Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, two kitchen queens with enough clout to sauté the sun, are back in the spotlight! These culinary titans go way back to the 1990s, a time when the world was just waking up to the idea that you could make chicken AND entertain without accidentally setting the drapes on fire.
Picture this: Ina, living her best Hamptons life, surrounded by fresh herbs and perfectly chilled Chardonnay, while Martha swooped into town in 1990, casually buying up real estate like she was playing Monopoly. That same year, Martha’s magazine launched its very first issue, and surprise, surprise—our barefoot queen Ina got a shout-out. (Apparently, barefoot was cool long before it became a life philosophy.)
Fast forward a few years: Martha’s production company waved its magic spatula and poof!—Ina got a gig offer from Food Network. But like an undercooked soufflé, that deal deflated. Not to worry, because Ina’s destiny wasn’t to simmer in the background. No, she took a shortcut and became a household name in the early 2000s with her very own show, Barefoot Contessa. You know, the show where she asks rhetorical questions like, “How easy is that?” while we, the audience, are pretty sure we’d burn down the house if we tried.
Now, this is where things get spicy—cue dramatic sous-chef music. In a juicy profile for The New Yorker, Ina spilled the beans (or maybe the risotto?) about how she and Martha drifted apart. According to Ina, Martha ghosted her after moving to Bedford, New York, presumably to spend more time with artisanal hens or something equally Martha-esque. But hold up—Martha has her own version of this friendship falling apart, and it’s a doozy!
Martha claims that their friendship hit the skids when she was ahem “sent off to Alderson Prison.” Yes, Martha went full Orange Is the New Black for a hot minute in the early 2000s due to an insider trading scandal. She said, and I quote, “When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me. I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly.” Well, who knew that a prison stint could be the ultimate friendship test?
But don’t start imagining a pie-flinging showdown just yet. Ina’s camp—armed with more kitchen gadgets than a Williams Sonoma catalog—denied this whole prison-silence saga. And then, enter Martha’s publicist, Susan Magrino, who appeared to clean up this boiling pot of drama faster than a Roomba on espresso. She firmly declared, “Martha’s not bitter, y’all, and there’s no feud.” No beef (or even tofu) between these two legends, at least according to the PR team.
No kitchen knives were thrown, no macarons were crushed, and we can all go back to pretending we’ll make Ina’s roast chicken someday.
