Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I agree, that Esquire photo was ill-considered. Whats the most icky squicky thing for guys re: girls? Squishy..., red, oh my goodness .. it absolutely evokes Carrie.

This last episode of TC with Rocco (who I have a negative bias against but want to give him credit, if I can).

Tom came off looking like a jackass. It looked like the producers were working overtime to make him look like an ass. I wonder if there is a rift there and they are starting to edge him out.

Jackass moments:
the whole truffle pissy fit of his including his stud-fest against Rocco.
the whole prissy thing about the tinned artichokes and the precious 6th grade girl look he gave.
the whole nasty trash talk for the camera right outside the kitchen door after his walkthrough
there is more but, well, its tedious really

I gotta say, I really loathe Tom. Padma, eh, she is benign to me. Tom, he is a loathsome egotistical..., I better stop before I say something unkind.

Food Network Star? pathetic. It makes me sad to watch only because well, because I wasted some time of my life when I could have been doing something really important, like cleaning my range top or dumping the kitty litter or even scraping my deck. These things are of great life importance in comparison to TFNNS.

I personnally prefer Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and Iron Chef to any other food program.

Oh can I say I find that wine parings chick fantastically creepy?

She is like this minute alcoholic elf in the kitchen who is sneaking about making queer meals that are meant to showcase vague wines which she quaffs, gulps oddly, eyes bulging, and gasping she says how it absolutely compliments the peanut-cabbage-foie gras burritos she just made.

saltsmoke: I think I would like to see what it looks like when you get started on chervil!

Cory & others: You nailed it on Big-Head and her two talents. OK, she has three: she CAN cook. But it's the emphasis on personality over cooking that has turned me off to Food Network, even as I couldn't turn off the channel a few years ago.

I watch Hell's Kitchen but don't like it so much anymore: Ramsey has bought into the American reality TV ideal that each season must be more XTreme than the previous, in order to keep some perceived impression of audience interest. I far better liked his BBC America show, the one with the turkeys. He seemed a lot more natural in that series.

Remain a fan of Rachel Ray, because so many Americans I know can't cook a freaking can of pinto beans and they need her help. However, I'd rather see her in the kitchen cooking a 30-minute meal than traipsing around Lower Cape Butt, ME, cooing over lobster simmer in Budweiser, or whatever.

Still like that Canadian grill fellow for running a sane TV show. Alton Brown still works for me; I like the geek-meets-chef presentation.

And there remains that Belgian chef whose name I never got, who ran a weekend show in Brussels in which everything was prepared on a flat-top stove humming at the same temperature, and food preparation was based on the temperature of the stove. Now THAT guy could cook!

What a useless piece of journalism. And to think it might have gone like this: Mario Batali is a greedy pig. He will do anything for money. He has restaurants all over America. The restaurants are pretty good. This is because in addition to being a greedy pig, Mario Batali is not an idiot. The people who work for Mario Batali work very hard. They want to become greedy pigs too someday. Mario Batali may or may not help them do this. How iconic. End of story.

"I decide to get tough..." -- after you've done more interviews, you'll learn that the question you asked next is the softess of softballs. It's a set-up meant to allow the interviewee to say, "on the contrary blah blah blah." if you want to do a puffy, fawning interview, best not to try and pretend it's anything different.

I didn't have a Neilson box, but I was a Neilson journaling family once. I've done Arbitron ratings, too. Twice. Once for TV and once for radio. It's kind of fun, but A LOT of work!

Great interview. I just came back from the local rec center after reading this and who did I see there but the great Mario himself! With his trademark orange clogs! And of course, it was only a minute before I overheard him talking about cheeses, with the security guard no less!