This week should have been a typical week. Take my son to kindergarten. Play with my daughter. Make dinner for family. Wrap dead fish in newspaper and mail to Food Network.
Wait, ok, that last part is somewhat atypical. While, like most people, I do mail the occasional dead fish to someone who has grieved me in some way, this would mark only the second time I have sent one to the Food Network. I really don’t want to get into the first time, as there was some, shall we say, unpleasantness. Let me just tell you that if you are going to send a dead fish to Sandra Lee, do not include your return address. Amateur mistake.
It wasn't me Sandra, I swear. It was Rahm Emmanuel!
You see, every afternoon at 3:30 after I pick my son up from school, I like to turn on FN just to see what Tyler Florence is making. Sometimes I turn it right off, but every now and then he has a great menu on his show, Tyler’s Ultimate. One nice thing about FN (and believe me, other than Alton Brown, there probably is only one other nice thing) is that it is age appropriate programming. The only time FN is inappropriate is for 12-14 year old males during Everyday Italian.
So what did our clueless amigos at FN do? They moved him to 11am (dead zone time) to occupy Michael Chiarello’s old time slot. As a side note, I always liked Easy Entertaining, it was like spending part of the morning in Napa, and Mike is a pretty damn good chef.
You'd be this happy too if you lived in Napa, had a basket of wine and were leaving Food Network
I know what you are saying. Hardly reason to send a dead fish, right. True. Read on…
Guess who is on at 3:30 now? I won’t keep you in suspense, it is Anne Burrell. You are either saying who the fuck is that, or throwing up in your mouth. Who likes her? Anyone? Perhaps there is an Anne Burrell fan club out there ready to attack me like the Guy Fieri mafia. I doubt it. Her show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef is, to put it simply, awful. I know Tyler Florence isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement but at least he was watchable.
It gets better. What genius thought it was a good idea to put Anne on right after Guy’s Big Bite? Not only are you cramming two of the worst personalities FN has to offer into the same hour, but are you oblivious to the fact that they look almost exactly alike? I expect there will be a lot of confused soccer moms. I’m tired of FN propping up utterly loathsome personalities. From Guy Fieri, to Anne Burrell, to Alex Guarnaschelli, it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Anne Burrell
Guy Fieri, sans glasses
As it stands now, aside from EPIE research, my FN viewing is down to Good Eats and sometimes Chopped. The day Alton Brown leaves will be the end of the line for me and Food Network.
So…they get a dead fish. Oh yeah, and also because the show The Best Thing I Ever Ate is self-indulgent garbage.
The best part of this story is that I threw in a bottle of ancho chili powder along with the fish, hoping to entice Bobby Flay to be a big show off and try to cook it. Joke is on him, I let that thing sit in the sun for three days; it has more bacteria in it than all of Tiger Woods’ mistresses combined.
Come to think of it, I just thought of a helpful way to help El Tigre defeat his sex addiction problem. Carry a picture of Anne Burrell around with you at ALL TIMES. That’ll keep your driver in the bag.
(OK, that was really mean, even for me. If I ever meet Anne Burrell she has permission to punch me.)
Article by Jeremy Rosenberg
After seven years in show business I have retired to be a stay-at-home Dad to my six year old son and one year old daughter. I love Epic Portions, I get to work from home all week except for Friday, which is always casual day at the office anyway. No more ties for me!!!!
Jeremy has written 72 other articles.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Isn’t “Cooking for Real” on right around that time as well? Man, that’s some awful food programming.
All I can really say is that you are totally correct. She scares me. A lot.
Hilarious! No need to feel bad for being mean to Anne Burrell. I’ve come to the conclusion that if the hilarity outweighs the meanness, then it’s ok.
anne is wretched, yes. intolerable. if you watch “the best thing i ever ate” then you are equally repulsed by the amount of screen time she gets on that show. vomit. some of the personalities just get to sit in a studio and describe their favorite foods while others get to actually go to the restaurant and describe while eating. whoever decided it was ok to send anne out into the field to stuff her horrid face every.single.time. should be fired.
i liked michael chiarello, too. but i can’t help it… i still like guy. a lot.
I’m not a big fan of hers, but I think you’ve got to separate the person from what the network tries to make her. She comes across to me as a fairly serious, gimmick-free chef; but, if you’ve seen Next Food Network Star, it’s apparent that they push people to jazz up their personalities. The most glaring example (for me at least) was The Essence of Emeril vs. Emeril Live.
Agreed that her personality is off-puting to say the least, but she’s one of the few chefs left on the network. She cooks good food. She doesn’t get hammered and show you how to make a tablescape. She doesn’t invent a new word for soup and show you how to make it in 30 minutes. She cooks decent food.
I saw Anne Burrell “twice” (the FIRST and the LAST time). Bitch doesn’t like BLACK PEPPER for chrissakes!
She’s dead to me.
AHAHHAHAHAHA! Driver in his bag. Hilarious.
If you painted Anne Burrell’s face blue in that picture she would look exactly like a character from Avatar. Or is that just me….
Anne Burrell just proves once again that the FN executives have no clue what they’re doing. Early on, they lucked into people like Emeril and Rachel Ray (oh, I’m sorry–they ‘developed” them–ha!), but have no talent for picking stars themselves. Now they’re focused on finding people to appeal to the younger demographics that advertisers want (ass-backwards–find the talent and then the viewers will come). They lucked into Guy Fieri, who for some reason became a hit. So they think, “Guy has spiked blond hair, that’s what people want! Let’s find a woman chef with spiked blonde hair!”
These people just don’t have a clue.
Mad props for mentioning my man Rahm in the caption, even if you did accidentally put a second m in his surname (happens all the time). Because he is like the most baller Democrat ever, I mean seriously the dude does ballet AND swears like a sailor AND sacrificed half a middle finger to an Arby’s slicer when he was a teen AND basically calls the shots in the Oval Office AND deals with the haters of which there are many.
Also I only watch the night stuff on Food Network when nothing else is on TV. CUPCAKE WARS AT 3 AM YEAAAH. Real talk though, Cupcake Wars is AWFUL. I actually like cupcakes but the judges are assholes and have the same opinion of every. single. cupcake. “I couldn’t taste [flavor]! This tastes store-bought!” It’s a cupcake. There is only so much one can do to improve it, especially with weird irrational races and then the last challenge always involves some poor carpenter listening to frantic bakers exclaim “I want my platform to look like…a child’s dream!”
Nothing more needs to be said about Guy Fieri…dude should just quit now while he’s behind.
And yeah so this comment is like six months late, whatever, I’ve gone on a huge Epic Proportions archive-reading binge and I love it.
Seriously! Guarnaschelli (you can bet she shaves her mustache) is the anti-christ with her mean comments and wrinkly facial expressions, which I guess makes Anne Burrell satan or something like that. Anne’s “perky TV personality” is so off the mark I can’t stand it. Strange hand gestures, bizarre enthusiasm, and goofy sayings just make me angry watching her.
Get this crap off my tv!