Results tagged “anthony bourdain”

The winner has been declared for this season of Top Chef (no spoilers here). Meanwhile, some viewers feel a bit cheated because the show’s chance to infuse itself with our city’s kind of diverse food culture fell curiously flat—nothing, for example, screams NY more than a visit from French celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli and a Big Easy finale. The most relevant, relatable show theme for most New Yorkers this season might have been all those frantic visits to Whole Foods for the elimination challenges.

How fitting that Anthony Bourdain’s controversial interview with DCist, in which Bourdain called organic food proponent Alice Waters’ agenda “very Khmer Rouge,” took place in our nation’s capital. Welcome to Alice Watersgate, a brewing chef on chef scandal that (potentially) has the unexpected benefit of bringing ideas about our country’s food policy to a much wider audience.

Chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain, who moonlights as a relentless crusader against perceived food world injustices, has apparently dropped the hammer on grassroots food revolutionary Alice Waters in an interview with DCist:

“Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic.”

“I'm a little reluctant to admit that maybe Americans are too stupid to figure out that the food we're eating is killing us. But I don't know if it's time to send out special squads to close all the McDonald's.”

Last night, for the second year in a row, visiting English chef Fergus Henderson (pictured) returned to The Spotted Pig to cook with chef April Bloomfield. The event was dubbed 'FergusStock.' Chefs and cooks from all over attended: in one corner, Tom Colicchio sat with his family and Ken Friedman, one of The Spotted Pig's principal owners. The bar was crowded (more than usual) with prospective diners angling for dinner spots.

“We normally associate cooking with exposing protein to flame,” said Anthony Bourdain at the Times Center, introducing chef Ferran Adrià of elBulli, who rarely cooks proteins by exposing them to flame, and even more rarely appears at food festivals like the one that took place in the meatpacking district this past weekend.

Yesterday, chef Grant Achatz of Alinea was slated to deliver a presentation on his eclectic serving implements (the antiplate, tripod, and squid) at the StarChefs ICC. First, however, he had a few words in response to “something that came up with a group of gentlemen,” referring to Anthony Bourdain and English chef Marco Pierre White’s controversial Sunday night panel.

“The Role of a Chef” panel which closed out day one of the StarChefs International Chefs Congress at the Park Avenue Armory featured iconoclasts Marco Pierre White and Anthony Bourdain (with writer Michael Ruhlman moderating) dishing about chefs they liked, and some they didn’t. As usual, Anthony Bourdain reserved most of his venom for food television personalities. When the conversation veered toward restaurants, both panel members essentially offered their thoughts on absentee chefs, who ostensibly oversee more restaurants than they can possibly physically cook in every day.

For some people, food is a means of sustenance, or at least a way to pad the stomach before a night of binge drinking. For others, it's a passion, and for a smaller minority, a career. But for celebrity "Chef-at-Large" Anthony Bourdain, it's clearly become a problem. To hear him tell it on his blog today, the man could use some help scoring primo stuff in NYC: "How come I gotta go halfway across the earth -- to like, Singapore, or Hong Kong (or Spain), for instance, to really get MY culinary jollies these days?... I'm like a full-bloom junkie, the honeymoon period over, needing a higher and higher dosage to get off in MY home town of New York!" It's only a matter of time before he bottoms out, face down in a plate of Chimichangas at Caliente Cab Company. At this point only a very special "foodie" episode of Intervention can save him.

Sure, the stress and time pressures of the kitchen inevitably spark infernos of obscenity, but recent shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen have exposed the salty language of star chefs to untold millions. Last week’s Top Chef episode raised eyebrows for its higher-than-normal profanity quotient, when contestants lit into each other with so much F-bombing “the resulting bleeps ran together like a test of the old Emergency Broadcast System,” according to the Times.

One of the things that makes eating dim sum in New York City exciting is the seeming endless variety of savory and sweet morsels. Even veteran dim sum eaters are rewarded by new discoveries every so often.

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EVENT: Earlier this year Holly Hunter encountered an interesting situation with an interviewer for a news station (we highly recommend watching the YouTube video of this). She discussed her tv series Saving Grace at the time, and she'll be doing the same tonight at the Paley Center (old Museum of TV and Radio). There will be a Q&A as well as a screening of one of the episodes. 6pm // The Paley Center for Media...

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? We're definitely setting our DVR to record The Martha Stewart Show. She’s got a three great New York Italian chefs on today: Odetta Fada of San Domenico, Lidia Bastianich of Felidia and Del Posto, and pastry chef Gina DePalma of Babbo. On Tuesday she’s got cookbook editor Judith Jones, and on Wednesday, New Orleans chef Susan Spicer (Monday-Friday, 1pm, NBC). But the prime time highlight might be a...

You might have had a copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style on your desk in high school or college. It was your go-to reference book whenever you forgot (yet again) where you should stick that damned apostrophe. Michael Ruhlman, food writer, trained chef, and most recently, judge on the Food Network's Next Iron Chef, has created his go-to reference guide for the kitchen, The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for...

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Next Sunday is the finale of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network). Michael Ruhlman has a comment from Chef Chris Cosentino on his blog about the airplane episode—he was clearly getting crowded by cameras, but for him the crowding was to the degree that he couldn’t work, and he wanted to clarify that fact “now that 1/2 the country thinks i am an asshole.”...

is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This isn’t stunt eating, Fear Factor-style, nor is Henderson’s food supposed to be particularly innovative, but it is. The chef’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” approach to cooking simultaneously emphasizes frugality and simplicity. In some sense, that's almost unheard of these days.

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week?

Last night Top Chef began with a Quickfire Challenge consisting of everyone cooking Padma breakfast...we swear she thinks of the challenges when she's stoned (see: the onion cutting relay. C'mon!). After the "food awakening" they were in for a rude awakening. Sent to New York City, the contestants seemed genuinely happy when they saw the Manhattan skyline...but their dreams were dashed when they were held in New Jersey for a day at Newark Airport. Cooking airplane food. Oh dear.

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week?

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week?

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Here’s the breakdown:

What’s worth seeing on food-related TV this week? Gothamist has got the breakdown:

(published in the U.K. last year as White Slave) makes clear that while establishing his restaurants in England in the early nineties, White never did the obvious thing by flying over to France, the culinary epicenter of the world, in order to crib from the temples of haute cuisine, steal the secrets from other chefs.

On Monday night there will be a huge, star-studded, red-carpet event held at Avery Fisher Hall with men in tuxes, women in floor-length gowns, and paparazzi galore. Some swanky movie premiere? No -- the James Beard Awards, an annual event that is taking a grand step up in venue this year (in the past it had taken place at the Marriott Marquis). But many question the decision to glam up the awards. Not only did Anthony Bourdain scoff at the decision to have restaurant staff prepare food in a venue with no kitchen, but for an organization that was drowning in scandal as recently as 2004, was this really a good choice?

Feed Your Mind is a new column that will focus on food-related books.

- A lovely family story, centered around the casual Puebla Mexican Food restaurant in the EV, was recently told in the The Villager. Some of the food is quite good, we are partial to the roast pork tacos served just as they should be, simply dressed with cilantro, onion and a bit of tomatillo salsa.

Anthony Bourdain, who has taken to guest-blogging for Michael Ruhlman, has already offered his opinions on Top Chef contestants. Now, he's on to bigger and better targets -- the personalities on the Food Network. He admits to watching it, "I find myself riveted by its awfulness, like watching a multi-car accident in slow motion," and has plenty to say about those who grace its airwaves. Emeril: "I STILL find him unwatchable." Giada: "Food Net seems more interested in her enormous head (big head equals big ratings. Really!) and her cleavage--than the fact that she’s likeable, knows what she’s doing in an Italian kitchen--and makes food you’d actually want to eat." Rachel Ray: "She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that '[e]ven your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!'" Sandra Lee: "Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time."