NO! NO! Wrong winner! WRONG! WINNER!
GHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH....!
I agree. I liked Aaron a lot, but Lisa or (I hate to admit) Adam should have won based on the demo.
Meredith and I were rooting for Kelsey before her ouster, then became Lisa fans.
Who did you like best? And why haven't we been discussing it all season? Mer and I felt like we were the only ones in the world watching (and no, the response boards on the Foodnetwork blogs don't count).
Adam. Totally. Totally. Lisa can go back to Romulus now.
Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;228772Adam. Totally. Totally. Lisa can go back to Romulus now.
I thought her ability to pass herself off as human highly suspect myself. She should have been weeded out by the Turing test.
This is based on glimpses of about five minutes duration each over the last few weeks, as my wife is watching it. In that little time, I was able to suss out her faux-human act weeks ago!
Which one's Adam? Maybe I can spoil it for my wife, who couldn't watch it last weekend, but recorded it on DVR instead, popping me off my History Channel show because she was recording another show at the same time...
-clash
Next Food Network Star is a fuckin' joke.
Top Chef gets a bit whiny and emo at times, but at least these are real freakin' chefs.
J, very true, the level of expertise is on a completely different level from Top Chef or Next Iron Chef, etc. It's still a fun show to watch...tho, you being a culinary artiste yourself, I can see where you're coming from. :)
Adam left me severely non-plussed when he served near-raw dishes, like three times in a row (and he just is not funny...at all). Lisa might be a Stepford...thing...but her food always seemed to come out good.
Quote from: KenHR;228915J, very true, the level of expertise is on a completely different level from Top Chef or Next Iron Chef, etc. It's still a fun show to watch...tho, you being a culinary artiste yourself, I can see where you're coming from. :)
I guess "real chef" isn't quite the right word. Just that the Food Network at this point pretty much values personality and marketability over anything like talent, or know how, or cooking ability. NFNS is basically all about finding the next Rachel Ray, not the next Alton Brown or Mario Batali or even an Emeril.
Can't say I disagree with you there. I think you even saw that with the Next Iron Chef competition. Mike Symon's a talented chef, but Besh (sp? the runner up) seemed to cook at a much higher level, like Batali or Morimoto. Symon admits he's more of a "classy comfort food" guy; I think he's got a great personality, but I wasn't sure he deserved the win as much as Besh.
EDIT: On topic, this is sort of why I liked Lisa better than Adam or Aaron. Adam just didn't seem to have a focus and cooked badly for most of the show's run. Aaron did the same old same old home cooking/grilling stuff. Food Network's already got Rachael Ray, the Neelys, Cooking for Real, etc....pretty much covering the bases Aaron covers.
Quote from: KenHR;228927Can't say I disagree with you there. I think you even saw that with the Next Iron Chef competition. Mike Symon's a talented chef, but Besh (sp? the runner up) seemed to cook at a much higher level, like Batali or Morimoto. Symon admits he's more of a "classy comfort food" guy; I think he's got a great personality, but I wasn't sure he deserved the win as much as Besh.
EDIT: On topic, this is sort of why I liked Lisa better than Adam or Aaron. Adam just didn't seem to have a focus and cooked badly for most of the show's run. Aaron did the same old same old home cooking/grilling stuff. Food Network's already got Rachael Ray, the Neelys, Cooking for Real, etc....pretty much covering the bases Aaron covers.
I dunno. Maybe it's because I've read a lot of Ruhlman's blog, as well as Soul of a Chef where he devotes a third of the book to Symon's story, and then there's that Cincinatti episode of Bourdain's show, but I think ultimately they made a good pick there. He may not seem like 5-star material, but the man makes incredible food according to some folks I rather trust on the matter, and while the after-show spin had the other two douchebag judges making it out like Ruhlman somehow forced a Symon win, the truth is they voted for him too. And as I recall, the Iron Chefs themselves were most impressed with Symon, and that more even that Ruhlman, said a lot to how good the guy is. A lot of that "classy comfort food" angle just comes from his home in Cincinatti, which is a decidedly conservative town culinarily speaking. I think he's more than capable of doing a lot more than just that.
Honestly, I was rather impressed with Next Iron Chef, because they shitcanned the semingly most "Food Network friendly" candidates pretty early. both Jill Davie and Gavin Kaysen struck me as left over contestants from Next Food Network Star.
Oh, I wasn't saying Symon isn't a top-drawer talent! He definitely made it through on merit, and Mer and I were rooting for him from the beginning. It just seemed from what I saw, though, that Besh seemed to have an edge on him. Of course, not being able to taste/smell the food, and being a hobbyist home cook type more than anything else, it makes it hard for me to judge accurately.
Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;228678NO! NO! Wrong winner! WRONG! WINNER!.!
OK, my wife and I watch Design Star on HGN and I can assess the quality of the designs in my opinion by looking at them. How exactly does one assess the quality of a chef on the Food Network? By looking at it? By guessing what it would taste like? By trying to cook the dishes yourself?
By assessing whether you would want to
- Cook what you watch them cook;
- Eat what you just cooked by watching them cook; and
- Watch them for 22 straight minutes (plus commercials) in the first place.
'Cause it's television and not teletaste. Rachael Ray's books are full of damn tasty recipes, but if I want to watch a pixie spout catchphrases, there's a Disney DVD somewhere for that.
Quote from: John Morrow;229115OK, my wife and I watch Design Star on HGN and I can assess the quality of the designs in my opinion by looking at them. How exactly does one assess the quality of a chef on the Food Network? By looking at it? By guessing what it would taste like? By trying to cook the dishes yourself?
By knowing anything yourself about food. If you've been at it for a while, and care at all about the quality of your cuisine, it's pretty easy to spot fakes like Sandra Lee or Rachel Ray.
Cooking is not an art. This isn't like painting or something where you can just throw the paint on the canvas however you like and it's somehow wrong to question your technique.
There are right and wrong ways to cook things, and it's pretty easy to spot the idiots simply because they clearly don't know what they're doing.
How are they fakes? Not a challenge to out, just want clarification.
Sandra Lee drives me nuts. I can't stand her.
Ok, I can finally read this thread now that the finale has been shown on Food Network Canada.
For my money, I would've gone with Adam because I think he had the best pitch of the three and I believe he's the most likely to come up with fresh new ideas after the first standard cooking show.
I like a balance of standard cooking shows and shows like Feasting on Asphalt, Ace of Cakes, David Rocco's Dolce Vita and Chef at Large.
Quote from: Dr Rotwang!;229570How are they fakes? Not a challenge to out, just want clarification.
Sandra Lee drives me nuts. I can't stand her.
In fairness to Mrs. Ray, she is at least honest enough to admit she's a fake. ;) But her constant mangling of seemingly every dish I've ever watched her cook sets my teeth on edge. Showing me an episode where she cooks sometihng "Asian" is thebest way to induce a homicidal rage.
And Sandra Lee, well, she doesn't really cook at all, she just opens a fucking can or a box. Her "creations" actually remind me of nothing so much as the kind of horrifying stoner/bachelor concoctions we all remember from our younger days, and the fact that she's one of the most disturbingly glass-like human beings I've ever seen is just pudding in the punch.
All I can say is a good cooking show lets you know that if you put forth the effort, you can expand your horizons. With patience and an understanding of the ingredients you can make meals in your own home you thought you had to travel to a foreign country or pay 40 bucks a plate for. These were shows with actual chefs or people with solid culinary backgrounds letting you know that while food isn't quite art, the science can be learned.
Most shows on Food Network nowadays are smiling friendly strangers cooking food that anybody can, should, and will learn better by paying attention to the family cook. It feels like such a waste and it's now that I really understand why Good Eats is the only show on that channel anymore that I want to watch when it's on.
I don't see how the next smiling friendly stranger from some reality show fiasco will change anything.