Car wash magnate and former Knicks forward Charles Oakley is a man of many passions: Las Vegas brawler, Michael Jordan aficionado, and chef. And now, tough guy Oakley wants to cook for you in your home for free. more ›

This week's NY Times Dining section has a long profile about Jamaica, Queens native Rocco DiSpirito, who many in the dining biz have criticized for focusing on TV shows and cookbooks when he could be running a restaurant. Some, like cookbook author Michael Rhulman, believe "he’s almost gotten to the point where people in the food world feel sorry for him and want him back." Others, like former NY Mag critic Gael Greene, opine, "I do believe that ‘Dancing With the Stars’ is kind of the last stop. I don’t understand—has he totally lost that passion to cook?" In his defense, DiSpirito paints himself as a populist who loves "advocating" for the "general public." But Ed Levine at Serious Eats scoffs at that, slamming DiSpirito and the Times in a fun blog post: "What DiSpirito really loves to do is bring attention to himself Paris Hilton-style and try to cash in on it. Only she can't cook." more ›

The Post has it that a prep cook at Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn is in hot water after a co-worker spotted him stuffing 15 lobster tails down his pants and into bandages around his legs. In recent weeks, Junior’s staff had noticed that the restaurant’s supply of lobster tails had inexplicably dipped. So when 40-year-old Raymundo Flores was observed in a walk-in freezer bulking up his trousers with crustaceans, coworkers called 911. more ›

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. more ›