Meet the stylists
They’re responsible for those gorgeous food spreads on TV, in magazines and on billboards
It’s just after 7:30 a.m. and food stylist Jan Sherk is in the green room at Toronto’s Global TV’s The Morning
Show, unloading a teetering stack of plastic containers of food, plates, linens and cooking utensils that tower above her barely five-foot frame.
She’s preparing for a cooking segment — set to go live in two hours. On it, Vancouver-based chef Caren McSherry will prepare sesame-coated chicken nuggets, pulled chicken tacos and prosciutto-wrapped pear and gorgonzola rolls from her new cookbook, Starters, Salads, and Sexy Sides.
When it comes to food styling, many people think of strawberries painted red with lipstick or ice cream made of shortening, but all the food Sherk prepares is used with actual ingredients from the book. After all, the hosts have to eat the stuff on air.
Sherk’s kitchen this November morning is a shallow counter in the busy area where show guests wait to go on air. There are other people unloading cakes for a segment on the just-opened Cheesecake Factory and wrapping gifts for a bit on gift-giving etiquette. Sherk finds a corner and plugs in a portable induction stove to toast the sesame-coated chicken nuggets she made the night before.
“It’s busier than usual in here,” Sherk says, while warming up pulled-chicken in the microwave.
“You never know what to expect when you walk through the door.”
Sherk is one of many food stylists responsible for the gorgeous spreads, crumbly cookies and juicy birds seen on TV, in magazines and on billboards during the entertaining season. In addition to creating the mouth-watering foods that lure patrons to restaurants and illustrate cookbooks, it is her job to simplify the lives of travelling chefs and cookbook authors.
“People are shocked when I say that the author didn’t make the food,” says Sherk, a trained cook, who began food styling in 2009. “I tell them that they’re flying in from another city and it’s impossible for them to shop for the ingredients when their plane lands at midnight or cook out of their hotel room. It’s why there’s a need for people that do what I do.”
Sherk got her start in food styling while a personal chef for Ace Bakery co-founder Linda Haynes. She tested recipes and styled dishes for The ACE Bakery Cookbook. Publisher Penguin Canada now hires her for cookbook authors’ TV appearances.
About an hour before airtime, McSherry arrives in her chef whites carrying a stand for the tacos and little clothespins to keep the flour tortillas together as cute presentation ideas for parties.
Not only is everything edible, Shrek brought three kinds of flour tortillas for McSherry to choose from.
“The No. 1 misconception people have is that the food is fake,” says Heather Trimm, who has styled for Julia Child, Dorie Greenspan, Nigella Lawson and Ricardo in her 20plus-year career.
Outside of labelling laws and health claims, there aren’t any federal laws relating to how food should be represented in ads. For the most part, food stylists use real ingredients.
“Sometimes it’s just easier to make the food for real than to fake it,” Trimm says, adding it’s faster to find a rounder apple or greener lettuce leaf than to think of ways to enhance the shape or colour of ingredients. “The crew might also want to eat it, and wasting food seems sinful, so I don’t do it. Generally speaking, most food stylists won’t do it.”
Food styling requires meticulous planning, she says. For TV, she might have as little as a few days notice. She needs to get the cookbook, consult with the publisher, author or producers of the TV segment, buy ingredients and make dishes that can be cooked in advance and won’t wilt or look drab by show time. On shoot day, she’s only doing final touches.
For example, while talking to me last week from her home, Trimm was roasting a chicken and baking a pizza ahead of a talk-show appearance the next day on The Social for singer Jann Arden, whose new cookbook-memoir Feeding My Mother came out last month.
“When I bring it on set tomorrow, I might freshen it up by adding more fresh herbs. I also have a pizza that I’ll be adding more cheese and melting it with a heat gun,” Trimm says.
“Since it’s live TV, our segment could be bumped up, so I can’t ask the producers to wait cause I have to wait for the dish to cook up.”
Trimm has had a few last-minute emergencies. Once, when a batch of mayonnaise she whipped up began to separate the morning of a Cityline cooking segment, she had to dash next door to the Senator diner to borrow a cup of mayonnaise.
Television is more forgiving than print. Whereas a stylist would spend two hours at a TV studio to prepare for a cooking segment, a photo shoot can start at 8:30 a.m. and go on till 6 p.m. to get five shots, says stylist Noah Witenoff, whose clients include McDonald’s Canada and Pizza Hut as well as cookbook authors chef Michael Smith and the Star’s former food editor Jennifer Bain.
Though the actual construction of beautiful-looking food is time-consuming, even more time is spent choosing the perfect tomato or bun, adjusting camera lights and angles and waiting for client approval.
“The main challenge is babysitting the food, which can be sitting out for a long time,” Witenoff says. “That’s when you paint on some oil or spritz on some water to keep it looking fresh.
“The food is real, and the company supplies all the food, and it’s our job to make it look amazing."
While the payoff for Witenoff can be a giant billboard or commercial that runs for weeks, for morning television the thrill is over in five minutes.
As McSherry’s segment kicks off at The Morning Show studio, Sherk is watching a few feet away behind the camera as McSherry explains the dishes to the hosts.
In minutes, the segment is over and any uneaten food is returned to the green room, where the show’s staff pecks at the leftovers.
When the crowd clears, Sherk cleans up, stacking her containers onto a dolly and hauls them back to her car.
“It’s my job to make the cookbook author’s stuff come to life from the pages of the book,” says Sherk, who will do the same setup for a Facebook Live stream at the publisher’s office later this day.
“I’m not interested in the spotlight.” karonliu@thestar.ca