Food shows

Nothing timely or relevant about this except that I finally did the five minutes of Web searching needed to answer the question, "What does notoriously opinionated TV personality and former chef Anthony Bourdain think of my favorite Food Network personalities, Alton Brown and Ina Garten?" (I completely understand if you give not the slightest damn. I shouldn't either, but I do.)

It turns out that Bourdain has had nice things to say about both of them. On Brown:

How did Alton slip inside the wire--and stay there all these years? He must have something on them. He’s smart. You actually learn something from his commentary.

From the context I think Bourdain is talking about Brown's duties as host of Iron Chef America, but I won't watch that. No, Brown's true home is his own show, Good Eats, in which he explains how and why cooking works as it does.

And on Garten (aka "the Barefoot Contessa"):

I watch Ina Garten. She actually cooks well. I have no understanding of her alternate universe. I don't wanna stay at her house. I think her friends are creepy.... But when Ina Garten cooks mashed potatoes, those are some damn good mashed potatoes.

He has said kinder things about Garten elsewhere, but I chose the friends-bashing quotation because as much as I like Garten and her show, her friends' on-camera appearances diminish my enjoyment considerably. They live in a world that's not just foreign, but repellent, to me.

I should clarify my characterization of Brown and Garten as my "favorites". It's not so much that either of them is my ideal host or even my ideal cook. They just stand out from their network cohorts by not being cut out of the same toothy-grinned, desperately bubbly mold. Perhaps I could learn something from Giada or the Neelys or Rachael or Fieri, but I never will because I can't watch more than ten seconds of any of them without needing to vomit.

Unfortunately, Food Network is a whirling cesspool of crap, and it keeps producing more of the same sorry waste material. It doesn't just showcase vomit-worthy hosts whose main qualification is alleged telegenic charm, it turns the process of finding and molding such people into vomit-inducing TV as well ("The Next Food Network Star"). I would cheerfully delete the channel from the list I monitor were it not that Brown and Garten keep teaching me science and techniques.