Martin Yan may be a good cook, but as a TV presenter he’s a one-trick pony.
I knew a guy who worked in Louisiana Public Television and he hated Justin Wilson. He said he was a racist, alcoholic and his TV accent was a put on.
That may well be true, but he sure was fun to watch. I’d always stop for the show if I came across it channel surfing.
Alton Brown sucks the life out of cooking. He may as well be explaining how to change your brake pads as mechanical as he is. He is also not funny.
I was working the phones during a Frugal Gourmet pledge drive marathon at the PBS station in Seattle. Somebody called in and said Jeff Smith didn’t know what he was doing.
One of his co-hosts on America’s Test Kitchen is a major babe.
Very interesting, but he makes it look so easy. I get the feeling I’d need to practice those techniques a lot just to be good enough to suck at it.
I like the shows he does with his daughter. They seem to get along so well; and she is the voice of inexperience for the rest of us. And when they make a mistake, c’est la vie.
He used to make food that looked like other things, right? I still want to do his half-an-apricot-on-vanilla-ice-cream to look like fried eggs.
I heard an interview with him once on a radio show from Wisconsin. Someone asked him what he could make with bratwursts. He couldn’t come up with anything, so I sent my idea to his website. Balloon animals.
Whaat? Well, thanks for ruining my childhood.
I don’t like Christopher Kimball at all, but Becky Hayes is really, really cute…
Lydia’s Italy and Mexico-One Plate At A Time (Rick Bayless) are both nice because they incorporate travel into the program which makes them much more interesting to watch.
Those old PBS cooking shows feel kind of quaint now, but I loved The French Chef, and The Frugal Gourmet. In his later shows, Smith’s preachiness began to bug, but he taught me lasting lessons when I was newly on my own, planning and making dinners every night – cooking techniques, the importance of using fresh and local foods, the concept of sharing food to share companionship and culture. I still use some of his recipes; in fact, one of my husband’s favorite meals is “Frug Pasta.”
I remember eagerly anticipating Saturday afternoons for the “how-to” shows on PBS. I loved those few hours; today I can tune into home improvement or cooking on multiple channels pretty much on demand. And I do!
So I’m choosing **The Frugal Gourmet **as my favorite. Newer cooking shows I like: Good Eats, 30 Minute Meals, Barefoot Contessa, anything with Nigella or Jamie Oliver. I like them because they have shown me things I’ve been inspired to cook for myself.
I looooovvvvveee to watch Sandra Lee for the snark factor. Hate anything with Mario Batali, Emeril, or Bobby Flay. I’ve never watched more than 5 minutes of Two Fat Ladies, but this thread has convinced me I should.
Well, you can’t build it up like that and not give us the recipe, woman! 
1UP for Good Eats
I have to say, America’s Test Kitchen, if only because watching those shows inspired me to subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country. Both of which are excellent, even if the recipes end up using every damn pot and pan that I own.
Also like Ellie Krieger and Giada de Laurentiis and Ina Garten, mostly because every one of their recipes I’ve tried turned out fab. And Nigella Lawson, of course, just because she’s so luscious.
My favorites:
Good Eats
Frugal Gourmet
Good Eats. The rest are just cooking shows.
I liked Ready, Steady, Cook. It was a game show on Food Network where both contestants were given the same grocery bag of ingredients and they had to prepare a whole meal from start to finish. It was a useful show because it showed different ways to put a balance meal on the table using readily available ingredients in less than half an hour.
another old one from Food Netweork that was cool: “Date Plate” two guys would read about a woman’s food preferences, and cook a meal accordingly, with a pro’s help. The winning guy got a date with her.
The only shows I’ve watched in any mass quantity have been Good Eats (seen every episode, many of them several times) and The Frugal Gourmet.
I totally forgot that we used to watch The Frugal Gourmet all the friggin time, as a family, when I was a kid, until very recently. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered it, but there you go.
Yes! I loved his ideas. Bratwurst balloon animals? Interesting…
Mr. Food! Yan Can Cook - he made it look so ludicrously easy. And from Day One, Good Eats.
The Frugal Gourmet is getting a lot of mention, and yes, Mr. Sali and I liked to watch him on PBS back in the day. Too bad the molesting old bastard is dead. I read in his later years he used to hang around Pike Market (?) trying to pick up young guys, and bitterly complaining that the Food Network should give HIM a show, being an original grand old foodie legend, etc.
I have recently discovered America’s Test Kitchen, and I find it extremely informative (of course, I don’t cook, so the information in my case is strictly theoretical). I mean, if I wanted to cook something, I would certainly try to find out if they have done that dish before and follow their lead. In that unlikely event, that is, that I would want to cook something.
I disagree with someone who said that Julia Child’s show was entertainment, if they were talking about The French Chef. It was very entertaining, but her whole raison d’etre (like that little insertion of French language there? spell-checker doesn’t) was to show these techniques and that they could be done by an ordinary person. I mean who else would devote a whole program to showing how properly to make an omelet?
I like Two Fat Ladies, but purely for the locations and the attitude. They never give you enough information (like ingredient amounts) to actually make the dishes they make, especially the baked goods.
I am so over Alton Brown. He does indeed suck the something out of something, but whether it’s the life out of cooking, or the last brain cell out of my head, I’m not sure. Let him stick to grape juice commercials, where he only has 30 seconds to annoy.
I used to love The Galloping Gourmet, but then I was only a teenager at the time. The Frugal Gourmet was too preachy. “Take a leek” - that got old in a hurry.
To re-cap: America’s Test Kitchen and The French Chef are my favorites of the past 45 years or so. Most of the personality chefs can slide off the face of the earth (Paula Deen can go first to lubricate the way for the rest of them) and I would never miss them.
Roddy
My mom and I both had copies of the Frugal Gourmet cookbooks and would watch him together, making notes on our books as he cooked.
Now, Good Eats is what I show to my CHEMISTRY class – they love it, we cook together, and learn chemistry at the same time. We just did a whole week of fudge – chocolate, cheater recipe chocolate, and peanut butter. Bet your chemistry teacher didn’t do that!
I read somewhere that many chefs and cooking hosts have opined that Jeff Smith had no idea what he was doing and that his recipe books are full of bad advice. I think I also read that his assistant did all the work anyway.
I do recall that half the time on The Frugal Gourmet (which I used to watch regularly) whatever he was making came out wrong.
Good Eats, Good Eats, Good Eats. Nobody has ever done so much for my understanding of the kitchen as Alton.
For entertainment purposes, one show I haven’t seen mentioned (and with good reason, I’m sure), is Guy’s Big Bite. I know, I know, but aside from his annoying little catch phrases I actually find him pretty likable, and I really like his kitchen and the food he makes.