Entries associated with the tag "Food Network":

This Saturday, Food Network freakazoid Paula Deen is doing a cooking demo at the Chicago Theatre, and labor organizers are gearing up a protest in support of 5,500 Smithfield Foods workers in Tar Heel, North Carolina, who complain of brutal and dangerous working conditions and crappy wages. Deen is the celebrity face of Smithfield, the world's largest hog processor, which in addition to its shabby treatment of workers, abuses its animals and the environment, as detailed in this horrifying Rolling Stone expose from last December.

So if you aren't down with unfair labor practices, miserably raised factory pork, or giant spewing fountains of pig shit, maybe you want to show up outside the theater Saturday at 9:30 AM and tell Paula what you think.

For more info, contact Will Tanzman at 773-728-8400, ext. 16.

Word has it Smoque is going to be featured on Monday's installment of the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives titled "Real Deal BBQ." Because it just hasn't been hard enough to get a table there.

He may not be named Tramonto, Cantu, or Bowles, but Orlando Serrano, head decorator at Roeser's Bakery in in Humboldt Park, is the lastest local food pro to turn up on the Food Network schedule.

And, speaking of Cantu, apparently he's going to be on Ellen tonight. ???

This isn't a Traci Lords situation or anything--you're not going to have to return his cookbooks--but are y'all aware of just how young Food Network cook Dave Lieberman is? He's 26, or maybe 27. 27. He graduated college in 2003. He's about as old as Yukon gold potatoes (1981), The Silver Palate Cookbook (1979), aspartame (1981), and Applebee's (1980). Not very old.

In his very little time on Earth he's managed to carve out your complete, full-blown, multifaceted career as a "food personality." He hosts a weekend show on Food Network, Good Deal With Dave Lieberman, and an online series called Dave Does, has authored two cookbooks (Young and Hungry and Dave's Dinners), apparently still works part-time as a private chef and caterer, has designed menus for Delta Airlines, is a spokesperson for Amstel Light and also hosts/produces segments on the Annheiser-Busch Here's to Beer web site. He was recently spotted whoopin' it up and over-beering a bit during his cookoff with Michelle Bernstein at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.

As befits a 26-or-27-year-old, his resume's pretty brief, but it's not without substance. He talks often of his father as his culinary inspiration--he was a stay-at-home dad and did most of the family cooking. In high school Lieberman worked in several Philadelphia-area restaurants and at Yale he hosted a public access show called "Campus Cuisine." It was while doing this that he was "discovered" by Amanda Hesser (to quote every piece of Lieberman lore; it's like Lana Turner and Schwab's) in her 2003 NYT article, Dude, Where's My Spice Grinder? (TimesSelect only), which addressed the new level of interest in food among college students. When Lieberman got out of class the day after the article came out there were messages from publishers and agents on his phone, and it was all over but the 50 Hottest Bachelors nod from People magazine.

Lieberman knows how lucky he is: "I knew I had this love and passion for cooking but I didn't want to be in a professional kitchen. Now there's this fortuitous turn of events and I don't have to. Working in a restaurant kitchen is a really tough environment and it's matched to certain personalities. The focus is on routine and repetition and I'm much more fascinated by the idea of creating dishes than I am in honing the minutiae of the production. I knew it wasn't going to be fun to work my way up through the ranks. I mean, I would love to work in Thomas Keller's kitchen, and I'm sure it would be good for me. But I like to have my hand on the entire picture."

But how's the show? Is it full of embarrassing gaps and lacks? Neh, not really. It's okay. Sometimes he seems a little inexperienced and ill-informed and as if he's chanting the wrong info off cue cards--but who doesn't on FN? By and large he has an ease in front of the camera (and great hands), and a sense of the rhythms and patter required to fill the time. I like, too, that he talks about cost, adding up how much things are at the grocery store. I dunno, though, shouldn't there be more? Is it OK just because it's surrounded by eh-OK shows? (It's worth noting that Lieberman's been--as far as I can tell--unscathed by Anthony Bourdain's recent beat-downs of Food Network Stahs. Why's that?) What's he going to do with his life in 20 years? How franchised and leveraged can you be? What happens to "America's Naked Chef" when he's middle-aged? I have this mental image of him in his bearded late 60s living off of wildflowers and tap water in California, sick of it all, sick of food, running from the cameras. Who knows?

Okay, let's be honest. if you spend any time watching Food Network eventually you'll notice...it's kinda white. PBS cooking show line-ups, while more hit or miss, have tended to be a little more diverse over the years: Vertamae Grosvenor, Daisy Martinez, Dorinda Hafner, Joan Nathan, Madhur Jaffrey's BBC shows, Ming Tsai--who used to be on Food Network--even goofy old Martin Yan (I will save my Yan rant for another day). Right now I count only five regular presenters of color on Food Network, including Al Roker of Roker on the Road, and terminal hottie Warren Brown from DC bakery CakeLove, who hosts Sugar Rush. 

Last week FN made a gesture toward acknowledging the size of this country's Latino community by announcing it was signing Ingrid Hoffman to a "multi-year deal to star in her own daytime series set to premiere in 2007," a move that had been hinted at earlier this year. Hoffman made her first appearance as a "Food Network talent" in her hometown of Miami at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival this past weekend. The only other Latino I know of on Food Network right now is Juan-Carlos Cruz, who hosts the horrible diet show Calorie Commando, which shows up late at night.

Five years ago Hoffman was called the "Hispanic Martha Stewart"; now she's the "Hispanic Rachael Ray." She has a weekly cooking and lifestyle show, Delicioso, on Galavision, makes biweekly appearances on Univisions's Despierta America, which is the number-one morning show in some markets, and has regular columns in BuenHogar (Spanish-language version of Good Housekeeping) and a syndicated column in Rumbo newspapers. She also has a cookbook coming out soon that she hopes becomes the "definitive guide to modern Latin cooking." So Food Network is not hiring a scrappy unknown, needless to say, but leveraging an already very leveraged and accessible food personality one step further.

Hoffman is originally from Colombia (her last name comes from her German grandfather), where she starred in commercials and telenovelas, but was told by casting directors upon her arrival in Miami approximately 20 years ago that she "wasn't Hispanic enough." She then turned to cooking, which she had learned from her Cordon Bleu-trained mother (still a consultant on Delicioso), who ran a restaurant in Bogota and a catering company in Florida. She started a restaurant called Rocca, and also ran a boutique called La Capricieuse. Like Ray, Hoffman got her start in the media through a gig on local TV, and took it from there.

Hoffman often describes Delicioso as "Sex and the City meets Martha Stewart." My Spanish isn't good enough to get a decent handle on the SATC quotient, but I can relate after watching it a few times that the show does have a good dose of table-setting and party-planning (à la Sandra Lee or Ina Garten) in amongst the cooking, outtakes at the end, plus the occasional goofy comedy segment and the bluest blue background you've ever seen on a set. It'll be interesting to see how her new show fits in at FN; in some ways it feels like the only news here is that she looks like the missing other sibling next to the heavily-promoted Ray and Giada DeLaurentiis (I want to put them all in hair nets), but I still hope she shakes things up a bit. Even a Food Network-ed take on Latin cooking would be a change.

Whoa. Weird! Anybody know anything else about this?

[Via hangoversunday.com]