Bonnie Belknap has as long a resume as anyone in Hollywood. She's worked on everything from Barton Fink and Max Headroom to The Sopranos and Wedding Crashers.Bonnie is the entertainment industry's premiere food stylist. She creates edible props and makes food photogenic for print and film. She helped us shoot a T-bone steak for Issue 009: All You Can Eat. We caught up with her recently to learn more about her unusual line of work.Given the number of images of food we see every day, we hadn't given much thought to the work that goes into making food look good in pictures and movies. Do you even use real food?Bonnie Belknap: We always use real food. In the shot we did for GOOD with T-bone steaks, I grilled the steaks just enough to get perfect grill marks (it was supposed to be a bloody steak when cut into). I touched up the edges with a blow-torch, and then gave it a very light glaze of olive oil and a final spritz of edible glycerin. I did manufacture some extra blood just in case, and that was made out of beet juice, Augustina bitters and kitchen bouquet. We can also enhance the color of certain foods with particular cooking methods, like blanching the vegetables just until they reach their most vibrant color, then shocking them in ice water.How did you first get into food styling?BB: I was doing private catering at the time. I met someone who worked on The Love Boat. They said they had a little food scene and asked if I could help them out.What did you do on that first gig?BB: I created an enormous cruise ship buffet...probably 36 ft. long. I can't remember what country the ship was supposed to be in, but whichever one it was, I had to convey that culture in the food we made.



