This Is Gonna Be Money
Dec 18, 2007 general food
An excerpt from the New York Times article Ian posted about, in which Emeril took a Wusthof, just like Mario Batali, do to dwindling ratings and a lack of return:
Ms. Johnson called “Top Chef” a copy of “The Next Food Network Star,” but “without the care about the food content, which we bring to everything we do.”
Huh?
Without even getting into the lengthy list of reasons Top Chef is superior in every possible way…
Do they really “care about food content” when that Ace of Cakes asshole is layering up half inch layers of fondant on cakes that are completely inedible?
When Rachel Ray is fumbling around the kitchen pretending to cook her fat-ladden meals in 30 minutes or less, should I be impressed? Maybe it’s that I should be wowed by her skills with a Triscuit and a Ritz cracker? If you’ve ever seen one of her books, there’s a ton of ingredients and there’s no way a normal home cook would ever turn them out that fast.
And was the edible ornaments competition a masterful display of culinary vision and technique showing the same great care “to everything [they] do?”
With each passing year I’m startled by the new lows the Food Network slumps to as they take the eating out of food and cooking and give us instead a channel filled with human NFG like Guy Fieri. Maybe it’s that the producers are what Chuck Klosterman refers to as Advanced and I’m just not ready for them, but it seems that instead of educating people as to what food can be, the Food Network has made a conscious choice to dumb the channel down.
Their new tactic of offing real chefs, even when they’re obnoxious, and replacing them with Semi-Homemade alternatives, is a pretty clear statement that attention to detail and care for what they do have gone out the door in favor of the almighty dollar, and it makes me wonder one thing: how does Bobby Flay feel about his job?
We know how Guy feels .
Tags: Food Network
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?
December 18th, 2007 at 11:12 am
My favorite comment in the article is from Mario, and he sums it up very well:
Still, Mr. Batali said, “They don’t need me. They have decided they are mass market and they are going after the Wal-Mart crowd,” which he said was “a smart business decision. So they don’t need someone who uses polysyllabic words from other languages.”
Hence, “yum-o” wins out over “molto benne”.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
…another reason not to have cable…!