes that Mario did" in the first thousand episodes," Carla Hall said. "But 47 of them were macaroni and cheese." Had they run out of ideas?

To reinvigorate the show, the chefs decided to expand their horizons. "I mean, there's a big world out there," Carla continued. "We came back and we said, 'Look, let's really teach cuisines of the world. We are not just these one-dimensional people or cooks.'" They all proved to have so many unique talents.

Clinton Kelly, for instance, wanted to write books, not be a TV chef, and he also admitted to a colorful history of drug use and partying. Meanwhile, Carla Hall confessed another talent, too: "I've always drawn. I did cartoons as a kid...I like crafts; I like doing this with my hand; I like color," she said. Another colleague was jealous.

According to longtime producer Dave Serwatka, who also worked on all nine seasons of Top Chef at Bravo, the show was successful largely because its chefs were more compelling as people than as professionals, but something dark lurked behind the scenes.

Despite their good times, co-host Mario Batali often showed his castmates the utmost disrespect. It started in the early episodes, when he made fun of Daphne Oz's food choices, and it would soon get worse.

In a 2012 interview with Eater, Mario said that his hosts “don't have weird ulterior motives...These are pure people. Their messages are not all yet clear, even after a year, but they're smart and fun." It was an oddly critical quote, one that came to make more sense in the coming years.

In 2017, Mario was accused by sexual assault from several different women. He couldn't hide any longer: he was outed as a creep, and he had to pay. "I know my actions have disappointed many people," he said. "The successes I have enjoyed are owned by everyone on my team. The failures are mine alone." Soon, he was in deep trouble.

In 2018, the NYPD launched an investigation into Batali, who was immediately asked to leave the show for a bit, especially after his behavior proved to go back decades. Later, he was officially fired for good and the cast had a much different look.

Charges were eventually dropped against Batali, though the accusations were dating enough to forever tarnish his reputation. Meanwhile, The Chew continued, but there was always an elephant in the room during filming. A dark cloud hung over the tapings.

The show was canceled not long after for "business decisions," and the remaining cohosts said their tearful goodbyes. "Michael, Carla and I will truly miss making you laugh and inspiring you to try new things every day,” Kelly said on Facebook. “We’re gonna finish out the rest of this season with as much enthusiasm as we can muster!" Other TV chef personalities were stunned.

Before news about Mario Batali broke, the late chef and television star Anthony Bourdain said of The Chew crew: "Mario Batali is a better chef than I am, a better businessman. And Michael Symon! I can't tell you how much I like and respect those guys. They're the smartest, funniest, best since Julia Child."

As brutal as the Batali scandal was for The Chew, it was far from the only celebrity chef drama. Just look back to 2009 when Bobby Flay became one of several restaurateurs-turned-Food-Network-stars to be sued by their own employees. Yes, while the regular face of flagship show Iron Chef may present himself as an all-round good guy on screen, staff at his Mesa Grill, Bolo and Bar Americain joints claimed that Flay hadn’t treated them fairly from a financial point of view.

The disgruntled employees of the three restaurants in question argued that they had been “cheated out of wages and tips and [sought] to recover minimum wages, overtime compensation and allegedly misappropriated gratuities.” And while the celebrity chef strenuously denied these damaging allegations, he did agree to pay out a whopping $800,000 settlement.

Since becoming a Food Network star, Paula Deen hasn’t been short of bad publicity. In 2013, for example, employee Dora Charles claimed to The New York Times that the chef had continually taken advantage of her. Reportedly, Charles had been instrumental in helping Deen build her cooking empire, but she was allegedly never financially rewarded as promised.

Charles said, “It’s just time that everybody knows that Paula Deen don’t treat me the way they think she treat me.” Apparently, Deen paid the woman she described as her soul sister under $10 per hour – even as she ascended through the Food Network ranks. Charles added, “I’m not trying to portray that she is a bad person. I’m just trying to put my story out there that she didn’t treat me fairly.”

Alton Brown took particular umbrage with Anthony Bourdain’s claims that most Food Network stars can’t actually cook. The Kitchen Confidential star made the remark during his “Close to the Bone” tour in 2015, but Brown soon fought back, telling People, “I don’t have to defend my skills against anybody. I’ve got 14 years and 252 episodes of a show called Good Eats that I’m pretty sure I can use as a résumé for my skills.”

Brown then turned the tables, asking, “When was the last time you saw Anthony Bourdain actually cook anything? I’ve spent 14 years cooking my own food on television, and I’ve never seen him cook a meal.” He did acknowledge, however, that Bourdain was “the best writer about food.” And in response, the New Yorker clarified on Twitter that he had “zero beef” with Brown. In fact, the TV personality was apparently a “hero to [Bourdain’s] daughter.”

In 2008 Jamie Oliver was accused of hypocrisy when he blasted the sale of chickens raised in “morally wrong conditions.” The self-styled “Naked Chef” also implored viewers of one of his U.K. TV shows to boycott stores that relied on factory farming for their eggs and chickens. But his point was undermined by the fact that he was the face of just one such retailer.

Oliver had previously inked a lucrative contract with Sainsbury’s, and the British supermarket chain confirmed at the time that it wasn’t planning to change the way it sourced its chickens. After further pressure from animal welfare groups, however, Sainsbury’s later performed a U-turn. And perhaps unsurprisingly, Oliver believed that he’d been instrumental in this decision.

It’s not exactly uncommon to add the odd white lie to a résumé to impress a prospective employer. However, Dinner: Impossible star Robert Irvine took embellishing career achievements to another level. For example, in 2008 it was revealed that the chef had claimed to have worked on Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding cake – a total fabrication. And yet this wasn’t the only untruth that Irvine had told.

Irvine asserted, you see, that he’d been responsible for feeding no fewer than four U.S. presidents – not only that, but apparently he’d been knighted by the Queen. Once the news emerged, the Food Network replaced him with Michael Symon; eventually, though, he returned to our screens and has remained a fixture there ever since.

In 2012 Graham Elliot, a one-time contestant on Iron Chef was accused by no fewer than 14 waiters of pooling tips at his eponymous restaurant. Gregory Curtis – a former employee who went on to file a lawsuit – alleged that staff at the Chicago eatery were required to put their tips together, with this money then evenly distributed among all staff.

However, the practice is only legal under federal law when it involves employees who would normally receive tips. And, unfortunately for food runners and cooks, they don’t fall under this category and so shouldn’t have benefited. Ultimately, Elliot settled with the disgruntled waiters who believed they’d lost a significant sum of money.

Fans may know that Anne Burrell fronted several Food Network shows, including Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and Worst Cooks in America. She first found fame, however, on Iron Chef America as a sous chef under Mario Batali. And it seems as though his temperament rubbed off on her, judging by a lawsuit filed in 2009.

In the legal documents, Burrell was accused of making derogatory remarks about many of her employees’ private lives and physical appearances at the West Village eatery Centro Vinoteca. And, interestingly, she appeared to take aim solely at her female members of staff. Burrell has never spoken publicly, though, about either the allegations or the settlement she reached with those affected.

Ina Garten has built her reputation on being the kind of eternally cheerful and comforting mother figure who could solve any problem with a decadent and calorific pie. Yet the Barefoot Contessa perhaps isn’t as sweet as we assume, as she’s actually turned down the Make-A-Wish Foundation twice.

Yes, in 2011 the charity contacted Garten to arrange a meeting with Enzo Pereda – a six-year-old diagnosed with leukemia. At the time, though, the chef was busy on the promotional trail for one of her books and so gave a “no” in response. And she once again disappointed her young fan when she refused on a second occasion a year later. It was only when Garten’s refusals went public that she relented, and by this point Pereda had decided that he’d rather swim with dolphins.

Geoffrey Zakarian’s 2011 victory on Iron Chef: Super Chefs was perhaps slightly soured by the fact that he’d already declared bankruptcy. The Food Network regular had found himself in financial difficulty after being sued by several ex-employees at his Country establishment, with the lawsuit ultimately forcing him to dish out a reported $1.25 million in damages and penalties.

In particular, Zakarian was accused of tampering with pay records, skimping on overtime money for his staff and even docking wages for food that employees never actually consumed. Yet while each and every allegation stemming from the now-closed restaurant was refuted by the Chopped star, he didn’t have the funds to fight the lawsuit – and so was forced to file for bankruptcy.

The late Anthony Bourdain was never afraid to tell it like it is, and he appeared to take particular delight in blasting the stars of the Food Network. Sandra Lee, Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri are just some of the famous faces who have found themselves at the receiving end of Bourdain’s sharp tongue over the years.

Even when Bourdain was offering a compliment to a Food Network star, he couldn’t resist throwing in a sly dig. In 2016 the star revealed to Atlanta magazine that he was a big fan of the Barefoot Contessa, a.k.a. Ina Garten, before adding, “She’s one of the few people on Food Network who can actually cook.”

Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay certainly got tongues wagging when they both left their respective partners in around the same period in 2015. De Laurentiis had initiated a divorce from Todd Thompson, while Flay had split from Stephanie, his third wife. And while the Giada At Home star had previously been linked to famous faces such as John Mayer and Matt Lauer, her fellow Food Network star was the one whom tabloids believed had prompted the end of her marriage.

Nevertheless, while speaking to Andy Cohen on his Bravo show, De Laurentiis refuted all the rumors about herself and Flay. She told the host, “Well, we’re very good friends. We’ve worked for many years together, but I don’t think [a relationship is] ever going to happen because I’m smarter than that.”

Iron Chef Showdown star Bobby Flay certainly knows how to make an exit. Halfway through the 2017 filming of an episode of the Food Network hit, the celebrity cook suddenly took off his apron to reveal a shirt emblazoned with the surprise message “This is my last Iron Chef battle ever.” And according to Vanity Fair, no one but Flay himself knew about the stunt beforehand.

Furthermore, while Flay later told People that the apron-yanking had simply been done in jest, he never returned to the show. A year later, he reportedly explained to fellow Food Network star Michael Symon that Iron Chef Showdown’s relentless schedule had prompted him to make the attention-grabbing statement.

Cat Cora was lucky to avoid a stint behind bars following a DUI conviction in 2012. After all, the Food Network star had been twice over the legal alcohol limit when crashing her vehicle into a BMW in Santa Barbara. For this, Cora was given a suspended prison sentence, probation for three years and a fine; she was also ordered to attend DUI school for nine months.

But Cora apologized for her conduct in a statement released after the verdict. She said, “I deeply regret my decision to drive that evening after my designated driver became unavailable. I learned a very important lesson from this experience and take full accountability for my actions. This will never happen again.”

Many viewers of The Next Food Network Star’s third season found themselves rooting for Josh Adam Garcia. The contestant, also known as JAG, claimed that he’d served in Afghanistan with the marines and was now attempting to transfer his skills to the kitchen. But it turned out that the then-25-year-old had somewhat embellished his military experience.

The Army Times reported, “[Garcia] didn’t spend nearly two years in the infantry. He didn’t deploy to any war zone. And while it’s unclear whether he was ever a corporal, what is clear is that the Corps showed him to the door nearly eight months early as a private. Oh yeah, and he never finished culinary school in New York.”

Giada De Laurentiis may look like she enjoys tucking into her own dishes on her Food Network shows. However, according to an insider quoted by Page Six, the chef rarely lets her lips get anywhere near the food on camera. In fact, when it comes to close-up shots, De Laurentiis allegedly uses a double to eat for her.

Of course, there are moments when De Laurentiis is filmed eating a forkful of food with her entire face in view. But reportedly, instead of swallowing, she will spit the food back out into a bucket off camera. And while De Laurentiis’ representative has branded the claims “absurd,” they did concede that “she doesn’t eat and swallow every time” – as, apparently, there are up to ten takes for some scenes.

Rachael Ray is renowned for her love of animals almost as much as her passion for food. In 2018, though, she came under fire for combining the two. You see, while the Food Network star’s own brand of dog food, Nutrish, claimed to be full of natural ingredients, a lawsuit was ultimately brought over concerns that this wasn’t actually the case.

Glyphosate – a type of herbicide found in weed killers – was alleged to be one of the ingredients, contradicting the brand’s natural claims. Thankfully for Ray, the case was later dismissed, and pet retail giant Petsmart announced that it would be standing by her product. But even so, the media attention surrounding the lawsuit undoubtedly damaged the chef’s dog food venture.

You get two Food Network stars for the price of one in this particular scandal. Mexican Made Easy host Marcella Valladolid was married when she was appointed a judge on CBS’ The American Baking Competition in 2013. She was joined by the also-attached Paul Hollywood, who would later appear on the Food Network U.K.’s Paul Goes to Hollywood. And the pair soon had more than sweet treats on their minds.

Yes, Valladolid and Hollywood reportedly wasted little time in making their professional relationship a romantic one, with both of their respective partners filing for divorce once word got out. Valladolid would later find love with a new man; Hollywood’s wife, by contrast, ultimately agreed to take him back. But the British baker would once again be sent packing after having been caught kissing a TV show contestant.

For 11 seasons, Down Home with the Neelys presented its husband and wife stars Pat and Gina as happily married. Everyone was left stunned, therefore, when the couple announced that they were going their separate ways – both personally and professionally – in 2014. And it turns out that their picture-perfect relationship had all been just a front.

Yes, in 2018 Gina told People that she’d been on the verge of divorcing Pat before they landed the TV show. The former bank manager also revealed that, in reality, she’d found the whole experience of being a TV personality highly stressful. Yet even so, Gina popped up on Bravo dating show To Rome for Love following her split with Pat.

A simple Jamaican-inspired dish saw Jamie Oliver accused of cultural appropriation in 2018. Apparently, the Naked Chef was attempting to showcase his love of Caribbean food by launching a product named Punchy Jerk Rice; the ingredients and Oliver’s lack of Jamaican heritage saw many come out in protest, however, over its authenticity.

Even a British MP waded in on the argument, with Dawn Butler – whose parents hailed from Jamaica – calling Oliver out for his apparent cultural theft. The chef who claimed to have taught Oliver how to make jerk chicken also voiced his displeasure. In response, though, the Brit said that he was only trying to pay tribute to the cuisine he loved.

Nigella Lawson is viewed by many as one of the most prim and proper TV chefs on our screens. It came as a shock, then, when the domestic goddess admitted to having taken cocaine. The star told a U.K. court, “I have never been a drug addict. I’ve never been a habitual user. There are two times in my life when I have used cocaine.”

Interestingly, Lawson made the confession during a court case involving two of her ex-assistants. Sisters Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo had been accused of stealing a six-figure sum from the chef, although they claimed in turn that Lawson had given them permission to take the cash if they kept news of her drug consumption a secret. The pair were later found not guilty.