Food Network Star 2012 Begins; Let's Take a Look At How It Begins

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So The Next Food Network Starhas begun and we're cool with the format. You got to smile, though, for the only Food Network Star that became much of anything was Guy Fieri, current host of Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives". Guy also has a couple of commercials under his belt. He was a great contender on The Next Food Network Star of 2010 and he's proof that stardom can be plucked from the Great Unwashed.


There is a new sort of format this year, borrowing a page from The Voice.

Three Food Network Celebrities: Giada De Laurentiis, Alton Brown and Bobby Flay, have chosen their team from the contender pool. There wasn't all the drama of The Voice, of course, but the main similarity is that these three celebrated cooks will be leading their teams and eventually one will win.

In fact I do have the composition of each celebrity chef's team:

Alton Brown
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Christie-caterer for movies
Martie-oldest person in contest
Judson-wears bowties-
Emily-loves the 50's era
Justin-youngest of group-has restaurant

Giada
==========
Phillip….IPPY-Hawaiian
Yvan-from Venezuela
Linkie-from South Africa, wedding culinary artist
Josh-Sushi chef/rock and roll chef
Martita-sexy, home chef

Bobby Flay
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Malcolm-41-private chef for celebrities
Kara-owns catering company
Michelle-executive chef
Eric-winery chef, quit his job for this
Nikki-loves to grill

I've included some notes that struck my fancy about each contender.

The task assigned to the teams for this, the first Next Food Network Star episode of this season, was to totally create a restaurant for each team. They were charged with choosing a name and a menu. Each contender would present their dish to the judges at their restaurant.

To entice whoever the hell gets invited to these things and for sure I should get an invite, each member of each team would present a short summary of their restaurant and the type of food to be served. After three presentations of the teams' restaurant and food type to be served, all the invitees, which did not include me, chose their restaurant and entered the appropriate door. Attendees would be filling out questionnaires about the dishes served and the winning team and best dish would be picked from this pool of votes.

Having the contenders create a sort of hype of their restaurant was a good idea in that it helped the judges envision the contender's ability to express his or her self, a very important trait in a cooking show as one would expect.

Bobby's team's restaurant was called "Tasting Space" and the contender leader was Nikki.

Alton's team's restaurant was called "Due South" and Emily was the contender leader.

Giada's team's restaurant was called "Blu" and featured something called California Cooking.


It would turn out that Bobby's team came in top place. Since Bobby's and Giada's teams were in the bottom two, each Food Network celebrity had to pick one of their team's contenders to face an elimination cookoff.

Alton put contender Cristie on the chopping block to compete against Giada's choice to throw under the bus-Josh the rock and roll chef.

It ended up with Cristie getting tossed and thank goodness.

Yes it's early in the episode's season for me to have such a dislike of a contender but the fact is that Cristie got tossed for pretty much the same reason as why I so disliked her.

The judges declared Cristie to come off as a bit angry and indeed she did.

First, come on, such as "cooking light" goes over like the proverbial lead balloon on cooking shows. "The Chew's" Daphne Oz is that show's resident food police and I'm willing to bet money that she was told to lay off the lectures. People do not watch cooking shows to learn how to cook light. Maybe they should, but they don't. It's that old leading the horse to water. If you put it on TV but nobody will watch, what good is that?

That was strike one. Strike two, may God forgive me, but this woman came off as such a judgemental fussy liberal sort who would get mad because she has all the answers and was going to show us heathens how to live and eat properly.

Of course as this thought crossed my mind I kind of mentally chided myself. "Pat, too much politics in everything" I thought.

But they did, the judges remarked how angry she seemed and I then mentally smiled.

Poor liberal Cristie, she said what appeared to be her anger was really her passion.

Heh.

Well they all say that, don't they?

At any rate, I don't much like Bobby Flay but he manages to stay in there don't he? I've never seen Flay cook up anything especially unique; his claim to fame is BBQ, what's the big challenge in that? Giada, well she's so beautiful it ought to be against the law. Watch any show Giada cooks on and note that always her blouse is cut down to here….pointing to my belly button. I always wonder why she doesn't cover up where you don't want hot grease to go but she's got it all. So what the hell is she doing cooking?

So the Next Food Network Star is off. When the contenders are culled down to around eight I will cover it every week in this Blog. Until then check in and see what we might have to say as the mood hits us.

For Blog posts on Food Network Star 2007 click here.

For Blog posts on Food NEtwork Star 2009 click here.


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