Food Network

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7 Questions With...

7 Questions With … Food Network’s Guy Fieri

January 19, 2012 Lori Acken

1. You’re at a magazine rack and can only choose three publications. Which do you pick? Maxim, Cook’s Illustrated and duPont Registry. 2. If your TV only aired three networks, which three would you want? ESPN, HBO and Food Network. 3. What has been your weirdest fan encounter? Sitting on a plane a woman says to me, “You look like that guy on TV — what’s his name? Oh yeah, it’s Gus Ferrari — do you know that guy?” 4. When was the last time you were star struck? I was shooting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives in Portland, Maine, and went to a […]

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Food TV

“Heat Seekers” adds spice to Food Network lineup

January 16, 2012 Tom Comi

There’s an old saying that says you should get out of the kitchen if you can’t handle the heat, and chefs Aarón Sanchez and Roger Mooking go to great extremes in Heat Seekers to prove they can handle that heat. Premiering with Season 2 at 8pm ET, the Food Network program features the two gregarious chefs trying some foods that might be too cruel for the contestants on Fear Factor. Most people have trouble eating a jalapeño pepper, but that is considered child’s play in this weekly contest that sees which host can stomach the hottest dishes in the country. • MORE: […]

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Interview

New Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian fights first battle Christmas Day

December 22, 2011 Lori Acken

Having bested San Francisco chef/restaurateur Elizabeth Falkner in a nearly flawless final battle on Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef Super Chefs, newly-minted Iron Chef Geoffrey Zakarian will fight his debut battle December 25 at 9pm. The silver-haired, chicly-bespectacled chef/partner of New York’s The Lambs Club and The National and Miami’s Tudor House — and Food Network favorite on Chopped and 24 Hour Restaurant Battle — will take on challenger Chef Victor Casanova, Executive Chef at Culina, an Italian restaurant at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. Judging the culinary contest are restaurant executive and PR exec Karine Bakhoum, chef Art Smith of Chicago’s Table Fifty-Two and […]

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Food TV

Guy Fieri talks “Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off” … and tacos

December 15, 2011 Lori Acken

To Guy Fieri, Rachael Ray is more than a longtime Food Network colleague and fellow food TV superstar — she’s family. Family he is looking forward to beating the (pots and) pans off when the duo’s new six-week series Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off begins on January 1. “This is more like a sibling rivalry,” Fieri laughs, “because here you have two people — although we’re not from the same family — there are tremendous amounts of the same thoughts on life. Love people. Love competition. Love food. Love pushing the limits.” Rachael vs. Guy pits Fieri against Ray to […]

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Food TV

“The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs” preview: just beachy

December 9, 2011 Lori Acken

By Lori Acken Follow @ChannelGuideLLA So much for my “Anne in third” prognostication. But Alex and Geoffrey are still in the running, so there’s that. Except now I think I’m starting to waffle on the whole of my prognostication and wonder if it might actually be Falkner and Chiarello in the final and Geoffrey Z  at number three. I know a bit of what Alex and Geoffrey have coming up in the next couple months. Elizabeth and Michael, not so much. In any case, after their adventures in auctioneering last week, life’s beach for the four remaining rival chefs — […]

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Food TV

“Next Iron Chef Super Chefs” preview: “Food Is Funny”

November 18, 2011 Lori Acken

Alright, I’m getting just a teensy dab testy now. First Robert Irvine. Now Chuck Hughes?!! Awww, men! <sigh> Given my helpless addiction to all things food television and the folks who star in it, I realize that trying to choose whom I’d like to emerge the victor on Food Network’s Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs is like trying to choose which of my kids I like the best, but geeeeez. With Robert’s Macgyver-with-a-steak-knife skills set and Chuck’s utter delight at everything foisted his way — except perhaps toe-foooooo! — losing them in the first weeks of the series is akin […]

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Food TV

Carrie McCully is Food Network’s fascinating “Chef Hunter”

November 10, 2011 Lori Acken

By Lori Acken Follow @ChannelGuideLLA The next time you sit down for a meal at your favorite restaurant, don’t assume that the chef who created your food just wandered into the place one day and bowled over the owners with his or her culinary wizardry. Sometimes, the cooks, the kitchen and the people who own the joint need a little help finding their way to one another. And that’s been New York native and professional chef recruiter Carrie McCully’s passion since she was an intensely observant post-grad with a natural love of the restaurant world. “I’m just passionate about all […]

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Food TV

“The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs”: Ho, Hummus

November 9, 2011 Lori Acken

By Lori Acken Follow @ChannelGuideLLA Or maybe, “oh nuts!” In any case, yes, this blog should have been up days ago … but you would not believe what a slew of holiday programming can do to a monthly publication with a teeny little staff of writers. I’ve been knee-deep in December magic when I’ve been itching to talk runny eggs and gummy hummus. But better late than never, NIC lovers. So off to the ballpark we go. San Diego’s Petco Park to be exact — a far cry from wherever the heck the wilderness plateau was from last week’s episode, but no […]

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Food TV

“The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs” recap — a fateful match up

October 31, 2011 Lori Acken

By Lori Acken Follow @ChannelGuideLLA And so it has begun. Outside in a field. By a pile of wood, a couple’a campfires, a lake so pure one of the chefs will make a sauce of it, and random crates and piles of fruits and veggies stacked up on hay bales. Oh, and also a slew of slain pigs on ice. OK, actually it really began in hallowed Kitchen Stadium, where the chairman appears all buggy-eyed and choppy-hands on a gigantic screen before the contestants. Alton explains the new rules— Chairman’s Challenge first, losers’ shoot-out second — ramped up to test […]