TV Chefs Blog is where we cover the celebrity chefs and cooking personalities: the news they make, the new products they sell, the restaurants they're opening. We also review the television cooking and food shows. We report on the more famous food authors and their new cookbooks too. If it has to do with eating it, making it and the star cooks who do it, it's here.
Here’s the video preview of what’s happening on this week’s episode of The Next Food Network Star on Sunday night at 10pm.
The remaining three finalists shoot scripted promos at iconic Las Vegas locations. Then they meet Season Two winner Guy Fieri and are told to each create a lavish buffet for the ultimate Vegas crowd – entertainers from famous Vegas shows and top Vegas chefs.
Also new and worthy on Sunday night is a new Iron Chef America where Bobby Flay takes on Gabrielle Hamilton of NYC’s Prune. I first saw Hamilton on television during an episode of No Reservations this spring when Anthony Bourdain came back to cover NYC. He, Eric Ripert and two other chefs needed a place to chow down. Where do top chefs go to eat? I mean wherever they go must be incredible. And yes, they went to Hamilton’s Prune to feast. That to me is impressive so this should be an excellent battle. That’s on at 9pm Eastern before NFNS.
And flanking it like a bookend at 11pm is our first preview of the revamped Dinner: Impossible with new chef in charge (another Iron Chef), Michael Symon taking over the reigns of departing Robert Irvine. His first mission is to Wildwood, NJ where he has to upscale boardwalk food. This is a teaser. The actual show which is moving from the half-hour to an hour format officially starts in August.
Here’s the Next Food Network Star episode two recap video followed by my commentary … so if you didn’t catch it Sunday night and are planning to watch it during one of the repeats this week, don’t click. Otherwise, enjoy.
So what happened on the Next Food Network Star last week? The nine contestants were given a Dinner:Impossible style challenge complete with chef Robert Irvine giving them directions. They awaken at three in the morning, are sent throughout NYC to pick up cheese, bread and meat. At each stop answering a question showing their knowledge or doing a prep work assignment. The teams end up at some train station in New Jersey where they each now have to cook a brunch on a train within 45 minutes for the three-judge team plus Irvine and another 30 passengers.
A lot happened but here are the highlights. Crazy Lisa, aka the “Dallas Diva” as we like to call her over at ChowHound, was actually impressive this time around. In the negative area, Adam makes a horrendous runny eggs dish — so bad even one of his team mate warns him before and during not to — yet he stays. Shane stutters all over himself again and also remains. Nipa literally walks out of the judging room — and they freaking keep her!!!! Insane! And Kevin who doesn’t have his point of view down and who wasn’t all that bad gets axed!! Huh?
I’m thinking the judges were watching another show or something. Geez, they so want an Indian cook they will apparently let a major diva tantrum go unchecked?! O, backbone! Where for art thou?
Want to know something though? For some reason this was way more entertaining than the first show. Even though Flay is not the host as they allege in their promotions. And even though I think the judges are nutso — yeah, Bob T, I read your judges blog at FN and you say Nipa was a different person before being on the show; gusss what little buddy, we only have the show to go by; that’s the purpose of the show btw. So I don’t give a rat’s butt if Miz Jekyll became Miz Hyde for the first two episodes. That’s what I’m judging on and that is what you are supposed to judge on!
Yo, and Bobby Flay and Sue, you’re votes counted as well; you’re not getting out of this clean either. So nyah! There, that showed you.
Here’s the video preview of what to expect to see on this week’s second episode of The Next Food Network Star on Sunday night.
Robert Irvine gives the remaining nine finalists a rude awakening at 3am, telling them that they must team up and race across Manhattan in a test of their food knowledge. After finishing their late-night food test, the teams then learn that they must prepare and serve an original brunch menu on a moving train, with the winning team receiving the opportunity to be featured in an issue of USA Weekend.
Didn’t see this one coming! Food Network has decided on it’s replacement of Robert Irvine for the new host of Dinner: Impossible. And who is this new-comer stranger? That’s the surprise; it is apparently a familiar face instead, none other than Iron Chef Michael Symon.
That’s right, Symon is taking over the helm of the Food Network’s third highest-rated show.
He begins shooting 10 “Dinner: Impossible” shows next week, finishing at the end of May. […] One episode of “Dinner: Impossible” will air in July, said (the show’s) executive producer Marc Summers, with the new season slated to start in September.
Symon, who won the network’s The Next Iron Chef competition in 2007 and appears on its Iron Chef America series, replaces Robert Irvine, who left last month following revelations that he’d exaggerated details of resume. Irvine had hosted the show for four seasons. Btw, new episodes of “Iron Chef America” will begin airing in November, Symon said.
The format of the show won’t change. Symon won’t know where he’s going until he gets to the airport and won’t know his cooking mission until he arrives at the site, and will have a set time to finish the mission. Past missions included catering a wedding for 200 and preparing an 18th-century meal for food historians in Colonial Williamsburg.
“This is my cup of tea,” Symon said. “Tell me something’s impossible, that gets me going to prove you wrong.” What will change is the length of the show — from 30 to 60 minutes. Symon says it’ll give viewers a chance to see more of how the mission unfolds
I was amongst the first to say it, and others agree. Thus begins the Save Robert Irvine Campaign to keep the Dinner: Impossible chef on the air and in his current job of the same show. The website “maintained by a group of volunteers who are interested in keeping Robert Irvine as host of Dinner:Impossible” contains links to the Foodnetwork comment form (trust me, the way FN buries that thing, the link is itself gold!) as well as an online petition form. ….
Exactly how hot must your restaurant be for the venerable Wall Street Journal to not only write about what power house people go to your restaurant but an entire article complete with online interactive seating chart complete with mouse-overs, photographs and floor layout to say just how hot your restaurant must be. So it is with Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud, which nearly 10 years later still packs in the movers, shakers, singers, actors and pols. And as said the WSJ covers it literally table by table ….
According to caterersearch, New York-based chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is set to open three new restaurants within Starwood hotel developments this year. Three new Spice Market restaurants, specialising in the street food of Southeast Asia, are confirmed to open inside three new W hotels in Istanbul, Turkey; Doha, Qatar; and Atlanta in the USA. The expansion forms part of Vongerichten’s new restaurant development company Culinary Concepts and menus in different cities will feature dishes tailored to local tastes and ingredients.
Didn’t see this one coming! Food Network has decided on it’s replacement of Robert Irvine for the new host of Dinner: Impossible. And who is this new-comer stranger? That’s the surprise; it is apparently a familiar face instead, none other than Iron Chef Michael Symon.
