Gates, Stefan

PERSONAL:

Married Georgia Glynn Smith (photographer). Education: Oxford University, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Michelle Kaas, Michelle Kass Associates, 36-38 Glasshouse St., London W1R 5RH, England.

CAREER:

Writer, scriptwriter, producer, director. BBC TV, London, England, assistant producer and development producer; Full on Food, BBC2, presenter and cowriter, 2004; Cooking in the Danger Zone, BBC2 and BBC4, writer and presenter, 2006—. Also presenter for Food Uncut, UK Food.

WRITINGS:

Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2005.

Cooking in the Danger Zone (television tie-in), BBC Books (London, England), 2007.

Also author of scripts for television series Full on Food, BBC2, 2004, and Cooking in the Danger Zone, BBC2 and BBC4, 2006—. Contributor to magazines, including Olive. Author of the blog Cooking in the Danger Zone.

SIDELIGHTS:

Television producer and food writer Stefan Gates is known in his native England and in the United States for his adventurous forays into the wild side of culinary arts. His 2005 book Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave describes how to prepare everything from cow heel to a Roman bacchanalian orgy, while in television productions for the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), such as Full on Food and Cooking in the Danger Zone, Gates takes intrepid gastronomes around the world in search of the offbeat and new. Louisa Pearson, writing in the Scotsman, termed his Cooking in the Danger Zone a "curious hybrid, where current affairs meets cookery in a travelogue format." Gates has also adapted that television series for a book.

Reviewing Gastronaut, Curled Up with a Good Book critic Amanda Cuda found the book to be "a hoot and should provide aspiring gourmands with lots of ideas and inspiration." Similarly, Library Journal contributor Lisa A. Ennis called Gastronaut "an irreverent and unexpected journey through several culinary oddities." A California Bookwatch reviewer praised it as a "fun survey [that] even avid cooks will appreciate."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

California Bookwatch, December 1, 2006, review of Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave.

Esquire, April 1, 2006, "How to Stage a Bacchanalian Orgy," p. 70.

Library Journal, April 1, 2006, Lisa A. Ennis, review of Gastronaut, p. 117.

Publishers Weekly, February 20, 2006, review of Gastronaut, p. 152.

ONLINE

Curled Up with a Good Book,http://www.curledup.com/ (May 7, 2007), Amanda Cuda, review of Gastronaut.

Guardian Unlimited,http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (August 3, 2006), Stefan Gates, "Trouble in Paradise."

Scotsman,http://living.scotsman.com/ (July 26, 2006), Louisa Pearson, review of Cooking in the Danger Zone.

Stefan Gates Home Page,http://www.thegastronaut.com (May 7, 2007).

UKTV,http://uktv.co.uk/ (May 7, 2007), "Food: Stefan Gates."

Urbanite,http://www.urbanite.baltimore.com/ (May 7, 2007), Robin Reid, review of Gastronaut.

World Hum,http://www.worldhum.com/ (July 17, 2006), "Stefan Gates: Cooking in the Danger Zone."