Before They Were Stars

Bravo beauty Padma Lakshmi served as one of India's first supermodels before entering the food and entertainment world. Discovered by a modeling agent while sitting in (here's the culinary connection) a café, Lakshmi went on to appear in campaigns for Ralph Lauren, Roberto Cavalli, and other top designers.

Armed with a B.A. in Theater Arts from Clark University, Lakshmi appeared in several food shows before becoming host of Bravo's Top Chef. For the Food Network, she hosted Padma's Passport and the documentary series Planet Food. The model-turned-hostess has since penned two cookbooks, most recently Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day, and shot to superstar TV food fame for her famous line, "Please pack your knives and go." We think this is way more iconic than Heidi Klum's "Auf Wiedersehen!"

When you think of grilling, you think of Bobby Flay. Food Network's famous grill master and owner of five restaurants across the U.S. and the Bahamas (plus the just-opened Bobby's Burger Palace in Long Island, N.Y.) actually got his start away from the smoke and fire. As a 17-year-old high school dropout, Flay worked the salad station at New York's Joe Allen Restaurant, where his father was a partner. While not the haute-est of cuisine prep, Flay's salad-making skills impressed the management enough to have Joe Allen himself pay for his tuition to the prestigious French Culinary Institute.

However, French cuisine didn't end up being Flay's thing. After a sharp, but thankfully brief, career detour at the American Stock Exchange, Flay discovered his culinary calling in the flavors of America's Southwest. His natural flair for Southwestern heat caught the attention of a New York restaurateur, who asked Flay to open Mesa Grill. The restaurant, and the chef, proved to be even hotter than Flay's signature spicy dishes.

Before the magazine, the Oprah-produced talk show, the Food Network fame, and, yes, before E.V.O.O. was in the dictionary, Rachael Ray was just another person working in the food industry. As a child, Rachael often spent her days inside the restaurants her mother managed in Cape Cod, MA, and upstate New York -- her first vivid memory being the time she accidentally grilled her thumb while trying to imitate her mom's spatula skills. Burns aside, it's no surprise that most of Rachael's first jobs (including a stint as a Howard Johnson's waitress) involved food.

Upon moving to New York City in her early 20s, Ray worked the candy counter at Macy's and, later, the fresh foods department. After getting mugged twice -- both times by the same man -- she left Manhattan to move back to upstate New York. While a buyer at Cowan & Lobel market in Albany, Ray taught a 30-Minute Meals cooking class, a response to the popular Domino's pizza campaign promising "pizza in 30 minutes or less," which exploded in popularity. The local CBS station took notice and hired Ray for a weekly on-air gig. In its first year, Ray's local news segment was nominated for two regional Emmys and spawned a companion cookbook that sold 10,000 copies.

A spot on NBC's Today show led to a call from Food Network, asking Ray to bring 30-Minute Meals to the nation. The biggest news this year has been Ray's number one spot on Forbes's list of highest-earning celebrity chefs -- she pulled in an estimated $18 million a year. That's a long way away from the HoJo's!

Food Network's Sunny Anderson got her culinary start the old-fashioned way: serving burgers and fries at Sonic Drive-in. The host of Cooking for Real and How'd That Get on My Plate? rocked a fashionable poodle skirt and an awesome pair of roller skates when serving and chatting with customers at the San Antonio hot spot. While she enjoyed the gig, Anderson really wanted to work with the cooks. "All I wanted to do was be in the kitchen," Anderson says. Soon enough, she was in the kitchen making dough at Little Caesar's.

It was while working simultaneously as a DJ and caterer in New York City that Anderson got her first taste of food television. An audience coordinator from Food Network's Emeril Live heard Anderson on the radio talking about the big-name music and fashion events she was catering and invited her to be a guest on the show. The guest spot lead to a chat with executives, and eventually her own cooking show on the network.

Ina Garten, better known as Food Network's Barefoot Contessa, grew up in Stamford, CT. Often pressured by her parents to concentrate on schoolwork, Ina didn't start cooking until her 20s. While vacationing in Paris with her husband, Jeffrey, Garten discovered her love of fresh, simple ingredients.

Back in the U.S. Garten moved to Washington, D.C., with Jeffrey, and while working on her MBA at George Washington University, she worked in the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Part of her job included writing for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter on nuclear energy policies -- a task Garten admits was kind of fun since her papers were being read by the president. Ultimately, though, Garten found the work uninspiring and sought a more creative career, one where she could be in charge and making the decisions.

A random ad in the New York Times for a specialty food store for sale in the Hamptons caught Garten's eye. She immediately fell in love and purchased the Barefoot Contessa shop on a whim, despite having no experience in the food business. But true to her convictions, Garten knew she had made the right decision.

Over the next 18 years, the Barefoot Contessa became a hotbed of culinary delights and was regarded as a highly praised resource for its wealthy and influential clientele. In 1996, Garten sold the Barefoot Contessa and began work on her first book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Outselling original projections, the cookbook caught the eye of Pacific Productions (the same production folks behind Nigella Lawson's shows), which led to her eponymous TV show, Barefoot Contessa.

Across the Pond, Jamie Oliver was already peeling potatoes at his parents' pub by the age of 8. "I remember being fascinated by what went on in the kitchen. It just seemed such a cool place, everyone working together to make this lovely stuff and having a laugh doing it," says Oliver. The Cricketers, Clavering, in the Essex region of England, is still in business, should you want to hop a plane to sample medallions of local venison or the 21-day hung rump steak.

After learning the ropes under his parents' watchful eye, he headed to the famed River Café in London, where Oliver was featured in a documentary about the restaurant. The day after it aired, five producers called looking to give that "cheeky kid" his own show. The Naked Chef, a reference to Oliver's simple recipes (not his missing clothing), was discovered.

Well, we know what wasn't part of Robert Irvine's background: getting knighted by the Queen, working on the wedding cake for Prince Charles and Princess Diana, owning a castle in Scotland, or serving as chef for several United States presidents. Irvine reportedly made false claims before being busted by the St. Petersburg Times. An admitted "résumé exaggerator," Irvine got axed from his Food Network show Dinner: Impossible for deceiving the public and was replaced with Iron Chef Michael Symon.