The coronavirus crisis has had a devastating impact on chefs and restaurant workers.
A new campaign from Vanity Fair® Napkins and JOAN Creative is designed to help support hard-hit chefs and restaurants from across the country, while giving quarantined consumers access to some great and easy instructional cooking content.
The campaign was created in partnership with the LEE Initiative Restaurant Workers Relief Program and stars four chefs, each hosting her own mini cooking show in a series called Cook In Place.
Rolling out one new show per week, each episode was shot by a different chef in her own kitchen with her phone and provides audiences quick and simple recipes they can make at home with ingredients likely already in their kitchens. The content will be posted on the Vanity Fair® Napkins social platforms.Here’s what’s cooking:
- Kelly Fields, Chef and Owner of Willa Jean in New Orleans, LA, bakes her famous chocolate chip cookies – the first time she is revealing the coveted recipe! Kelly’s spot debuted first and can be viewed here.
- Sam Fore, Chef and Owner of TukTuk Sri Lankan Bites in Lexington, KY, whips up Cajun fried rice.
- Karen Akunowicz, Chef and Owner of Fox & the Knife in Boston, MA, makes easy homemade orecchiette pasta.
- Ashleigh Shanti, Chef de Cuisine of Benne on Eagle in Asheville, NC, creates quick coconut curry chicken over noodles or rice…or anything you have.
“We have all had to be incredibly creative to survive this crisis. From a personal perspective, we have to figure out what to cook with a can of corn we’ve had in the back of the pantry forever,” said Jaime Robinson, co-founder and CCO of JOAN Creative. “Enter these amazing chefs who can teach us how to create wondrous meals out of the random things we have in the pantry. This far into quarantine and I definitely need this! What’s more, it’s an opportunity to support these great chefs and the work of the LEE Initiative.”
In addition to engaging with the chefs to create this content, the Vanity Fair® brand made a generous donation to the LEE Initiative.
“As a napkin brand, mealtimes and community are deeply important to us, and the restaurant industry is a central driver of these values in our society. So when we heard about the work that the LEE Initiative is doing to support the restaurant community during this time, the Vanity Fair Napkins team wanted to step up and partner with them to support some of the people who are the heart of that community – the chefs,” said Katie Kolesky, Director of Brand Building, Towel and Napkin Categories at Georgia-Pacific. “With people spending more time at home, we wanted to help spark some inspiration and creativity in our consumers by having these four amazing chefs share easy-to-make recipes – each with her own spin and personality.”