Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Neelix
5. Pots, Pans, And Swimsuits
Neelix is the "ultimate in flexibility and a jack of many, many trades," notes the Star Trek: Voyager series bible (season one). He was certainly several things even before his time on the Intrepid class — orbital tether scale model something or other, mining colony worker, engineer's assistant, garbage scow worker, merchant, trader, smuggler, the list goes on. On Voyager, he was guide, 'chief morale officer,' coffee-wrangler, ambassador, Grand Proxy, godfather, part-time presenter, one time sleuth, and of course, cook.
Most of the crew might have baulked at the mere sight of his leola root stew, but by the end, in Captain Janeway's words, "Neelix [had] left some pretty big pots and pans to fill". His holo-novel, Cooking with Neelix: A Culinary Tour of the Delta Quadrant never did see the light of day. In the real world, Ethan Phillips, as Neelix, did get to co-author the Star Trek Cookbook (1999), which included recipes from the 'crews' of Voyager, the Enterprise-D, Deep Space 9, a couple of Cardassians, and a Ferengi for good measure, too.
The Star Trek Cookbook includes the "Top Ten Reasons the Crew Hates Neelix's Cooking". Number 9: "Kidney is not a breakfast food." Number 8: "A little confused by the soup fork." No doubt the most surprising revelation of the piece is that Neelix "spent a few years as a swimsuit model on Talax". Thankfully, that's not canon, but it will haunt you the next time you stop by the mess hall.