"food tv" news and stories

Just in case you've been dreaming about eating in a restaurant that was launched by the likes of reality star Heidi Montag, former prostitute Ashley Dupre and Real Housewife of New Jersey Danielle Staub, this is your lucky day. VH1 is launching a new 10-episode reality show this fall, aptly named Famous Food. The show's title is also the name of the to-be-launched Los Angeles restaurant in which the television stars will work with Mike Malin and Lonnie Moore of the Dolce Group (Ketchup, Angels & Kings, Geisha House and Dolce) to open the joint and undergo challenges "related to renovation, concept, marketing, menu, staffing and opening."

TV Squad explains: "At the end of the eight-week process, the celeb who Malin and Moore think worked the hardest will win a partnership stake in the restaurant, while the rest will go on to ... other things. (Probably more reality shows.)"

Other contestants include The Bachelor's Jake Pavelka, Three 6 Mafia members DJ Paul and Juicy J, and former Sopranos star Vincent Pastore.

Here's this week's installment of Slashfood's exclusive exit interviews with the latest "Top Chef All-Stars" contestant to get the boot. In an effort to prevent spoilers, we've included the text after the jump.

Here's this week's installment of Slashfood's exclusive exit interviews with the latest "Top Chef All-Stars" contestant to get the boot. In an effort to prevent spoilers, we've included the text after the jump. This was a double elimination, so catch the second exit interview on Monday.

Still reeling from the Great Dim Sum Fiasco of the Century, this week found our not-so-chivalrous cheftestants getting on each other nerves. Or talking about each other behind their backs. Or, in the case of Marcel, getting all up in Dale's face with a bunch of weird flailing motions that made him look like a Beastie Boy, circa 1988.

Maybe Marcel's rant was motivated by a genuine sense of injustice about making a lot of food for his diners and merely winning runner-up. Or, as Tre put it more succinctly, maybe he's just "an a--hole." In any event, tensions were high this week: Two chefs were going home. And after getting up at the crack of dawn, spending all day off Montauk Point in fishing boats, and returning to the beach to cook with the sand in between their toes and the sun in their eyes (cry us a river, Jamie), the chefs were visibly haggard.

Forgoing the usual quickfire for some team fishing (major revelations: Angelo is still traumatized from watching Jaws as a child; Mike likes to fart at sea), the chefs were separated into teams and told to cook only the Atlantic treasure trove they caught. But this challenge proved that there truly can be an "I" in team, as the chefs worked together about as well as a bunch of junior-high brainiacs competing for one trophy at a science fair.

Spoiler Alert: Winners and losers are revealed after the jump.

What do you get when you take Top Chef, mash it together with Shark Tank and toss in a bit of The Apprentice? Apparently, it's America's Next Great Restaurant (a.k.a. what NBC hopes will be America's next great reality-TV show when it debuts on March 16, 2011).

It doesn't take more than 30 seconds of the promo clip released by the network to get the gist here: You've got a representative cross-section of starry-eyed hopefuls with big dreams of success (in this case, opening their own restaurant chain) and four expert judges who furrow their brows a lot and seem to have mastered the art of the "dubious glance." (As happens when one contestant says he's leaning toward a chain that only serves vegetarian food.)

Bobby Flay leads the team of judges, which also includes Australian celebrity chef (and KitchenDaily contributor) Curtis Stone, restaurateur Lorena Garcia, and Chipotle founder Steve Ells. The four will not only anoint the winner; like the popular Shark Tank, they'll invest in the winning concept as well. It all makes for what NBC is billing as the biggest prize ever on any reality show: the launch of a restaurant chain in three U.S. cities.

And what peek do we get of the concepts in play? One woman is hawking her concept Wok, "stir-fry for the healthy heart," while another guy is pushing "kabob sliders."

Then we've got the cast-off from the Jersey Shore who wants to take his grandma's meatballs national. The name of his proposed chain? "Saucy Balls."

Oh, how we hope that he makes it beyond episode one.