Maybe thre’s a drinking game devoted to it, like when Rhoda says “Hi, Mary” or when McCoy says “He’s dead, Jim.”
Hey, does Stoli make a garlic vodka?
Whether prompted or not, it was the ridiculous amount of clapping, and ooh-ing and ahh-ing (and some rather frightening looks of total adulation) that made me stop watching Emeril. “Bam” or “I said to myself, SELF!” and “Kick it up a notch” lose any appeal they might have had after the tenth show or so… A shame, because I actually quite liked Emeril’s cooking style. Well, then I moved and no longer had access, but I don’t miss it.
I just find it scary that I last watched Emeril Live about 5 years ago - and it’s apparently exactly the same. Does Doc still play paprika sprinkling music on the chimes?
Someone once gave me an Emeril cookbook, because cooking is a hobby of mine, and my ex- and I had our honeymoon in New Orleans. The recipes underwhelmed me. As did the pointless prose the made up for the dearth of actual useful information. I have to confess that I’ve never seen his show, but I have little incentive having read through that book.
And remember: An apple a day keeps the doctor away –
– but a garlic a day ensures complete privacy 
On the nosey. I’m not a chef (despite my username), but a pretty damn good cook, and I find his recipes, technique and presentation to be lame. I don’t know any decent chefs that don’t liberally use wine, garlic, and butter in their recipes. What are the alternatives - apple juice? Lard? Both have their place, of course. And that cheesy easy-listening band - WTF is that all about?
Ah!
I have never heard of Emeril Lagasse, but suddenly ELZAR from Futurama and his “BAM” with the “spice weasel” makes much more sense…
At a time when the Food Network was about cooking shows, they needed a personality that was sorely lacking. So they gave Emeril a freer hand to be himself on the original Essence of Emeril. None of the other chef shows had anyone with any sort of personality (other than Grillin’ and Chillin’, but we got stuck with Bobby Flay). Remember, this was pre-Alton. They had the Two Hot Tamales chicks, Sara Molton, Ming Tsai, and a much less boistrous Mario Batali; the only other entertaining chef was the pair on How to Boil Water (and they haven’t been able to capture the camraderie and fun of the original episodes in the current series).
Part of what JimSox said may also be true. Those first season shows were rather dull; not that he (or any of the chefs) weren’t competent, just that they were doing the PBS-style cooking show.
Anyway, as Lagasse started hamming it up, ratings went up. So Food Network executives did what every other TV executive has done since the dawn of wirelessly-transmitted moving pictures: they piled it on. People liked the ‘BAM!’, so we had to make sure we had a ‘BAM!’ per episode. Not content with that, we had to start having more ‘BAMS!’, because one is never enough. Like most people who enjoy food, Emeril does not hide his love of garlic (even when he was laid back, he talked about putting roasted garlic in his pocket and carrying it around like candy - a joke that has grown very old over the past decade). He started exaggerating how much he was using. People liked it and responded. So the producers played it up, and now everytime he glances at a bulb, the ‘Applause’ light kicks on.
When starting to learn to cook you find out that you can cover a lot of mistakes by just adding lots of yummy garlic to your recipe. Later you learn not to make so many mistakes, and to modulate your flavours. Emeril just hasn’t got past the lots of garlic phase (or at least is presenting his program for those people who haven’t got past that phase).
Yes.
At the risk of starting this old trainwreck up again, you do realize that the man was executive chef at Commander’s Palace, right? As a Doper once said, "one does not become executive chef at Commander’s Freaking Palace by being a bad cook.
Errr, unquote.
Or even as an experienced (and not terribly good) cook!
Disclaimer: I have never seen Emeril. I know his name only because I work a lot of crossword puzzles.
Amen brother. Emeril is a buffoon on that show.
Just curious…at what point did he roll them in minced garlic?
Spam is ‘spiced ham’. Of course, Spam comes from Wisconsin, right? The ‘spices’ are basically sugar and salt. (‘Oh, be careful with that black pepper, Ole! You don’t want to get too wild!’)
So maybe some people do see garlic as ‘exotic’ or ‘ethnic’.
I don’t know, I have one of his cookbooks, and there are several recipes in there that I like, but the book seems to have been put together sloppily. For instance, there’s a recipe for French bread that goes straight from mixing the dough to rising, with no kneading in between. That is not going to be a very good loaf of bread. Also, there is a recipe for andouille sausage, smoked on a backyard grill. He tells you everything except for a: how long to smoke it, and b: how to tell when it’s done. Pretty important steps I would think.
BTW, lots of garlic in that book 
Roasted garlic was incorporated into every dip; the caramel, dark chocolat, white chocolat, and chopped nuts. I believe the first batch contained 40 cloves, and he went times 10 for each succeeding batch. Hence, no need for a separate garlic coating. Although, he does read suggestions from “that www thing”, so perhaps you should post it.
First of all, as D_Odds explained so well above, the show is hammed up quite a bit, for the benefit of ratings. I like it myself; I think of it as “cooking camp”. Err, “camp” in the Rocky Horror term of the word, that is. I can see how the man’s overexuberance and the various unchanged-for-the-last-five-years schticks can get on people’s nerves, but I like him just fine. At least, I do as long as I don’t watch him all the time. 
As for the garlic thing, Chefguy, I guess you’ve been lucky. The simple fact is, a large segment of America is into bland. When I went to friends’ houses as a kid, I never saw or smelled or tasted even the least amount of garlic. Many of my coworkers don’t like stuff if it has “too much garlic”. I remember talking to a guy once who bitterly complained about an experience at Olive Garden, calling the place “Garlic Garden”, as if that were the most vile epithet one could call a restaurant. Heck, I even have one friend who won’t eat it at all – but he actually has an extremely valid medical excuse so I can’t fault him.
So when I watch Emeril go hog-wild (as it were) with garlic, yea, I can understand why people applaud.
My parents are like that. I was in college before I knew that garlic existed in a form other than garlic salt or garlic powder (which we would sometimes have at the table, so you could put it on your food without everybody else having to eat garlic). It’s quite a challenge cooking for them when they come to visit, because garlic is such a regular part of our cooking repertoire.
I love garlic and my only New Year’s resolution this year was to incorporate more fresh garlic into my diet. I have kept my resolution and I’m loving it.
I don’t watch Emeril, but I would be likely to applaud at the sight of garlic, too.