An Open Letter to Food Network

I used to like Food Network, especially back when they had shows about, you know, food.

Today's Food Network isn't about food, its about a "lifestyle" (whatever the hell that is) and an "attitude". The problem is, I don't want to live the food network lifestyle. I never really did. For the most part I just want to cook and eat good, high quality food. I don't want to "see the wacky things people do with it" (under Jim O'Connor, I LIKE George Duran, as a matter of fact, let's bring back Ham on the Street can we?) I just want to see how best to cook it. But outside of Good Eats, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and a handful of specials there's not much of anything on the Network that's worth watching. Even when they luck onto something they go and mess it up. Iron Chef: America: fun to watch. Food Network Challenge: painful in its boring, over-wrought, anything to induce drama execution. The fun about Iron Chef is that you get to see chef's fail organically. Yes, the show is contrived and no, the hour isn't really an hour and yes, we all know that they get a short list of ingredients (and can choose who they want to challenge) in advance. We know this. (Unless we are food critics who think viewers believe in "flat earth" science.) We understand this but we don't care.

Of course, Throwdown! isn't as dramatic as we think it is. But its still fun. Too much of Food Network isn't fun these days. The Next Food Network Star gets its culinary ass kicked weekly by Top Chef on Bravo! Not only are the challenges (and, for the most part, the winners) on Next uninspiring, but the food that's cranked out is sullen and pedestrian to boot. The judges are vapid and unlikable, and make us all realize just how much we don't want to be a part of the sordid inside world of Manhattan TV. If I have to hear that man and woman at Food Network tell me again how much I want to see "a lifestyle" that they are wanting to present I'm going to puke. Since I realize this is an inevitability I just don't watch the show. Rachel Ray's perkiness, "Yummo" and host of other cutseys make me throw up, just a little bit, in my mouth when I'm watching her shows and that no-talent, can't cook a lick to save her soul, Billionaire wannabe Giada is akin to slathering a good steak with cheap steak sauce, it's gaudy and unnecessary.

Am I being harsh? You bet I am. Because I used to enjoy watching Food Network back when they had shows on that were worth watching. Granted, I've only been seriously cooking for around 10 years now, but my culinary teeth were cut watching Sarah Moulton and Emeril Lagasse, yes I understand that both are now passe and old fashioned, but when you're first learning the difference between broiling and a good sautee, seeing cooks like that who have a gift for simple explenation are a blessing from culinary heaven. Soon both of them will be missing from Food Network altogether, replaced with Guy Fieri and Amy Finley, a step back in quality and expertise.

It'd be one thing if Food Network evolved in taste and refinement with its viewers. There was a time (albeit briefly) that all new food trends flowed through that Network and they did a good job reporting on the ones that didn't originate there before other outlets.

Instead, Food Network as devolved into an elementary-school food-fight with crashing cakes, trash talking vegetable carvers (I kid you not) and a culinary world where everything is bland, made with the same ingredients, and whose first ingredients are lard and butter. I like lard and butter as much as the next guy, but cooking doesn't begin and end there. Heck, FOOD doesn't begin and end with cooking, or competition. It's about learning and reaching and failing and (most importantly) eating. I don't cook and eat so I can write this blog, I write this blog BECAUSE I cook and eat. I didn't eat food and drink wine because I liked Food Network, I watched Food Network BECAUSE I enjoyed eating food and drinking wine.

That's the same reason now I find myself watching it less and less and less.

Regards,

Cory Crow
Houston, TX
Amateur food eater, wine drinker, semi-dangerous food cooker.