The post The High Times Interview: Cat Cora appeared first on High Times.
Cat Cora got her start on The Food Network in the late 1990s and soon became integral to the cooking show trend that would dominate the next decade. In 2005, she made history as the first female Iron Chef. Since then, the world-renowned celebrity chef has opened restaurants around the globe, released popular cookbooks and a memoir, and appeared on dozens of shows teaching people how to cook and lead healthier lives. Cat’s latest endeavor—advocating for medical cannabis patients—might just be the most important of her career.
How did you get your start in the entertainment aspect of cooking?
Well, I was a partner in a restaurant in the Bay Area called Postino. It was a great success. I got a call to come do a local cooking show in San Francisco, and I’d never really done any television. Once I did it, I absolutely fell in love with it. I fell in love with being on television. This was the mid-’90s, so the celebrity-chef phenomenon wasn’t quite there yet. The Food Network was just starting out, and this whole idea of cooking shows was still pretty new. I got the tape of that little local cooking show and I sent it in to Food Network, and they called me, like probably a couple weeks later, and wanted me to come in and do a guest appearance on a show. Then they called me back to do a couple more shows and it all happened super-fast. So the planets were all aligned and I was ready to go because I’d found this new medium that really excited me and I had some aptitude for. So I jumped on