Meet the pioneering, opinionated and inscrutable Jeremiah Tower, one of the most controversial figures in modern American cuisine.

Emily Thomas hears about his extraordinary childhood in grand hotels and on ocean liners with only haute cuisine for company; how he helped bring about a food revolution in Berkeley, California that would become the 'New American cuisine'; and why, after years of celebrity in San Francisco, he mysteriously disappeared from the culinary scene for over a decade.

Jeremiah is widely seen as the first modern-day celebrity chef, and he doesn't hold back when explaining exactly what he thinks of the biggest names in food today.

(Picture: Jeremiah Tower. Credit: Gary Gershoff/WireImage via Getty Images)