Published: Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Foodies are feasting on small-screen fare
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Associated Press/Richard Drew
Buddy Valastro is "The Cake Boss" on The Learning Channel.
Food-truck battles and cupcake wars; little people crafting chocolate confections and five-star chefs forging masterpieces with ingredients from a vending machine; molecular gastronomists making scientific ideas edible and D-list celebs opening a restaurant.
Full yet?
To begin with, food shows were once largely limited to quiet PBS instructional fare -- like how to calmly make a cheese souffle under Julia Child's tutelage.
While there are still plenty of series teaching viewers how to cook (there are now two channels devoted to food with the recent launch of the Cooking Channel, an edgy spinoff of the Food Network), in recent years a deluge of programming has shifted the genre toward full-fledged participation in the reality-TV era -- from competitions between professionals ("Top Chef" has sliced and diced through nine seasons) to cook-offs between amateurs ("Hell's Kitchen" is about to embark on its ninth season).
There are culinary adventures, like "No Reservations" and "Bizarre Foods." And the dessert course is especially rich, with a raft of shows (more than a baker's dozen!) -- including "Ace of Cakes," "Cake Boss," "Last Cake Standing" and "Cupcake Wars."
Just as culinary trends keep evolving, food on TV continues to venture into new formats. "Rocco's Dinner Party," airing on Bravo, is a hybrid food competition/talk show with chefs competing as host Rocco DiSpirito converses with celebrity dinner guests. And "The Chew" premieres in September; part of the new daytime fare replacing several soap operas on ABC's daytime slate, it suggests that the network sees food as a genre of the future.
All of these culinary offerings have indelibly changed how we look at food, helping usher in a new generation of enthusiasts. "Almost everyone in America has 'foodie' on their to-do list," said DiSpirito, a pioneer in modern food-TV as star of NBC's reality series "The Restaurant" (based on his career as a restaurateur).
"And almost everyone has a favorite chef now or a favorite ingredient or a favorite farmers market, and that is very different from when I started out cooking. I don't think it's simply a trend anymore."
All this has helped create a nation of foodies interested in foie gras and Wagyu beef tartare and sparking wet-aged vs. dry-aged debates -- knowledge often acquired from snippets seen on these shows.
An increased awareness of culinary arts among young people (and career-changers) has ignited a steady rise in enrollment at culinary schools. From 2006 through 2010, Johnson & Wales University, which has campuses in Providence, R.I.; Miami, Denver and Charlotte, N.C., saw an increase of 40 percent in applications to all of their culinary arts as well as baking and pastry programs. Enrollment for the culinary program at the Art Institute of California-Los Angeles saw 18 percent growth from fall 2005 through fall 2010.
Full yet?
To begin with, food shows were once largely limited to quiet PBS instructional fare -- like how to calmly make a cheese souffle under Julia Child's tutelage.
While there are still plenty of series teaching viewers how to cook (there are now two channels devoted to food with the recent launch of the Cooking Channel, an edgy spinoff of the Food Network), in recent years a deluge of programming has shifted the genre toward full-fledged participation in the reality-TV era -- from competitions between professionals ("Top Chef" has sliced and diced through nine seasons) to cook-offs between amateurs ("Hell's Kitchen" is about to embark on its ninth season).
There are culinary adventures, like "No Reservations" and "Bizarre Foods." And the dessert course is especially rich, with a raft of shows (more than a baker's dozen!) -- including "Ace of Cakes," "Cake Boss," "Last Cake Standing" and "Cupcake Wars."
Just as culinary trends keep evolving, food on TV continues to venture into new formats. "Rocco's Dinner Party," airing on Bravo, is a hybrid food competition/talk show with chefs competing as host Rocco DiSpirito converses with celebrity dinner guests. And "The Chew" premieres in September; part of the new daytime fare replacing several soap operas on ABC's daytime slate, it suggests that the network sees food as a genre of the future.
All of these culinary offerings have indelibly changed how we look at food, helping usher in a new generation of enthusiasts. "Almost everyone in America has 'foodie' on their to-do list," said DiSpirito, a pioneer in modern food-TV as star of NBC's reality series "The Restaurant" (based on his career as a restaurateur).
"And almost everyone has a favorite chef now or a favorite ingredient or a favorite farmers market, and that is very different from when I started out cooking. I don't think it's simply a trend anymore."
All this has helped create a nation of foodies interested in foie gras and Wagyu beef tartare and sparking wet-aged vs. dry-aged debates -- knowledge often acquired from snippets seen on these shows.
An increased awareness of culinary arts among young people (and career-changers) has ignited a steady rise in enrollment at culinary schools. From 2006 through 2010, Johnson & Wales University, which has campuses in Providence, R.I.; Miami, Denver and Charlotte, N.C., saw an increase of 40 percent in applications to all of their culinary arts as well as baking and pastry programs. Enrollment for the culinary program at the Art Institute of California-Los Angeles saw 18 percent growth from fall 2005 through fall 2010.
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