05/09/2007: "Ranking the Food Network Hosts"

Hi All,

Didn't I say awhile back I'd like to do a post on the Food Network hosts? I did, yes indeed.

Everyone got a TV channel that, when they're just aimlessly surfing about, they switch to first. Or a sort of a "elevator music" channel that you half-watch when you're puttering around the house. Okay, so I don't "putter" myself; in fact, I don't even really know what is encapsulated under such a verb as "putter," although my Mom might be an example of a putterer: she sort of flits from one area of the house to the other, hummingbird-like, addressing this or that, cleaning up what she calls "clutter," and which, to the best of my understanding, includes anything of value that anyone is foolish enough to leave out in plain sight when she goes on one of her "de-cluttering" binges.

I recall when I stayed at my folks's house after returning from Iowa, before the renters had left my house, Mom went on a anti-cluttering jihad and managed to de-clutter my car keys, my sneakers, and most every important piece of paper---including novel notes, receipts, and my living will---de-clutter it all out of existence. She'd have de-cluttered the clothes off my back if I'd happened to have found myself sucked into the vortex of her voracious puttering. When I confronted her about the whereabout of all my stuff, the following conversation ensued:

ME: Where in holy old hell is are all my belongings? My car keys, for starters?

MOM: I cleaned up. They were in the way.

ME: Where---the counter? That's in the way?

MOM: I may have recycled them.

Now I can understand Mom's need for a clutter-free house, partially because she's a neat freak---they have a maid, Beata, come over bi-weekly, and my Mom, God bless her, is the sort of person who cleans up for the maid; she's Q-tipping the garburator blades mortified that the maid is going to think her a slob; meanwhile Beata must be thinking she's got the cushiest job in town, seeing as she's nothing to do. It's like a guy spending Sunday afternoon washing his car in the driveway then driving it down to the Spray-N-Wash and telling the attendant, "I know, it's filthy; do what you can." Actually, Beata ends up feeling so distressed at not earning her paycheck she re-cleans, DOUBLE-cleans, everything my Mom's already cleaned; they're going to have to re-shellack the hardwood floors, as they've been worn down to unvarnished wood from all the double moppings and scrubbings.

But as I said, I understand, because my father---as I suspect most men---localizes his movements to the general vincinity of the couch and environs and yet still manages, without ever expending much energy or in fact even movement at all, to create a whole disaster-zone of clutter. I think men emit clutter without consciously realizing they're doing so; we're clutter magnets and the iron filings, embodied in beer cans and newspapers and empty envelopes and accrued dirts and debris, are so drawn to our persons that people like Mom cannot help but embark on de-cluttering missions every so often.

Where the hell was I? Oh, yes: my father watches the Business Channel. Don't ask me how I arrived at that point---circuitous, I know. That's his "elevator music" channel. A lot of people it's a sports channel or all-news. Mine is the Food Network.

Don't ask me why. I don't cook. Tonight I ate one of those rotisserie chickens. The only vague stab at cookery I attempted was when I tried to cut the chicken in half---and "stab" is apt verbiage because I couldn't get the damn bird to come apart properly; I sort of hacked at it awhile then started tearing, getting my fingers all greasy; by the end it was in such as state that, had it been the featured homocide on CSI, Gil Grissom would look at its lifeless torn-apart body and say:

GIL: This was the work of a real sicko. No respect for life, person who did this. A butter-knife butcher; he took his time, he had fun. We got to put this guy on ice.

Anyway, this is all to say I don't know shit from shinola when it comes to cooking. But I love eating, and as the Food Network is basically the Playboy channel for food lovers, like, food porn, I guess that explains my love of it.

So, the hosts. For the purpose of this post I'm going to take it as a given you've watched the channel and know who I'm talking about. I'll rank five shows/hosts on a scale of 1 - 10.

TAKE HOME CHEF (Curtis Stone): This show stars young cute Aussie chef Stone, who grabs some lucky person---always a woman, always good-looking---at her local supermarket and, after being assured she has a husband/boyfriend, offers to go shopping with her and then back to her house to cook supper.

Listen, I'll be honest: the food is only so/so; Stone knows what he's doing, but it's not culinary fireworks. The greatest bits of this show ... well, it's two-fold. First of all, the women are always enraptured by this smooth-talking, handsome Australian who can cook the lights out. The way they giggle and swoon as he flirts outrageously with them, shows them how to chiffonade parsley, genlty mocks their fear of calamari, whatever, is ... I don't know, as a dude I find it hovers between hilarious and a nightmare: not my own, but one experienced on behalf of the girl's poor boyfriend, drudging away in some cubicle while his hot young girlfriend opens up her home to this Crocodile Dundee sonofabitch who looks at all times as if hes intent on cooking the pants, quite literally, off her. There are a few times the camera will capture a look between Stone and the woman and I'm watching, thinking, if that camera wasn't there those two would be lathered in olive oil rolling around on the kitchen lino.

Now the second best part is when the guy comes home: there's this elaborate "surprise" where the dude walks in the front door, sees TV cameras, sees his breathless, giggly girlfriend with this big blonde Aussie pally-pally, and almost every time they look like the poor schmoe who's been brought onstage at the Maury Povitch show to find out that his wife's been schtupping his best friend, the pool boy, the milkman, whoever, behind his back. This initial look, totally betrayed, like, "How could you do this to me---on TV?!" Then he finds out they've been cooking all day, it's all innocent, but still something's curdled because the last 10 minutes of the show---the "dinner" where Stone serves them---is always carried out with this level of teeth-clenching, white-knuckled fury on the boyfriend's part; they always laugh and smile and compliment the food, say things like "scrumptious" and "Oh, I didn't know you could make Mediterranean sea scallops taste this good" but you know what they really want to say is, "Get out of my house, you filthy Mad Max-Yahoo Serious-highwayman bastard, or I'll kill you! Do you hear me---kill YOU!"

Good times. SCORE: 8 out of 10. By the way: this one's on TLC, not Food Network.

BEHIND THE BASH (Giada De Laurentis): Giada's the daughter of Dino De Laurentis, producer of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, KING OF THE GYPSIES and other cinematic fare. His daughter spends most of her time in front of the camera, which is good in one sense, as she's hot, but bad in another, as she's annoying.

I don't really know if she can cook, either. Her first show, EVERYDAY ITALIAN, isn't being shown anymore, but what I saw of it was pretty rudimentary cooking. The network soon capitalized on her most marketable asset---namely, her cleavage (scuttlebutt has it she's had a boob job, which I can't wholly count as a mark against her. Actually, not at all. Actually, it's a plus)---for BEHIND THE BASH, where Giada heads to lavish parties and hangs out with the caterers and executive chefs. But even in this capacity she's hugely annoying. First of all she's got these giant white enamels, just massive, massive teeth, which she flashes with the same frequency Joe Friday would his badge whilst interrogating a roomful of hopheads; you sort of wish a producer would say to her:

PRODUCER: Giada, you've got nice teeth and we want to see them, certainly, but when you open your lips a little it's called a smile---a beautiful, inviting smile---but when you do what you're doing fifteen, twenty times an episode ... darling, that's a rictus.

On top of that, she's one of these over-pronouncers. Every foreign word gets this perverse or drawn out or over-enunciated twist. It's not "mozarella" in Giada's mouth, it's "moot-za-relle." It's "pa-blaaaaah-no" peppers. It's "shiiiii-ta-KE" mushrooms. Some chefs can pull this off, Mario Batali being one of them; Giada, in my not-so-humble estimation, cannot. She reminds me of this woman I met, "Andrea," but she made a point of making sure everyone said, "Aaaaahn-dreahah." After awhile I started calling her Andy.

5 out of 10. (+2 for every show where Giada wears a low-cut blouse)

IRON CHEF AMERICA (Alton Brown/Kevin Braush/Mark DaCascos/The Iron Chefs):

Has anyone not watched this show? I started watching it's original Japanese counterpart when I lived in Japan; it was one of the few shows that was entertaining regardless of the language difference (the other one was MXE Challenge, now showing on Spike; hilarious, although again: crotch shots are funny in any language).

The basic idea, for those not in the know, is that the four Iron Chefs---Bobby Flay/Mario Batali/Masahiro Morimoto/Cat Kora---meet the challenge of visiting chefs in "Kitchen Stadium," where "The Chairman" (Mark-friggin'-Decascos, who will be known to lovers of 80-90's action flicks as the star of such gems as AMERICAN SAMURAI, DOUBLE DRAGON [not to be confused with 80s video game DOUBLE DRIBBLE ... aside: does anyone else remember that once you learned to time the "elbow" move in DOUBLE DRAGON, the game was a cinch to beat? You just went around elbowing goons, elbowing the bosses, elbowing the almighty fuck out of everyone until you got the end credits. It was almost like the CONTRA code]) ... anyway, The Chairman gives a secret ingredient both chefs have to use---last night it was wild boar. They have an hour to perpare 5 dishes using that ingredient.

Great, great show. The host, Alton Brown (who has his own show, GOOD EATS, which is not bad but Alton's such a clean freak he's really not far removed from Phil Hartman's Anal Retentive Chef character) is hugely knowledgable does a fine job keeping up with the action on all sides of Kitchen Stadium, while his lackey Kevin Braush (host of THE THIRSTY TRAVELLER, an informative show where Braush basically gets paid to be an alcoholic, getting loaded on all four points of the globe; great job, I'd take it) fills in the gaps from his "man on the street" position on the kitchen floor.

At the end the dishes are judged by a "panel of experts," whose crucuial expertise often seems to be that they showed up for taping that day. One, though, Jeffrey Steingarten, I like a lot. He writes for Vanity Fair, I think, and he's not afraid to tear into a dish, even the mighty Iron Chef's, whereas some other judges could be presented with a chocoate-enrobed dog turd and claim it was marvellous ("Such a depth of flavor! Such a rich and vibrant patina of compound textures! It's hitting every one of my taste buds!"). I like Steingarten, but he's got this really syrupy voice, like he's been hovering over a pot of savory minestrone soup for an hour and he's in full-on drool mode; I half-expect him to expectorate all over his fellow judges or, God forbid, The Chairman; Decascos would have to elbow him to death for such an insult.

As for the Iron Chefs themselves: all pros, all a lot of fun to watch. Batali's my fave, though I'm always amazed by Morimoto. And some of the challengers are awesome, too; they've had a few "science nerd" chefs in who get it going with the liquid nitrogen, whacking the tops of champage bottles with scimitars, and all sorts of wacky kitchen gadgets.

SCORE: 10 out of 10. The flagship program.

ROAD TASTED (Jimmy and Bobby Deen): So this show features Jimmy and Bobby, sons of southern cooking legend Paula Deen (who has her own southern-fried show, and who exudes a strange southern sexuality. I mean, to me. Maybe I'm weird. I mean, I know I am, but there are some women you look at and you think, Man, 30 years ago that woman ... she was a hellcat, I'm sure of it. Something about her sweet, almost saccharine southern charm, the way she says "puddin'" and suchlike ... she's covering up something, some wild streak. Southern women, I don't know. I know this is an old southern woman, I'm just saying, she was a hellion way back in the day. This whole apple-dumpling act she's got going, it's a sham.)

Anyway, Jimmy and Bobby do no cooking in this show. I love it for that reason. They just get in this ragtop Mustang and tour around the country, finding local delicacies---the best rice balls and almond torte in NY City, for example; the best cinammon bun in Seattle; the best rootbeer in Wisconsin---and eating them. So, like, a travelogue of gluttony. Nothing wrong with that. Jimmy and Bobby got the same country-fried charm as their mother, the type of guys who could get along with anyone. Lots of "food porn" footage: slow shots of cinammon buns being pulled apart, apple pies pulled out of pie tins, various food dipped in chocolate, etc. I have to tuck a bib down my shirt while watching to catch the drool.

SCORE: 8 out of 10 (THE SECRET LIFE OF ... another "road trip" show in the same vein, gets a 7 largely because its host, Jim O'Connor, looks like he's trying too hard)

30 MINUTE MEALS (Rachael Ray): Apart from Emeril LeGasse, Ray's probably the biggest star, and a crossover star at that, the Food Network's ever produced (as an aside: how did LeGasse ever end up with a sitcom? He's a fun personality, perfectly suited to a kitchen stage, but who thought he could carry a prime-time sitcom? There are only so many ways you can work "BAM!" into a workable comedy premise. I would actually have liked to see Emeril tackle a crime show instead.

SCENE: CRIME SCENE: Body of young hophead outlined in chalk:

Lieutenant Carruthers: Alright, LeGasse, I know it's your first day on the job and I hate to spring this one on you, but you've come with highest commendations. What do you think happened?

Sargeant LeGasse: BAM!

Carruthers: They said you were a hardass. They also said you were the best.

LeGasse [produces paprika from pocket, tosses a pinch on the corpse]: BAM!

Carruthers [puffing on stogie]: You're right, the entry trajectory of that slug DOES look fishy...

LeGasse: BAM! BAM! BAM!

Carruthers: Three shots, huh? Alright, smart guy, where did they come from?

LeGasse: BAM!

Carruthers: The book repository? LeGasse, you magnificent bastard, I think you've got it!

CREDITS ROLL.

What? What was I talking about? Oh, yes, Rachael Ray. Listen, I got nothing against her success, she's a personality, some people must like her. I personally do not. At all. She's got this lunatic, unhinged chipperness that's so overwhelming, so overdone, that you end up thinking she could produce a hatchet at any moment and chop you into confetti with that same perky, rubber-doll smile pasted on her face the whole time.

If you had a drinking game and took a shot every time she said "Yum-mo" you'd be blotto by the first commercial break. I don't get her appeal, at all. Could someone please tell me? I'm happy enough that other people like her, she is sort of the anti-Martha Stewart---her recipes can be made in 30 minutes, lots of canned foods, lots of microwaving---so she can't be all bad, if for that reason alone. She's doing a talk show now, where she basically cooks for 45 minutes, then exchanges vapid and uncomfortable banter with some deer-in-headlights Z-level guest ("Ladies and gentlemen, you know him, you love him, the zany "Klinger" from TV's M*A*S*H: Jamie Farr!")

SCORE: 4 out of 10.

All best, Craig.