Food Network Chefs

[SmokehouseDan]

I think Alton Brown and Sarah are both kind of annoying to watch. Alton is to corny, and Sarah always looks like she is about to burn something.

I like Iron Chef, but I always seem to see the same show. My favorite episode was the dessert one with bananas, and the challenger made the stained glass out of sugar.

I don't care for Martha Stewart, but I do like some of the guest chefs. Shes had on.

[SmokehouseDan]

Actually my favorite show is The Great Chefs series on Discovery channel. I learn a lot from the show, but I often miss it, because it doesn't come on til 4 and I'm at work.

[Lesley C]

Please allow me to retract my comments about Claudine. They were based on second-hand reports. There's enough incorrect gossip flying around the food world and I shoudn't have added to it. Heck, I send food back in restaurants as well. Sorry to Claudine and all. Until I meet her face to face, I will abstain from any criticism. I bet it isn't easy to work with a star like Pepin, even if --or especailly if -- he's your father.

[jaybee]

I learned a lot from David Rosengarten. Love Jaques and Caludine, always enjoyed Julia, liked grillin and chillin. The robot clap audience for Emeril is a turn off. Why is it so cool to clap when he adds butter, garlic or booze? It's bush league. Lidia Bs show is good.

[lizziee]

For me, the one person who set the standard for food television is Julia Child. Her French Chef series was a landmark. She introduced a generation to "unknown" ingredients and techniques. She never dumbed down to her audience and made sure she imparted correct technique. At the same time, her quirky sense of humor and earthiness made it fun to watch.

[Aurora]

Julia Child defies description, her personal story is inspiring, and she is still fun to watch. What I most enjoy about her is that she allows the cooking to happen--mistakes and all--and she's always in favor of a good strong drink. A woman after my own heart.

[John Whiting]

Did Mireille Johnston's "A Cook's Tour of France" (BBC 1992-3) ever make it to the US? I have them all on tape; they were the one TV food series that treated television as if it were a medium watched by the same people who read -- and write -- good books.

Mireille interviewed some of the greatest French chefs of the time -- in French, in short bursts, immediately translating as she went along. You saw these people being comfortably themselves, not set up like zoo animals before a gawking public. She was a great but unpretentious lady, whose legacy includes having done the translation for the English version of Louis Malle's extraordinary four-hour documentary on wartime France, "The Sorrow and the Pity". Writing her obit for the Guardian was one of the saddest but most rewarding jobs I ever did.

[Simon Majumdar]

John

Mireille's Cook's Tour was a marvel and one of the great cookery shows of all time.

As a Brit, I did not grow up with Julia Childs but her shows have been on in the UK on occasions and I have seen them on my trips to the US. I love her way of presenting and she reminds me of the late great Fanny Craddock who with her drunk husband, Johnny stumbled her way around the TV kitchen of post -rationing Britain

S

[tony h]

In one of her shows Delia actually showed you how to boil water. Is that why she's called football head smith 'cause everybody wants to kick it?

[John Whiting]

In one of her shows Delia actually showed you how to boil water.

Speaking as a grandfather, I found her egg-sucking demonstration particularly enlightening.

[Ron Johnson]

OK, here is the deal:

In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Out

Alton Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .David Rosengarten

Iron Chef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Ready, Set, Cook!

Mario Batali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bobby Flay (the studio show)

Nigella. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sara Moulton

Emeril Lagasse . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .Emeril Lagasse

Tony Bourdain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Keith Famie

Tyler Florence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bobby Flay (Foodnation show)

Gordon Elliot is so excruciately painful to watch that I have never seen more than a couple minutes of the show. I'd like to see a show where Gordon knocks on a door in New York city and a very angry and slightly inebriated Tony Bourdain answers, grabs Gordo by the scruff of the neck, and . . . well use your imagination.

[Waz]

Actually my favorite show is The Great Chefs  series on Discovery channel.  I learn a lot from the show, but I often miss it, because it doesn't come on til 4 and I'm at work.

You need to get a Tivo! I rarely watch TV but now when I do I just pick from a big list of cooking shows that I have my Tivo automatically record. Plus you get to just skip the commercials (steal according to Time Warner).

[Simon Majumdar]

and a very angry and slightly inebriated Tony Bourdain

is there any other sort of Bourdain?

much more interesting would be the episode where a group of seventh Day Adventists turn up on his doorstep and he invites them in with a warm smile and a huge hug. Once inside he serves them warm buttered crumpets while they join in a rousing rendition of "What a Friend We Have In Jesus"

An average night, chez Bourdain

[Ron Johnson]

much more interesting would be the episode where a group of seventh Day Adventists turn up on his doorstep and he invites them in with a warm smile and a huge hug.  Once inside he serves them warm buttered crumpets while they join in a rousing rendition of "What a Friend We Have In Jesus"

If you can't beat 'em . . . join 'em.

[tommy]

Why is it so cool to clap when he adds butter, garlic or booze?  .

it's not cool. it's what the lady with the big yellow wand in the audience wants you to do. and yes, it's fun.

[Wilfrid]

Gordon Elliott's voice is so annoying, I sometimes watch the show just to mimic him (try "Follow that food!" with the Gordon bray full on). I do the same thing with the Great Puck.

Rosengarten's out? He used to be informative, if somewhat twee.

[Ron Johnson]

Rosengarten's out?  He used to be informative, if somewhat twee.

Agreed Wilfrid, however, Alton Brown is also informative but does not drool.

[Wilfrid]

Alton's too geeky for me. Also, his crew can't point the camera straight and keep it still - my big complaint about "A Cook's Tour" too. (And "Nigella Bites", come to think of it.)

[tommy]

Alton's too geeky for me.

if that ain't the nerd calling the kettle dork.

[John Whiting]

In print and on TV, "designers" are given a freer and freer hand. Both graphic artists and cinematographers now regard text as a decorative feature of their craft rather than the other way around. Any extended speech by a single person is taken as an excuse for a visual riff -- a sort of cadenza which works itself out without reference to the words. It's the same mode of thought which often makes text difficult to read by insufficient tonal contrast between type and background, or a page with a complex self-pattern which obscures the text that overlays it.

[Liza]

Sorry to disagree, John - just to point out that designers/and/or editors and cinematographers are most often at opposite ends of opinion: designers are the ones who implement text into pictures; cinematographers want the picture to be full frame and uncovered with text, drawings, etc.

[John Whiting]

Well, someone, somewhere, is pushing form at the expense of content.

[tommy]

Well, someone, somewhere, is pushing form at the expense of content.

thanks goodness. everything was so boring for so long.

[rich]

Nathalie DuPree was the sloppiest chef I've ever seen - it was comedy at its best. Where is she?

The Frugal Gourmet (Jeff Smith) wasn't a great cook, but his historical backgrounds were fascinating. Where is he? (certainly a little staff fondling shoudn't make him disappear forever)

Caprial was the most talented chef I've ever seen on TV. Where is she?

Sara Moulton's way too cute to be "out" on anything.

Is Julia Child going to do a TV special for her 90th (Aug. 15)?

[JSD]

Nathalie DuPree was the sloppiest chef I've ever seen - it was comedy at its best. Where is she?

I'd forgotten about her. I remember gagging as I watched her stuff a bird of some kind, with rings on, and gloppy stuff sticking in and around the stones on her rings. Yuck..

Julia Child is the absolute best. I remember watching her in black and white as a child. I made my first souffle from her Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Dan Ackroyd on Saturday Night Live nailed her when in a sketch he cut off a finger and the blood was squirting everywhere. And she's so classy, she thought he was great too.