who's your most & least favorite Food Network personality?

[Ns1]

I don't know where to post this follow-up, but damn she looks good post Food Network

 

[Chaotic42]

I miss Bourdain.

 

[Carson Dyle]

For being a food guy and former executive chef, it occurred to me the other day that I'd never seen him cook anything.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Best: Jacques Pepin
Worst: any food network "personality"

 

[OutHouse]

Food TV has cooking shows? All I ever see is chopped.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I used to watch Justin Wilson before there were any food/cooking channels. Hell, I could just listen to him talk for hours.

 

[HomerJS]

Fav: Alton Brown, Guy Fieri (more the show then him)

Least: Giada. I don't care what she looks like, Watched her emasculate her husband on location in Mexico.
Bobby Flay: He is the assholiest of all assholes.

 

[KMFJD]

never liked Alton Brown

 

[BurnItDwn]

I always hated guy fieri, until his hot ones interview.
Something about judging books by their covers or people by their appearances.

 

[snoopy7548]

I loved Food Network when it was all about cooking. When it had Iron Chef Japan, Two Fat Ladies, and all those good shows. Now it's just lame food competitions where you really don't learn anything about cooking.

My favorite is probably Alton Brown, at least during the Good Eats era. To be honest I like pretty much all of them. If I had to pick a least favorite it'd probably either be Giada or Rachel Ray. They're hot and all, but can be really annoying and fake.

 

[DigDog]

Idk if it counts but i highly esteem gordon ramsay, and instead think jamie oliver a buffoon.

 

[bfun_x1]

I loved Food Network when it was all about cooking. When it had Iron Chef Japan, Two Fat Ladies, and all those good shows. Now it's just lame food competitions where you really don't learn anything about cooking.

My favorite is probably Alton Brown, at least during the Good Eats era. To be honest I like pretty much all of them. If I had to pick a least favorite it'd probably either be Giada or Rachel Ray. They're hot and all, but can be really annoying and fake.

We have many of the celebrity chef recipe books and if I had to rank them by food it'd be Nigella Lawson and Giada De Laurentiis at the top. Nigella was only a minor celebrity on the American Food Network but her recipes are excellent. Rachel was okay to watch but the 30 minute meals had too many compromises. It was like she ran out of good ideas and just started slapping stuff together. Alton Brown was the most fun to watch.

 

[shortylickens]

Which of them has nice tits?

 

[NutBucket]

Best: Jacques Pepin
Worst: any food network "personality"

I love Pepin but he was around way before cable tv existed.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I love Pepin but he was around way before cable tv existed.

Not exactly sure what your point is. I also like Rick Bayless, better?

 

[NutBucket]

My point is he isn't a "food network personality". He was famous well before then. Bayless was too IIRC.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

My point is he isn't a "food network personality". He was famous well before then. Bayless was too IIRC.

That's why I said, "Worst: any food network "personality" The thing I dislike about the food network is that it bases it's shows not on cooking ability but, on camera personality. The networks don't understand food any better than science fiction.

 

[Kaido]

That's why I said, "Worst: any food network "personality" The thing I dislike about the food network is that it bases it's shows not on cooking ability but, on camera personality. The networks don't understand food any better than science fiction.

This is one of the reasons that I like sites like Serious Eats & ChefSteps, where they focus on the food & the process. Granted, personalities are what sell TV shows & thus sell advertising, so it's kind of a closed-loop system that does what it needs to do to stay on-air. And there are some benefits. I like how Alton Brown breaks things down & explains how to get really good results. I like how Guy Fieri finds really awesome dives & tells you all about what's great at each restaurant & how they make it. And you can pretty much flip on the Food Network at any time of the day & find something interesting to watch or learn. But at the end of the day, it is entertainment. Most people I know who watch a lot of Food Network don't actually cook all that much...

 

[Kaido]

I always hated guy fieri, until his hot ones interview.
Something about judging books by their covers or people by their appearances.

Some people on reddit who have worked with him at different food spots have chimed in & mentioned that his TV personality is just that. Pretty normal dude IRL, just puts on a show with the car & the hair & the attitude for the camera.

Alton Brown OTOH is probably the same in-person as he is on his show, I'd imagine.

 

[Kaido]

Idk if it counts but i highly esteem gordon ramsay, and instead think jamie oliver a buffoon.

I changed my mind about Gordon Ramsey when I watched his MasterChef episode on lobster. I had no idea you could even do what he did to a lobster. The dude knows his craft:

 

[Chaotic42]

Ramsay's non-US stuff is a lot better - he's not playing up for the camera. A friend told me that he very rarely ever curses, they just bleep stuff out for effect. He seems like a generally cool guy outside of Hell's Kitchen.

 

[MrSquished]

For being a food guy and former executive chef, it occurred to me the other day that I'd never seen him cook anything.

He did probably cook maybe once a season, IF that, on an episode maybe for some locals he was staying with, or for himself and eric ripert. But it was rare.

 

[DigDog]

Almost cofefe..

We have 3 tv chefs, mainly, in the Rain Kingdom: ramsay, jamie oliver, and Heston Blumenthal - you should google Heston's Feasts, specifically the Willy Wonka one.

Ramsay's cooking revolves around the idea of using good quality ingredients which are well known to work with each other and cook them properly. Just like mama make.
Its good, simple food and when you eat "lamb steak with not-terribly-exotic sidedish" you know what you are eating.

Heston's cooking revolves around the idea of deconstructing a dish into the essential aspects of taste and feel, and exagerating them and sometimes completely flip them over.
So you wind up with a dessert that you snort or a duck that looks like wallpaper and you lick it like you would lick wallpaper (as you do) but in the end it's still a duck. He'll also easily take 2 days of work to make french fries, or make a soup that costs three hundred bucks.

The guy is a genius, but what he gives you is closer to drugs than to food.

And then we have that pompous prick, Jamie Oliver. I always say of him, he would happily let you butt**** him, just as long as you first lube him up with some good quality italian olive oil.

His typical dish would go like this:
"today we make a poor people's dish from northern italy, it's very easy to make."
"First, take a bit of this rare imported $300-a-bottle italian oil"
"Add a pound of beans from the west-facing hill of a small town in pedimont, available in september on request at $35 plus shipping"
"Fry in tuscan lard from acorn fed pigs bred from medieval stock and raised underground"
And so on

He'll proceed to overdo any decent paisano dish like he has no concept of money or even a grasp of the logistics required to source those ingredients, to make a plate of pasta and beans that costs $50 and any idiot could replicate for five bucks at 99% the taste.

He's an idiot.

 

[Micrornd]

Least - Bobby Flay - that sum bitch would need 26 ingredients to make chocolate milk, never have seen anyone go to more trouble to complicate something simple

 

[Carson Dyle]

Least - Bobby Flay - that sum bitch would need 26 ingredients to make chocolate milk, never have seen anyone go to more trouble to complicate something simple

Alton Brown was pretty good at doing the same thing. Except he did it in a way that's a bit more entertaining. Like I said before, I think Brown's old shows were the net result of about a dozen interns and staff members doing research, then holding long meetings to come up with recipes and figuring out how to fit three days and two nights of preparing those dishes into one 30 minute show.