"Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love." Keith Floyd
The whole concept of the art of cooking being turned into a circus side show with whiny cook wanna-bees (I so hesitate to use the term "chef" in deference to all the real chefs out there) and unknown and quite frankly, unqualified judges, is just deplorable to me.
This does not apply to Iron Chef America and a show like Bobby Flay's Throwdown both of which do offer enough light entertainment and demonstration of some unique skill and artistry for me that make them tolerable and fun to watch while trying to relax and go to sleep.
But, new Food Network shows like Chopped are destroying the art of cooking.
And, I might add. the host, Ted Allen, formerly of the show Queer Eye, is simply terrible. I watched Queer Eye and his contribution to the show was minimal if not unnoticeable. He was transparent. And now to hire him a Food Network "hour" passing him off as some "expert" in cooking is insane. Maybe I could accept him as a judge, as is his part-time gig on Iron Chef America, but I barely can tolerate him in that role. His education is in psychology and journalism and he has experience as a freelance food critic and magazine editor. He gained exposure working in the shadow of Queer Eye's real star, Carson Cressley. I think of him as a fat-free potato chip with no taste and no character for anyone to take him seriously.
The Food Network is after ratings. Nothing else matters to them. What else in new in television. But I do not enjoy watching any show about food and cooking where their is stress, anxiety and disappointment as the primary focus of the production. That is not what cooking and eating are all about. Everything does not have to be about a competition or a car chase or vampires or tears or whatever other nonsense is presented to us as "quality" entertainment. It is not and never will be. The Food Network belittles their desired demographic with what essentially is crap television. Chopped is the perfect example of that.
A favorite of mine, Anthony Bourdain writes in Michael Ruhlman's excellent blog at: http://ruhlman.com/ - "I actually watch Food Network now and again, more often than not drawn in by the progressive horrors on screen. I find myself riveted by its awfulness, like watching a multi-car accident in slow motion. Mesmerized at the ascent of the ready-made bobble head personalities, and the not-so-subtle shunting aside of the old school chefs, I find myself de-constructing the not-terrible shows, imagining behind the scenes struggles and frustrations, and obsessing unhealthily on the truly awful ones."
So I'm obviously not alone in my feelings toward the Food Network. Enough with the cheesy competitions of amateurs. I don't care if a cook-chef too-be will be the only African-American in his family to ever do whatever this contestant was whining about. Or the short fat and sweaty chef with the middle-class Neew Yorka accent believing he should prevail because he is older than the others and has switched careers and seems to thing he deserves some success for this efforts. Who cares? I cannot muster enough emotion for any of these people to pass them the salt let alone to consider them for some sort of prize after the old guy screwed up a plain hot dog by schmering it with too much molasses and then burning it.
So, what are these people thinking? Do "they" not realize they're taking the art of cooking right into the toilet? Is a show like Chopped supposed to be fun, or entertaining, educational perhaps, or maybe culinary reality television? Does the Food Network think it is something "we" should not take too seriously and consider it some type of light entertainment? I can't be sure. But, they've missed the mark. It accomplishes nothing. It is a waste of our time.
