Eat Out NY follows around Kelly Choi, who goes to various high end restaurants in Manhattan and talks to the chefs and hang out in their kitchen. It’s a great show, especially if you can’t afford to actually visit those restaurants. My problem is with Kelly’s appearance. She’s not always dressed like a whore on the show, but most of the time she is. It’s highly inappropriate and unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, I love slutty looking girls: I find them highly entertaining and they provide great conversation material. I just don’t need one to distract me when I’m trying to learn about restaurants. Wearing low cut gowns and setting her make-up gun to whore is enough to make Giada blush.

$9.99 is a show about stuff to do in NYC for $9.99. The great thing is that they don’t limit the show to Manhattan. Maryam Basir is one of the hosts and like Kelly Choi, she dresses really slutty. Except unlike Kelly, she’s vapid and totally ignorant about food. She always has a big dumb smile on her face when people are trying to teach her things and you can almost see the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon that’s playing in her head. If you wanna cut the the chase, you can check out risque photos of Maryam on her website. And her resume, which includes her measurements.

Both programs are on NYCTV25

Rachael Ray is unstoppable - like Mecha Streisand. Or Oprah if you don’t know what Mecha Streisand is.

Personally, I don’t like her: I find her annoying, insipid and unctuous. Her cooking looks gross to me. Though, I do get the concept of her and why she’s popular. I understand why some people like her personality and her cooking. I get why Mid-western moms love her. And I do think it’s a good thing that she’s getting more people in the kitchen and trying new things. Though, I do not get why weird dudes have crushes on her and I think that is a telltale sign of some kind of personality disorder. I do not hold it against her that she will do anything for money.

Here’s my problem:

Two days ago the New York Times reported that Ray Ray recently started a non-profit organization called Yum-o Organization. It aims to, as the official website states, “Cook. Feed. Fund.” and that “The Yum-o! Organization empowers kids and their families to develop healthy relationships with food and cooking.”

Nice! So she doesn’t produce the healthiest recipes on her show (”Healthy” being a totally relative word - yes, her meals are healthier than a Big Mac, but terribly unhealthy compared to this kind of home cooking). But Rachael Ray does inspire and influence thousands, if not millions, of people. And going around, promoting healthy (it should really say “healthier”) eating habits for Americans is admirable, right?

No. Because it’s a fucking sham.

I call extreme shenanigans because Rachael Ray is also a spokeswoman for Dunkin’ Donuts. What’s a kid supposed to think when they hear Rachael Ray telling them eating fruits and veg can be totally yum-o and then they see her on peddling French crullers on TV? Maybe it’s good for them to learn early on to not trust anyone and that people are liars and will pretend to do nice things as a tax write-off.

Delicious TV: The host, Toni Fiore, is good on camera. Unfortunately, it’s shot on janky camcorder. I got distracted because her nails were all done up and it seems like she’s scared to get them ruined. She doesn’t have proper knife skills, so it’s a little aggravating for food dorks like me. Delicious TV can be found on NYCTV 25.
ChewFood rating: C+

Jacques Pepin: Fast Food My Way: Oooh, boy. How can you not love Jacques Pépin? He’s an adorable old Frenchman who you can tell just absolutely loves what he does. He’s a very rare television personality: He’s comfortable in front of the camera without trying. He doesn’t need to stand around and tell you how great his recipes are and how delicious his food is, he just gets into the cooking. Plus he has an Ugly Doll in his kitchen! (I mean, I have an aversion to cyclopses, but he still gets points for that.) I am gonna try to get Chef Pépin to adopt me. In the mornings, I’d come down to the kitchen all bleary eyed and he’d have coffee all ready and say, “Shooey, what would you like for zee breakfast? Baked eggs weez herbs et pork belly? Euh, Belgian waffles weez macerated seasonal fruit? Breakfast crepes?” And I’d reply, “Why don’t we cook them all, Papa Jacques? Why don’t we cook them all?” And he’d go, “Ah, but of course!” On WLIW 21 in New York (PBS).
ChewFood rating: A+

Daisy Cooks! With Daisy Marinez: I’m usually a fan of programs with any punctuation in the title, especially exclamation points, but this disappoints. Daisy, who does Spanish food, is boring as hell - which is shame because it’s obvious she really loves cooking for people and knows what she is talking about. She just sucks on camera. I couldn’t even finish a whole episode.
ChewFood rating: D+ (The plus is for her moxie.)

Master Class at Johnson & Wales: This show is low budget and it’s supposed to be like you are just observing a class at the prestigious Johnson & Wales (alumni include Tyler Florence and Emeril). Not bad. It’s informative without any pretense of a host or narrator. It’s not food porn and doesn’t give me a food boner or anything, but I’ll continue to watch it. On WLIW 21 in New York (PBS).
ChewFood rating: B

Living Fresh: Sarah Snow thinks she cuter than she is. Sandra Lee’s zealousness and vanity + Martha Stewart’s arrogance - sticks in their asses - 20 years in age = Sarah. I watched an episode about organic vegetables and one about natural honey. It was pretty informative. Like did you know organic vegetables contain 10-50% more antioxidants than conventional vegetables? Or that one egg yolk from an organic egg contains more omega-3 than eight conventional egg yolks? About the cooking: There’s actually very little cooking. She does most of her prep work off camera and so she gets right into the cooking - which is fast, healthy, easy and big on organical things. The cooking part of the show is only about eight minutes and includes only one dish. Then for most of the show she travels to a farm and learns about crap - these segments are really long and boring. Then she sits down with a guest and does some artsy-craftsy thing like make bird feeders or arrange flowers. So this show was one part cooking, two parts boring educational / propaganda / commercial segment and one part crap. I think they try to cram too much into her show. On the Discovery Home channel.
ChewFood rating: C+/B-

Dinner: Impossible: I really like this show - it’s just plain fun, like Iron Chef. Chef Robert Irvine is British and jacked. I keep waiting for him to roundhouse kick culinary students like he’s “The Transporter”. Basically they take this Robert and throw him into a new challenge in different locations every episode. One time he had recreate an authentic 18th century meal using 18th century equipment. The last episode I caught he had to make dinner for the crew building an ice hotel in Quebec inside the actual ice hotel without melting the place. On the Food Network.
ChewFood rating: A-

Tomorrow night at 10pm EST, Discovery Health is showing Nathan Lyon in Lyon in the Kitchen (did you get the joke there?!). You may remember Nathan in The Next Food Network Star 2: He was the bald trained chef that was really good on camera but for some reason didn’t win. Instead they gave it to some fat dude with gaudy jewelery, embarrassing hair and hackneyed quips. I was rooting for the morbidly obese gay black guy.

Japanese television: Frying-pan contest.

(Thanks, Franz!)

I think I was looking at the Food Network all wrong. I had expected it to be like a supermarket: One stop shopping. Years ago, it used to be that if my supermarket didn’t have it, then fuck it, I didn’t need it and I’m not gonna go outta my way to get it. I’ve discovered that it’s not that there isn’t better food-based programming out there, it’s that I’ve been searching in the wrong place. If you want fresher, more esoteric ingredients then you are gonna have to go out there and search for them, right? Same with cooking shows.

I’ve been watching more Discovery Health and Discovery Home lately. Not all their cooking shows are great, but at least they are refreshing. These two channels put heavy emphasis on shooting and editing their cooking shows in a heavily food porn-ish way - which is, more often then not, annoying. I guess they figure creative editing will hold viewers attention.

Kylie Kwong: An Australian who does Chinese cooking. Almost all her dishes are lot more complicated and expensive then Ming Tsai’s. Also, she doesn’t explain her ingredients and steps very well - I guess this forces you to buy her books. The show seems to be more about the visuals. I will probably never make any of her dishes, but it’s still fun to watch.

License to Grill: Think a friendlier, black Bobby Flay meets a straight Michael Chiarello. Rob Rainford’s outdoor kitchen setup is nicer than my indoor kitchen (he’s got a fridge outside). He’s all about dry rubs on meat and even made nachos in a cast iron pan on the grill. I don’t really care for this show because I don’t cook large cuts of meat on the grill. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and grilling is man’s work.

Healthy Decadence: Hosted by Devin Alexender, who reminds me of a less offensive, less hilarious Sarah Silverman. She does fresh, tasty, healthy cooking. So she’s basically Ellie Krieger (who hosts Healthy Appetite on the Food Network), except more personable. Then in contrast, a program about “super-obese” people came and it grossed Matt out so he had to change the channel.

Take Home Chef: This show blows. Curtis Stone is an Australian, B-version amalgamation of Jamie Oliver and Tyler Florence, except with a crappy haircut and bad highlights. He assaults random women in the supermarket and asks them if they will take him home so he can teach them how to a gourmet meal for their husbands (real progressive). He does almost all the cooking himself and the actual cooking poriton of the show is about five minutes. Lame.

Cookin’ in Brooklyn: Chef and host Alan Harding is a Carroll Gardens legend (he owns Schnäck and the Gowanus Yacht Club to name only a couple), so obviously I’m gonna love his show. He does casual, comfort cooking from the viewpoint of a trained chef. Basically, he’ll show you how to the make the best meat loaf and tell you why it’s the best. From the Discovery Home website: “‘I love onions and potatoes as much as I love truffles and foie gras,’ says Harding. His motto is ‘cooking should be fun, not complicated’.” I think one of the reasons I like this this show is because it’s just plain fun. Alan seems like a solid dude that you can grab a beer with. My only complaint is the scripted stuff they make Alan say. Oh, and the super lame theme song.

The Travel Channel not only has Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but also Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman. I usually detest culinary travel shows, but I’d rather watch this white dude being forced to try aged tiger penis and live grubs in Malaysia than watch Giada eat an omelet and a fruit tart in Seattle.

Also, Mark Bittman has a new cooking show on PBS (WLIW 21 here). I haven’t seen it, but the New York Times gave it a pretty good review.

There’s a bunch more shows I have yet to see, like Chef Marcus Samuelsson (of Aquavit fame) in Inner Chef, so I’ll keep you updated . I opened up my nappy-headed horizons and look at the bounty of new-to-me cooking shows I found.

Star wipe and I’m out!

New cooking show alert!

Dinner with the Band is hosted by Sam Mason, a well established pastry chef whose resume includes Union Pacific and WD-50 (that posh molecular gastronemy restaurant [you might have seen Wylie Dufresne on Iron Chef America]). And Sam’s a hipster - thought I’d mention that to any of you girls who have a femme-boner for hipster dudes with sleeves and who can cook well.

Like a lot of other avid cooks and eaters, I’ve gotten over The Food Network. I don’t think I need to explain why because Anthony Bourdain already did an excellent job doing that. One thing he didn’t mention is that at some point after watching X amount of hours of the current Food Network programming, people like me, and probably you, plateau and stop learning new things. There are only so many basic tips and techniques they choose to share. And then they share the same ones again and again. I know that there is much more to learn about various ingredients, cooking techniques and various cuisines. So I was excited to find my new favorite cooking show: Simply Ming, which you catch on public television.

What makes Ming Tsai a good host in my eyes? He’s got all the basics down: He’s good on camera, explains all of his steps and ingredients, and makes simple, easy, cheap food. And I’m learning the techniques of a cuisine that I’m not familiar with cooking. What makes him an excellent host? He’s genuine. Like Ina Garten genuine. He comes across like he’s a nice dude - the kinda guy that if you stopped him in the street, he’d be more than happy to take a photo with you and wouldn’t mind if you gave him a hug. Think a less arrogant version of any male on The Food Network (save for Michael Chiarello and maybe Alton Brown). Best of all, he doesn’t use hackneyed phrases like “off the hook” or have any annoying personality quirks like mispronouncing the word “spatula”. Ming is a huge departure from the over-acted, insincere tasting of tiny bites that Giada and Rachael Ray take: Close or roll your eyes, moan and put the stress on each word of, “MMM. THIS IS. SOOOOO. GOOD. MMM. SERIOUSLY, YOU GUYS.” As hilariously shown here.

Each episode, Ming focuses on one ingredient. In one episode I caught, the theme was ginger syrup (a ginger flavored simple syrup). He made ginger beef and leeks (which took about five minutes to actually cook - in your face, Ray Ray) , blue ginger gimlet, ginger-limeade, glazed chicken thighs with carrots, and a chilled shrimp and cucumber salad with a ginger vinaigrette. AND he did a segment where he went to China and interviewed his adorable parents about food. All that in one episode! How efficient! Can YOU cook a three course meal AND compose two different cocktails AND fly to China and back within thirty minutes?! I don’t think so! Face!

Ming used to be on The Food Network. I guess he didn’t pull in enough viewers because there’s not enough Italian or Southern flavors in his cooking. I don’t know why ethnic foods scare the majority of Food Network viewers. Please leave comments with your thoughts on why.