MEET...MR. FOOD

You don't just pick up the phone and talk to Mr. Food.

The cooking guru to working moms has an office, a receptionist and a personal assistant named Marilyn who makes his appointments.

This month, he visited Minneapolis, Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia and various smaller towns with one of his 127 affiliate stations. Almost anywhere in the country, viewers can tune in to the local news and watch Mr. Food give a 90-second explanation on how to cook a great dish in less than an hour.

His real name, off-camera, is Art Ginsburg. And once you get through to the man known for saying "ooh it's so good" at the end of every recipe, you realize the on-camera persona isn't an act. The former butcher, green grocer and caterer really thrives on telling the American public about quick, easy recipes for today's amateur cooks.

"With today's working couples, the cooks want to stop on the way home and pick something up in the supermarket to build around," said Ginsburg, 64. "They want it on the table in 20 minutes and they want accolades from the people they cooked for.

"It must be sensible, and it must be quick."

That was Ginsburg's motto from the beginning when, in 1971, the local television station in Troy, N.Y., asked him to do a guest spot on its morning talk show. They asked him back again. And again.

By 1982, he was so popular that King World Syndicate signed him and began marketing cooking segments to stations across the United States.

Ginsburg still tapes his segments in a studio in New York state, but he and his wife Ethel (she prefers to be called "Mrs. Food"), two sons and a daughter live and work in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Locally, he's seen on KFVS in Cape Girardeau on the 5 p.m. news. After every Mr. Food segment, the station runs an address people can write to receive recipes.

"Every week we get many, many letters," said Paul Keener, KFVS' promotional director. "He's extremely popular."

It's a down-to-earth approach to cooking that has made Mr. Food, and his plethora of cookbooks, so successful, Ginsburg said. When asked if he ever was a chef, he gets almost defensive.

"If I had ever been a chef, I wouldn't be where I am today," he said. "A chef cooks for other chefs, with 15 ingredients and with 15 steps. I have 1 1/2 minutes of choice words, words meaningful to most people."

Besides the chef question, there are a few others Ginsburg usually fields. Stock answers: The recipes are his own or simplified versions of ones sent in by viewers. He and his wife take turns cooking at home. "Ooh it's so good" was simply a contrivance to make people remember him.

But it's obvious Ginsburg doesn't mind fielding the same old questions. It gives him a chance to promote his new lines of seafood, sauces, flavor sprays and antibacterial cleaners.

And after nearly 25 years on television, being in the public eye isn't anything new. He plans to be there a lot longer.

"If Upstairs is good to me, I'll be doing this for the next 20 years for sure," Ginsburg said.

"I'm probably one of the luckiest guys -- no, THE luckiest guy -- because I love what I'm doing."