Hot-headed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is finally waking up from his kitchen nightmare.
The reality show "Kitchen Nightmares" put Ramsay in failing restaurants across America for one week so the tell-it-like-it-is chef can try to turn the struggling businesses around. But the show proved too troublesome for the salty U.K. chef, who says he's through with it.
The foul-mouthed Brit admits the show's title is a little too fitting: "If the restaurants succeed, there's no praise," Ramsay told The Sun. "If they're screwed, we're blamed and get lawyers' letters."
More than two-thirds of the restaurants Ramsay "helped" ending up being sold or shut down, the paper said.
Slashfood attempted to contact the production company, Granada Entertainment, to clarify if both the American and British versions of the "Kitchen Nightmares" are canceled -- our calls were not returned.
At this point in the usual "Top Chef" season trajectory, you might expect a certain focus and discipline that naturally comes with narrowing the playing field down to seven ambitious young chefs, each working at the top of his or her game. This year, however, is another story.
Maybe it's that the talented and reliable Jen is off her game, or that the universally derided Robin is still around or that the twerpy Eli can actually put together an interesting plate of food for once. In any event, Wednesday night's episode felt like a detour into a "Top Chef" bizarro-world, where up is down, left is right and nobody knows anything anymore. Well, almost anything: Robin still sucks, Michael V. is still a cocky jerk and Kevin is still the model of modest brilliance.
Rattling off the random highlights of the episode sounds as scattered as Robin's cooking philosophy: Dirty jokes! Vegetarianism! Natalie Portman! No Toby Young! A Quickfire challenge that revealed itself to be a desperate marketing ploy! Make that two marketing ploys! In fact, Portman's description of one dish neatly summed up the entire episode: "It makes me smile and laugh -- and I'm confused!"
Judges panel at the Art of Eating, from left to right:
Eberhard Muller, Natalie Sann, Paulette Satur, Daniel Boulud
and moderator David Rosengarten. Photo: Alexa Weibel.
If cooking is the way to one's heart, Daniel Boulud should be able to attribute much of his success to his understanding of food. "I think that every restaurant is the chef's soul," he says in documentary "A Certain Taste for America."
In an ongoing series entitled "Art de Vivre: The Art of Eating Today," led by the French Institute in New York City on Monday, a screening of the film (very doting on Boulud) was followed by a panel discussion reflecting upon the art of eating and, more specifically, the importance of sustainability and sourcing food.
As a world-renowned chef hailing from a small hamlet outside Lyon, Boulud has achieved his veritable empire -- 10 successful restaurants based in New York, Palm Beach, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Beijing -- by striving to keep a strict culinary focus on seasonal cooking and high-quality ingredients.
More on Boulud's rise to fame, and the panel discussion on sustainable produce, obesity in America, seasonal cooking and its debatable expenses, after the jump.
Season 2 of the popular reality show "Cake Boss" starts tonight. The show follows Buddy Valastro and his old-fashioned Italian family pastry shop, Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop, in Hoboken, N.J.
Following the sweet success of shows like "Cake Boss" and Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," Bravo announced Sunday that it's popular "Top Chef" franchise would spin-off in the sugar direction with the show "Top Chef: Just Desserts."
Let us pause now to reflect upon Jeffrey Steingarten, award-winning writer, fearless gastronomist and utterly irascible judge of "The Next Iron Chef." Every cooking competition show needs its Simon Cowell, after all, a grumpy, hard-to-please, perpetually underwhelmed quipster whose general lack of enthusiasm makes for great, nasty sound bites. But Steingarten is in another class entirely: He's so disaffected, it's hard to tell if he's got a pulse half of the time.
Week after week, Steingarten regards the Iron Chef hopefuls in the same way a crusty professor might deal with a snot-nosed student who happened to stop by his office outside of office hours. The man may certainly have his cheerful side, but by now we've gotten the feeling that every week, the "TNIC" editors decide to save up and splice together all of his best "You got me out of bed for this?" looks, and parse them out over the course of the last 15 minutes of each show.
When in doubt, they zoom in on one of his particularly befuddled stares -- no doubt there are plenty to choose from -- and try to give it some sort of significance, as if the man can't believe what he's hearing. You imagine that a Steingarten comment like "my flan is a little curdled" was probably delivered politely, gingerly to chef Jose Garces -- but when the tribal drums of failure are added to the soundtrack, man, does it take on a sting.
Soupy Sales, the comedian responsible for 20,000 pies to the face, has died at the age of 83.
Sales, who built his comedic reputation with characters like White Fang and Black Tooth on children's TV shows in Detroit and New York, took his first cream pie to the face in 1951, the Associated Press reports. He died Thursday in a hospice in the Bronx, N.Y., after battling health problems.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," Sales said in 1985.
Have any Soupy pie memories? Let us know in the comments below.
Crispycone, the snack slowly finding its way into U.S. markets, has caught the attention of Stephen Colbert, who both sang its praises while demonizing the food in a recent "Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger" segment on his show, "The Colbert Report."
"Crispycones you are the greatest food in the world!" Colbert said in the Oct. 15 episode. "Which is why I'm giving a wag of my finger to Crispycones."
If you're like us, you've been waiting all season for the ultimate knock-down, drag-out Voltaggio brothers showdown on "Top Chef Vegas." Ah, the boys next door we love to hate, with their cutting comments, their undermining of each other's abilities, their constant bickering. ... We're not sure what dinner was like in their house growing up, but no doubt it involved lots of flinging of peas and acting out, followed by long, unbearable silences.
You can even see it in their food: Robotic big-bro Bryan and his classically flavored, cooked-to-perfection entrees; sneering bad-boy/skate-punk Michael and his crazy textures, flamboyant technique and exotic flavor profiles. It may be a few episodes too early to say it, but last night -- on the occasion of "Top Chef"'s customary restaurant wars challenge -- we finally saw the their sibling hatred in full effect.
Those catchy (some might say annoying) Fantanas are back with their fourth member for the "pop" group touting Fanta.
After nationwide auditions, Summer, Melody and Isabela (who knew they had names?) found their fourth Fantana in September in New Jersey. Her name is Shakira Barrera and she is assuming the role of the yellow pineapple Fantana for this girl supergroup that drinks only Fanta.
To kill time during the weekday a la "Elf Yourself," you too can be a Fantana. And if you're feeling Fanta-inspired, you aren't alone: behold Sanka "girls," the Fanta Halloween costume, Mario Batali's pants and the Fanta robots.
In retrospect, it all sounds like something out of one of those strange dreams where everyone you watched on TV during the day converge into one subliminal place -- and Bret Michaels was there, and so was Rod Blagojevich! And Sinbad was taking Al Roker's drink order while Joan Rivers recommended the $100 burger. Oh Auntie Em, there's no place like home!
In reality, it was just another day in the life of a "Celebrity Apprentice."
When Slashfood received word through the grapevine that our very own "Star Chef" Curtis Stone was serving up gourmet cheeseburgers for charity at Burger Heaven on Monday, we had to go and root for the home team.
Jehangir Mehta: 'The Next Iron Chef' villain?
Photo: The Food Network.
What was that on the Food Network Sunday night, you ask? Thudding sound effects, suspenseful music, extreme shaky-cam cinematography -- it had to be one of the "Bourne" movies, right? The opening of a scene from "Saving Private Ryan"? A straight-to-video "Mission: Impossible" sequel?
No, that trumped-up spectacle you witnessed was not the next John Woo movie -- it was, of course, the semi-celebrity chef competition "The Next Iron Chef." It's unlikely that anything can challenge Bravo's "Top Chef" as the premiere American cheftestant show, but as an old ad once put it, being No. 2 means you just try harder.
And trying really, really hard is what "The Next Iron Chef" is all about. In fact, all the music, fancy editing and bright lights are beginning to take their toll: Even the eight remaining chefs can't muster up quite that much energy. When your losing chef can utterly shrug off his failure -- something along the lines of "even great chefs have bad days; at least I have two great restaurants and my lovely family to go home to," yadda yadda yadda -- you know you've got a low-stakes kind of show. It's not as if these folks are going to go back to toiling in obscurity, with the added insult of "reality show failure" being tattooed on their foreheads.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. "The Next Iron Chef" has its pleasures, even if they're in a watered-down, "Top Chef"kind of way. Any episode that sings the praises of Los Angeles' myriad strip-mall Asian restaurants can't be all bad, especially when the four chosen for the show are all authentically, unequivocally tasty. Even the blatant product placement of the overexposed-but-still-delectable Kogi Korean-taco truck didn't bother us -- in fact, the mere thought of their short rib tacos gave us the Pavlovian impulse to check their Twitter posts to see if they were nearby.
If you're a fan of Curtis Stone and happen to be in New York, it's your lucky day.
The chef is currently filming a reality TV show with a bunch of other celebs and will be at Burger Heaven at 9 E. 53rd St. from 10:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. serving gourmet hamburgers for the charity Feeding America. It's not cheap -- $100 a burger -- but it's not every day that you can buy a burger from Curtis Stone.
Since the very beginning of "Top Chef Vegas" -- when she sheepishly chose immunity over a prize in a quickfire challenge -- the spazzy, chatty 40-something firebrand with the Kool-Aid hair has been courting the hatred of just about every mammal on the show, including the dead ones she's overcooked in the kitchen.
Even the cameramen seem to be joining in the slander. Each week, her pancake makeup looks a little worse, her puttering around the house more aimless, her early morning pilates routine more ridiculous. If you're looking for someone to teach you the doggy paddle on your front lawn, Robin's your girl.
Call it ageist, call it sexist, call it discrimination against the uniquely untalented, but certainly the bile and vitriol directed her way are disproportionate to her overall annoyance factor -- or are they? This week, the show's editors played up the Eli-vs.-Robin smackdown, wherein the elder stateswoman of "Top Chef" had the gall to suggest a nice serving platter for the Weeble-like Eli's scallops.
"You're not my mom," the snotty 25-year-old shouted, just after reminding us that he still lives with his mom and dad -- and is quite happy with the arrangement, thank you.
Paula Deen had a bit of a freak out last week on the set of the "Today Show" after an NBC staffer accidentally walked into the shot and hid behind a kitchen island.
"Oh my goodness, can you all see? What is he doing in here? Does he work here?" Deen asked Al Roker as she prepared her Nutty Orange Coffee Cake to promote the New York City Wine & Food Festival. "He doesn't have a gun does he? Should we pull out our knives?"
Roker laughed along with Deen, although it became a bit awkward after he asked her what she was making.
"Nervous. That's what we're making -- nerves, nervous," she said. "Is he from this country?"
But all became hunky-dory once more when Deen learned the man did indeed work for NBC.
"Oh so you do work here, well here," Deen said as she handed him a slice of cake.
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