Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you.

Thank a dog.

We'll be taping in front of a live studio audience.

And it's all coming from my hometown, Seattle, Washington.

We got a Seahawk in the house.

If you're into cooking, chances are you've watched Chef Joel Gameron and work his culinary magic on television, including right here on Ktrk Public Television.

Our viewers consistently tell us they're into cooking and food.

So here we are at northwest now.

That's right down your alley with Chef Joel Gameron.

Next on Northwest.

Now, You.

Chef Joel Gameron is a Seattle resident, and he produces his show right here in western Washington, not in New York or Los Angeles.

Gameron is not an overnight success.

He went to culinary school in the U.S. and Italy, worked at Seattle based Sur La Table, a cooking equipment company, did appearances on Today and Good Morning America and other New York daytime shows, then a two season series on A&E, and then launched cooking.com shooting video segments in his garage in West Seattle.

Now, though, he's on PBS with a show called Homemade Live, shot in front of a live audience at Pioneer Square and distributed nationally.

Chef thanks so much for coming to northwest now.

Great to have you here as a guest and great to have you on PBS and part of the family here on the air at KTC.

that's nice to have.

You grew up on Mercer Island.

Talk a little bit about, where'd you graduate from high school.

talk a little bit about your youth here in the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah, I had a great upbringing, but like any teenager, I was ready to get out of Dodge.

my parents had a pretty ugly divorce.

It was, you know, it was teenage years, and I was kicked me out of the rainy, gray Seattle.

So I moved to the East coast 3000 miles away.

I actually played tennis in college, the University of Connecticut.

And, and I just wanted to go somewhere where no one knew me.

And I didn't know anything.

And I learned a lot.

but one thing I absolutely learned is how much I love the Pacific Northwest.

Yeah, yeah, you play great.

Some great basketball, I'm sure.

Yes.

Yeah, we were there.

I was there for the men's and women's championship.

Yeah.

Freshman year was crazy nice.

I noticed that you got your degree in management.

Was was your original plan to own restaurants and to be a management ownership guy?

And how did that evolve into.

No, I want to cook.

It's kind of the same with me in some ways.

I never wanted to be in management because I liked making the thing.

Yeah, it sounds like the same thing maybe happened to you.

Kind of.

I didn't realize I was an entrepreneur at 17, 18 when I went to college.

but when I went there, I went for, like I said, like for tennis.

And so I wasn't really thinking, what am I going to study?

I loved cooking, I started cooking when I was about 14, 15 and dorm rooms at college.

There's no kitchen.

So I was missing it a lot.

And I looked at our, curriculum.

And UConn did not have a cooking program, so I applied to the dean.

I said, hey, can I create my own major?

and they said, no.

And and it took two years.

And eventually they said yes.

So I became the first and only restaurant management major at UConn, with a minor in communications, which made complete sense now.

And it was kind of my first hint of, yeah, I can kind of build and kind of shape the world.

The to what I want it to be.

And yeah, the goal was to own restaurants and be like the next Tom Douglas.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of good models here for that.

That.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

you then you went to culinary school in Italy?

Yeah.

Why?

There's culinary schools all over the world.

Why Italy?

And a is that kind of a specialty of yours or.

Yeah, I read about the school that was run by moms and grandmas and I thought, what a cool approach that was not just the typical French upbringing with the tall hats.

and I went there and really understood ingredients, quality and credence, caring about, simplicity and not overdoing and not heavy sauces.

And I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.

But I also wanted the French side.

I wanted that classic side.

So when I came back, I went to Napa Valley.

So I kind of did the French in Napa Valley, and I did the kind of Italian no, nothing in Italy.

So there's kind of a would you say that sort of fusion idea has, has stayed with you, or how would you describe your thing, your niche?

That's a good question.

I think my niche is approachable and I think I try not to be too foodie.

And I think in the beginning, as we all do in any career, you kind of you get to inside baseball.

And I started to learn that I was I was doing things like at Thanksgiving, I'd put something way too over the top of my family would be like, well, we're not eating this beet gross foam that you made.

so I was with to experimental.

So what I started to learn is my niches, what is simple, what's understandable, what's doable for people.

And my calling became less about impressing people on the plate, but getting people to create their own plate.

You ended up working for sur la tabla, which is a big outfit here, based in the in the northwest.

And that really, it seems to me, kind of got your exposure that expose you back into sort of a national piece there.

You ended up doing a lot of work in New York City, making some initial appearances on television.

Talk a little bit about your time with them and kind of some of the doors that opened up.

Yeah, well, I well, like I said, I wanted to be the next Tom Douglas.

So I started in restaurants and really was not happy I missed people, is what I learned.

So I had to find a job that had cooking and people, and certainly Tom had a really cool model where in their cooking stores they have cooking classes.

and I started to teach in those cooking classes.

I was really, you know, it was 23, 24.

And I started to kind of put in reps and understand, oh, this guy's eye is wandering and he's not paying attention, or she didn't get what I just said.

So I was learning that the inside baseball that I took from culinary school wasn't resonated with the home cook, and I absolutely loved it.

I loved trying to connect to a home cook as a chef.

Anyways, it turned into a ten year career at sort of the top.

They moved me to New York City and I got discovered, because a lot of producers and, big showrunners were coming to my cooking classes, and so they were taking cooking classes from me in person and then asking me to kind of go on broccoli.

Yeah, I'd say we got to get this guy on.

Yeah.

And, yeah, man, talk about a great synergy there of both, circumstance and opportunity.

Yeah.

and you were prepared because of your academic and culinary background.

You know, those two things meet, and all of a sudden, now the sparks start to fly, and here you go.

So we end up with a show called scraps on any.

Yeah.

Which is really neat in concept.

Yeah, but also sounds like a little bit of a burnout job, you know, because you are from television.

It was it was a tough job, but, getting it on the air, as you know, getting any television show made is very difficult.

And we pitched through network and every network you can imagine, no one wanted to make a show about garbage.

Scraps is a show about cooking food that you normally throw away, which at the time was thought of as weird and now is really thought of as sustainable, which it did.

All right.

and no one make it.

And then I met Katie Couric.

I went on her show, and I've been going on the today show since I was 26, and she became an EP of the show and executive producer of the show back the show, and we got it made by A&E, and it became my first cooking show.

And the tough part about that is it was it was all travel all the time, right?

I mean, you were you lived out of a suitcase basically.

Oh my God, it was so out of a suitcase.

It was a perfect job for in my 20s, a kid.

Yeah, yeah.

But the idea was that I was traveling across the country in my van, Pippi, which represented a scrap because it was from a scrap yard in an old van, and we would pull up to Charleston and South Carolina and Asheville and Texas, and we would teach people how to cook with food they normally throw away.

And that's why it's called scraps and great show.

We did 22 episodes of it and it was a blast.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

So here comes the pandemic.

Yeah.

And you're cooking school blows up and you, you're set me straight.

You moved back to Washington during this time.

That seems like another group of circumstances that come together that you somehow connect the dots, leverage the opportunity, and again turn it into something awesome.

I tried it, I tried, yeah.

As a well known chef who was doing television, the pandemic was a bomb.

And, you know, it just shook up all productions.

And so I didn't know I it was time to move home.

So we got pregnant.

We moved back to West Seattle and in West Seattle.

Lights out there.

We love you.

And, I just what do I do?

Cooking from home.

And so we turned my garage into a little studio.

We opened it up to this new thing called zoom, where you can interact with people.

And we offered free zoom cooking classes, and it turned into millions of people joining me, interactively.

And it's become this big business called homemade.

And that was just organic growth.

Millions of viewers.

You're not out there promoting or running a national campaign of any kind.

It just word of mouth.

People were bored.

They were at home and cooking and sour dough making and all this became really popular.

And, by then I had my chops and I understood kind of how to reach people, how to connect with people in person at the time and on media.

And so zoom was kind of made for someone like me.

Was homemade live in your mind at that time?

After the cooking school blew up, you you had your little studio in your home.

Yeah.

But then you end up moving to Pioneer Square.

Is that sort of, coincidental with Almost Live happening?

How did how did that idea get born and what timeline that a little for me, it's a good question.

I felt like, like I said, zoom and this idea of interactivity was made for me because that's what I came up with.

And still atop is I'm really used to live.

I like raw, and a lot of chefs can be edited to look entertaining and to kind of hold people's attention.

But I knew that my niche could be being this kind of real, raw chef.

And so I came up with this idea of a cooking talk show.

In my mind, it was somewhere between and Real Live meets Ellen.

And, we wanted to get to know well-known people through their stomachs and through their tummies and through their restaurants.

I mean, the recipes.

And it's one thing to know a Seahawk through just a normal interview, but get them cooking, kind of get a new side of that Seahawk.

And, that was her idea.

Yeah.

To kind of race down barriers and yeah, you just you just learn a different kind of yeah, a different part of their personality.

And so we kind of tested it, and we brought in some, some test shoots, and then we went and did it.

And there's a live studio audience.

If we screw up, you see it all, and we get to know some of our favorite people, but, through the other recipes, which is awesome.

There was another piece of serendipity, I think, that happened for you during the Covid.

And that is it's always so difficult to find a, a great producer, somebody who owns that baby, somebody who can show, right.

Somebody who can get you that live audience, which is a pain in the neck and a yes.

Yes, talk a little bit about the producer you ended up.

Oh my gosh, I'm surprised you know this.

so one of my friends became this guy, Brett.

And Brett is Jimmy Fallon's executive producer and one of his producers.

Yeah.

And I called him up, and I said, I need a director for this show in Seattle.

And it was right during the writers strike, so they were out of production.

He's in a robe in the Poconos with his wife, and he's like, I'm not doing anything.

And I'm like, well, this is in Seattle.

And he's like, I'm not doing anything.

So our director became Jimmy Fallon's producer.

We work around Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show schedule.

We fly him out to Seattle.

He is fabulous.

It's worth it.

So worth it.

And he, we work with their talent booker, so we're able to get some amazing celebrities and have access that we normally wouldn't have.

it's very attractive, of course, to to this audience.

You grew up, a piece of you as a PBS kid.

Yes.

Which is what we call them.

Talk a little bit about your your early life with PBS and your kids and your experience with that.

And then how the whole PBS thing evolved.

Yeah.

So, early it was cooking shows.

So America's Test Kitchen, Julia Child watching Jacques Pan, PBS, even as a kid.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I got really into it.

It was an escape for me.

Cooking has always been a little bit therapeutic.

And, you know, as a teenager, especially coming from a family that was kind of breaking up, like I kind of mentioned, I needed kind of a place to go.

And so PBS was kind of home for me.

And these cooking shows really spoke to me like friends.

so I really related to them, and I loved them.

And so, that was early on.

And then midway through my career, I got an opportunity to be on Sesame Street and cook with Elmo and Cookie Monster.

So PBS and kind of what they've always represented has been a big part of me.

the opportunity came through another producer who said, hey, I've got an in, with, with a channel called WGBH, which happens to be who started Julia Child.

Right.

they're out of Boston, and, they're legendary for creating great cooking shows.

So I got introduced to them, and the rest is history.

They're now a co-producer of the show.

Yeah, it really seems when you look at all this in your background, it really becomes apparent in the rearview mirror.

There was really no other path for you?

I don't think so, but I think the path is, I think I, you know, what do you do in the pandemic?

Do you start producing out of the garage?

What do you do?

And the college doesn't offer cooking.

You create it.

So the path for me is to pick up a shovel and create the path.

And like so many of us who are entrepreneurial, that just it didn't it's not like I set out to be an entrepreneur, but I like to kind of pave my own way.

Do you ever talk to kids, high schoolers, or colleges about this?

I think this would be so instructive for them.

Yeah.

I think this point that you're making, with me that we've been able to lay open here a little bit.

Yeah.

I think young people should hear this.

It's interesting because I went back to my high school last year.

They invited me to come speak, and we had to rip them off their phones.

That was the first thing.

And it's just a different level of where their attention goes.

And, I think it's you either from what I've learned and what I'm gathering is you either kind of have that bug or you don't, and you can talk about it all you want and create your own path, but it doesn't really sink in unless it's someone's kind of seeking it.

And for me, I again, as a young age, I was kind of looking.

I was kind of looking to kind of do my own thing.

And I love looking back, even moving to Connecticut, where there's zero and looking back and seeing friends and communities and connections that I made.

And just thinking, you started with nothing.

And now there's something.

Every day I walk into my studio on Pioneer Square and I say hi to my team, and I look at my kitchen and I feel extremely proud.

Yeah, grateful.

Look what this turned into.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I would say too, and I think this is important to add, you keep putting yourself in these situations where there's one exit.

So there is talk a little bit about the role of fear and not having a lot of choices where in other words, I've been through this too.

You have to.

There's no other way to go.

But for me it's the pandemic or it's this or it's that.

Yeah, it's sink or swim, but there's a certain magic that comes along with that, too, although it is sometimes painful.

Right?

Yeah.

I think the UPS really high and the downs are really low.

Listen, it's it's affected my marriage.

It's affected my, my own health.

there's a other side to creating your own path, which is there's no straight line.

There's no playbook.

You're creating the playbook as you go.

Some years are really difficult financially.

Some years really work out.

So, for as much as it's, you know, incredibly prideful and exciting, there is a really scary part to it.

And so, I get why some people think that risk isn't worth it.

I didn't understand that.

But as my life has progressed, I get it.

And that's just part of the gig.

And you just have to have belief in yourself and the one thing I can always bet on is myself.

And, that's the best place I can invest.

And not knowing a little bit about what you truly faced when you're younger, there's a reason we have young people, and I tell this to my kids, too.

You're too ignorant, and I don't use that word in a derogatory way to understand all the reasons.

There's no way you should be doing this.

I agree, don't stop now.

It's not in you.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'm with you, I think.

Listen, you have to go through it.

You have to feel it.

And, I also know, like, things are great right now, but tomorrow they might be cloudy and turbulent and being okay with that.

You just have to be okay with that.

And the other side of it is it will never be turbulent, but you might never see the sunshine and it might be smooth.

So, there's flip currents to both.

And I have lots of friends who are not paving their own way.

They've got step stable jobs.

W-2s.

Yeah, yeah.

And they're great, you know, and and there's a lot they love about what I'm doing.

And there's a lot about I love what they're doing.

So mutual respect and like we talked about too there's a price to pay for everything.

So so yeah.

So the the total stable predictable side has got a price that comes along with it.

And so does the entrepreneurial risk taking place.

Yeah.

And you know, I mean I think the the key we talk about scraps.

My show.

But there's a mantra in there that I'm obsessed with which is you have to use what you have to make what you want.

And scraps is this idea that you might have orange peels and you might want dessert.

So can you turn those orange peels into a dessert?

And the same is true with this is, you know, maybe all you have is a garage, but can you turn it into a show?

Or maybe all you have is, I don't know, whatever it is a couple bucks in the bank, but can you turn it into something?

And the answer is the scrappier you are.

I feel like the most successful you can be in this.

This line of stuff, a little bit about, homemade live.

there's a lot of competition out there.

Why do we love cooking shows?

And what do you think is almost live secret sauce, if you had to diagnose it?

I think almost like our homemade live is not a cooking show.

I think, it is a people show with cooking.

And I think that's a secret sauce, is that I feel like through social media and like you said, there's so many cooking shows out there.

I kind of feel like cooking shows and celebrity chefs like me is a little oversaturated.

There's a lot of it.

Yeah.

So what separates Homemade Live to me is that we're kind of getting to know people first and listening to their stories.

It's less about here's how you chop an onion or why you should.

Braised short rib.

It's a talk show with cooking as a vehicle.

It's not a cooking show with talk shows of you.

Right?

Which we flip the model.

Yeah.

Which is rare.

Yeah.

Talks about some of the guests you've had.

Oh my gosh.

So we've had Katie Couric who is like I said, a good friend of mine.

So she flew to Seattle.

She was fabulous.

Kathie Lee Gifford we had Ali Love from peloton.

We had Reggie Bush, star running back.

So we really want, you know, we love chefs and we brought in a couple chefs.

But really we want actors, musicians, writers, politicians.

We want people you don't know through food.

And now we want to get to know them through a different lens.

Booking guests is a massive oh my gosh.

I mean that's a it's it's people underestimate this is you know doing this is the easy part right.

Booking you is what the nightmare is.

So right.

You're so right.

And even with this incredible team.

Yeah that we've align ourselves with it's stressful.

And let's just be real celebrities.

It's kind of like friends who always have cool plans when you are.

You know what I mean?

And they say they're going to come, but will they show up on the day is it's extremely stressful.

But, like I said, the lows are lows.

The highs are highs.

When when they show up, it's amazing.

When they drop out of the last second, you got to scramble.

You got to scramble.

So it's it's a complicated show to pull off.

But when it works it works.

I wanted to expand on a piece of that.

You talked about your staff.

did you do this, alone for a while?

Booking and guest wrangling and.

Yeah, and and cooking and recipes and post-production.

And now you have people talk a little bit at.

What about how that evolved?

Yeah.

and can you just do the show piece now or.

Where are you?

Yeah.

I think when I started, YouTube was not even a thing.

And I think now there's creators out there who make amazing shows who can edit and post everything they can from start to finish.

I can't do that.

it's too hard.

I put too much energy into the creative side of it, into being on camera.

and so I need to surround myself with incredibly talented people who are way more talented than me.

So we find incredible camera operators here in Seattle.

Like I said, if we need to fly in a director, a producer, we do it.

But the team is so much more talented than I am, and that is the key to my success, is finding my blind spots and bringing in the right people.

And, you know, I mean, we all know that the team is everything.

Yeah.

Talk a little bit about, your workload now, in this era, the TV show is just a small piece of what you really have to do when it comes to distribution and engagement and interaction and all this.

It just you've got what's vital.

In other words.

Social media podcast Alaska Airlines inflight.

Each platform takes some hand feeding.

And again, is that something you do?

Do your people do it?

How do you how do you manage all that?

So definitely it's a team effort.

It's not something that I all do, but I definitely am the one that's kind of helping with the strategy and leading the vision of it.

And that's my job.

Right.

So there is a lot to do.

yes.

So you can watch the show on PBS, you can watch on Alaska Airlines, which is really cool.

It's been an amazing partnership.

and when you think about how often we shoot, we shoot ten episode seasons.

Right now, season two is coming out.

It's ten episodes next year.

We want to do a lot more.

Yeah, but ten episodes of shooting is ten hours of work.

So ten hours of work for 365 days a year.

That's like a day out of the three hours every other day is dedicated to getting those ten hours ready and to distributing them.

Oh, yeah.

And you know that.

So the shooting is a tiny, tiny fraction.

It's the end of a long process.

So, you know, just like I do, the creation of it has to be something that you love.

I love coming up with these episodes.

I love coming up with these recipes.

I love thinking about the guests.

And then I love looking at the post-production and editing it and working with these really talented people and thinking, well, should we bring the music in there?

Should we cut this segment out so that if you don't love that process, yeah, you're not going to love this business?

Yeah.

And and it's hard I think these days to, to just stand back.

You're just the talent.

Because guess what?

If you're just the talent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty easy to replace I agree.

You have to you have to get that.

It's it's your baby.

It's your show is your vision.

And it didn't used to be like that.

And we're not actors.

Actors are hired to play a part in someone else's vision.

This is our vision that we want to play ourselves in and bring to life.

So it's a different world.

Where to that where the producer or the PA, the production assistant, for those of you don't know where everything and and that's what makes it fun.

Talk a little bit about how how does this evolved.

I did a little reading and you've got this idea about, medicinal cooking.

Yeah.

food is medicine.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, a big thing out there.

And now talk a little bit about that and why that resonates with you.

Yeah.

So we've have millions of people come into our virtual cooking classes, which are free every single day.

the cooking show is one part of our business, homemade live.

But homemade is a website where you can come take these cooking classes with us.

Just like I started in my garage.

The idea is, I believe and I have prediabetes and, four out of ten Americans have diabetes.

weight loss and health can be solved with food at home cooking.

We so much processed food these days, it is very, very difficult.

It is a drug.

we all talk about the pandemic.

There is no bigger killer in our country than obesity and processed foods.

That is the poison.

And so homemade, which is the complete opposite of that, was created with this idea that we can really empower people to cook more.

So we're teaming up with hospitals.

We've done some amazing stuff with Swedish here in Seattle, the American Diabetes Association, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation.

And now we're looking to team up with more health care providers to give people what we're calling free culinary medicine.

Chefs lead it alongside health care professionals, doctors, nutritionists going to go vegan.

No, I'm not going vegan, baby.

But I am going to keep the whole Foods.

Right.

So the more, you can cook which whole ingredients, right.

Fruits and vegetables, incredible meats.

we believe the better.

So that's where we're trying to kind of push everything.

Do you have goals to to do the Tom Douglas thing too?

Open a, restaurant, a homemade restaurant or two in the Seattle area.

I mean, it seems like there's some real good opportunity right now in Seattle that really has some building back to do.

what's your thoughts on that?

My goal is to inspire the world to cook more, period.

And that's been my goal since I learned that I really wanted to be in front of people.

now it's I want to inspire the world to cook more healthy.

And so my dream is that if you go visit the doctor one day, he says, hey, you're overweight.

We're worried about your your health.

It doesn't even have to be overweight.

Your kidneys are not great.

You're going through menopause.

He diagnoses you and gives you medication.

I'd love for him to also diagnose you and prescribe you cooking classes.

And I'd love for those cooking classes to be homemade.

So that's my dream right now.

That's what I'm chasing.

Yeah.

To go with the sheets of paper, you get through your here's the diet you need to have.

Okay, great.

How do I turn this into something I want to eat?

And then I'm excited about that I can engage with.

Nailed it.

That's exactly what I want to do.

So I'm the producer on your show?

Yeah, I already got it.

You're ready?

We're ready, baby.

Yeah.

Bring it on.

So the show hopefully is a way to reach the masses, bring people in.

But ultimately we keep them there because we're keeping them healthy.

Good.

Yeah.

Chef Joel Gammon, thanks so much for coming to northwest.

Now a great discussion.

And I feel like we got a little cooking from you and a little insight about, who you are as well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm a big fan and I really appreciate the space to chat.

You bet.

It's great to see a locally produced show go national.

It's not very common here in Western Washington, even though we're the 12th largest media market in the country.

The bottom line my thanks to Chef Gameron for coming to northwest.

Now to speak to our loyal audience of self-described foodies.

KTC members can watch season one of Homemade Live anytime on PBS passport, and keep your eye on our local listings for the upcoming season two here on KBTC Public Television.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at KBTC.org.

Stream it through the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest.

Now, until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

You.