'Rock n Roll Chef' serves a few surprises

Nathan Lippy slips quietly between the picnic tables jammed together in Jimbo's Pit Bar B-Q on Kennedy Boulevard.

Or, as quietly as Lippy can from a visual standpoint. His python boots, ripped jeans, metallic van-shaped belt buckle, vest, and sleeveless blue T-shirt prompt several in the lunchtime crowd to crane their necks for a better look.

Perhaps they're ogling the enormous tattoo of a crucifix wrapped in dove's wings on his right shoulder. Still, Lippy is going relatively incognito today. He's wearing a straw hat that conceals a platinum Mohawk that looks as if a volcano is flowing peroxide lava through the middle of his dark brown locks.

Seventeen seconds after he reaches a table in the back of the restaurant, a young waitress in a red-checked shirt appears at his side.

"I like your style," she blurts out immediately, bypassing the drink order and introductions.

"Thanks," Lippy says. A rosy-cheeked smile hits his face. "I like your ... blouse."

"Thanks."

"What's your name?"

"Jocelyn."

"Hi, Jocelyn, I'm Nate."

They shake hands. She giggles. Still no drink query.

"Are you a rock star?" she asks. "People in the back thought you were a rock star."

"No, I'm a chef."

"Really? That's cool. Can I get you something to drink?"

He takes her reaction in stride.

"That sort of thing never happens in New York," he says.

The home-schooled 28-year-old from Brandon spent years in the big city working at restaurants and playing in bands after graduating from culinary school. He came back to Tampa to be closer to family and to launch what he hopes will be a multimedia career as an influential food star.

"They aren't used to seeing guys like me," he says of the dining room's reaction to him. "Better yet, people are not used to eating the kind of food I make.

"They're like, 'This is not right. You've got a Mohawk. Why are you cooking me this delicious food?' Which is great. I've kind of become the underdog. The unlikely candidate, which is fun."

Look out, world. Here comes Nate Lippy, the rock 'n' roll chef.

Making new stars

Lippy belongs to a new generation of young cooks who grew up watching Food Network the same way previous generations watched Sesame Street.

They've observed as Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart crossed over from the ghetto of food celebrity to pop culture icon-hood.

They're also part of a wave that for the past decade has flooded culinary schools with students in search of lucrative restaurant careers and possible fame.

But they're also choosing untraditional paths to achieve notoriety. Unlike Emeril, who became famous after owning his own restaurant, or Julia Child, who gained international attention after writing a groundbreaking cookbook, wannabe food stars are using alternative media to promote themselves.

Fueling the change is a redirection by Food Network, which in the past decade has begun showcasing stars less classically trained but more entertaining to watch.

By the late 1990s, the fledgling network was attracting connoisseurs and gourmands but missing pressed-for-time moms, says Michael Smith, senior vice president of marketing and creative services.

In mid-2000, "Today" show weather anchor Al Roker suggested the network take a look at an energetic young woman teaching cooking classes at a grocery store in Albany, N.Y. Her name: Rachael Ray.

"The lesson then was if we're going for ordinary home cooks, then it could be anyone, not necessarily a cookbook author or a restaurant chef," Smith says.

Since then, the network has moved cooking instruction to morning hours and become more entertainment oriented in the evenings. That has brought new opportunities for people like cake artist Duff Goldman ("Ace of Cakes") and spawned the talent search "Next Food Network Star," which introduced popular newcomers Guy Fieri and Aaron McCargo.

"The key is the onscreen personality," Smith says. "You have to bring yourself to the screen. It's not about being classically trained necessarily. It's about being someone a viewer wants to hang out with."

Building audience online

As non-food networks like Bravo, Fox, NBC and Travel Channel broadened their programming to tap the appetite for food as entertainment, new tools emerged for affordable self-promotion.

For Lippy, that meant being able to bypass running a restaurant or writing a cookbook in favor of taping cooking "webisodes" that showcase his personality and food online at NathanLippy.com.

A considerable amount of time is spent in multimedia production. He networks with fans on Facebook. He posts abbreviated recipes for the more than 1,300 followers of his @ChefNathanLippy account on Twitter. He uploads photos of his cooking demonstrations to Twitpic. He blogs about his latest spots on TV shows.

"I feel some strange sense of masculinity when I get behind a smokin' hot grill with some bangin' ingredients," he wrote of a recent appearance on the syndicated "Daytime" program. "It's so COOL!"

Lippy's raw star appeal and his use of technology attracted the attention of New York city-based entertainment producer Steve Ship, whose company Doghouse Management guides the careers of Food Network host Ingrid Hoffman and "Top Chef" season four winner Stephanie Izard.

Ship, a onetime music manager and current producer of Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling events, found Lippy after a friend, financial advisor Darren Kipnis of Tampa, pointed him to the young chef's Web site. Kipnis knows Lippy's father, YMCA chaplain Jay Lippy, who bragged about his son's cooking.

Last year, Ship and a business partner formed a company with Lippy, Make Him Stop LLC, and assembled a supporting cast to groom his career, including Kipnis' wife, publicist Nancy, to guide his public appearances. Earlier this year, Lippy was signed by the talent agency International Creative Management, which has offices in Los Angeles, New York and London and represents such entertainers as Samuel L. Jackson, Megan Fox and Beyoncé Knowles as well as food celebrities Ina Garten and Curtis Stone.

"I usually have a gut reaction within the first few seconds of meeting someone about whether I think they're viable," Ship says. "With Nate, I sensed his passion for cooking, his love for food and his desire to communicate and teach."

Part of Ship's role is to introduce the budding star to his various entertainment connections. Ship was especially impressed during a dinner party he held in New York City, during which Lippy cooked.

"I wanted to see how he would interact with a group and cook under pressure and see if the passion and charisma we were seeing would come across in that circumstance," Ship says.

His one bit of advice: Not to make anything Lippy hadn't made before. Lippy responded in true rock 'n' roll fashion.

"I found out later he didn't listen to me," Ship says.

The first dish was a brand new one, a Brussels sprout soup with a truffle oil. It was a hit and Ship was sold.

Lippy decided he wanted to live near his family in Brandon. It was a move that Ship supported. "It's a very good market for him to learn his craft," Ship says. "It's harder to get things started in New York and L.A."

Along the way during the past year, the group has worked to polish Lippy's performance ("Wear a shirt under the sleeveless chef coat," Kipnis said. "Nobody likes armpit hair.") and focus his food message on his various media.

The rock 'n' roll angle is aimed at an untapped younger demographic that doesn't cook - something Lippy hopes to change by touring colleges a la rock star. But his message is reaching groups who might not immediately spring to mind when the attraction is a Mohawk-endowed chef.

Earlier this summer, Lippy flew to Mississippi to cook for the owners of Viking Range, Corp., manufacturer of professional cooking appliances, and their top 50 customers.

"I was a little bit nervous about that," Ship admits. "It was a much older demographic and there were a lot of Mississippi blue-hair women in the audience. I knew they would love his food but I didn't know how they would react to him."

The worry was unfounded. By the end of the night, a woman who Ship estimated to be in her late 70s asked Lippy for a picture and then goosed his butt.

"His appeal is much broader than we thought," Ship says.

Creating a 'foovement'

Ship and Lippy say part of that appeal comes from Lippy's home-schooled background. Martha Stewart, Lippy says, was his "digital media teacher."

Every morning, "I'd wake up at 9, watch her from 9 to 10 and then I'd make something that she'd make," he says.

One day when he was about 8, he surprised his mother, Phyl, by making homemade pierogies filled with chili cheese dip brought home from a restaurant the night before. Lippy saw Stewart make a simple 1-2-3 pasta and decided to try it for himself, even sautéing the pierogies in butter and parsley.

The expression on his mother's face hooked him on cooking.

"It was like a jealous pride," he says. "It was, like, 'Oh, no, he's actually good at this.'"

The episode started somewhat of a friendly competition as mother and son tried to outdo each cooking their way through the Culinary Institute of America's main textbook.

Along the way, Lippy secretly taught himself to play his sister's guitar so he could make music like his father, who taught him about rock 'n' roll during car trips.

"He'd crank Santana on the radio super loud, and ask me, 'Who is that band?'" Lippy says.

As a teen, he switched from wanting to be a professional skateboarder to an Air Force pilot. But after a stint working as a grunt in the kitchen at the former Mise en Place Bistro on Bay-to-Bay Boulevard in Tampa, he decided the cooking life was for him.

"I got my butt kicked, but it was awesome," he says.

That led to him enrolling at age 17 in CIA cooking school in Hyde Park, N.Y., and playing in bands in New York City. After graduating, he worked in kitchens in Manhattan and taught himself how to shoot and edit video for a Web site.

His cooking role model is British culinary star Jamie Oliver, best known for his show "The Naked Chef."

"What he's done for England is amazing," Lippy says. "Because of him, parents are demanding healthier food in schools.

"I would like to do that instead of just having a show. I'm trying to create a food movement ... a 'foovement,' if you will."

He recognizes that his style sets him apart from most wannabe food stars, but insists, "It isn't a character. It would be hard to keep up something like that if it wasn't real. If the cameras and everything weren't there, I'd still be doing the same thing I'm doing.

"Someone once described me as 'Martha Stewart's cool nephew,'" he says. "That was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten."