Friday Open Thread: TV Chefs
So look, we all have our favorite television chefs, and then the ones we barely tolerate. Tina still loves Robert Irvine, despite the fact that he’s been proven a fraud on a number of counts; I have a thing where I can’t turn off Alton Brown, even when he’s engaged in prop comedy that he has no right doing.
But lately, a new star has risen on my horizon, and I just can’t get enough of her. Laura Calder is a Canadian chef who got her start in journalism and PR, and then chucked it all to become a cook. She spends her time jetting between Europe and the Canadian Maritimes, where she tapes French Food at Home — possibly the greatest cooking show ever. Graced with generic non-verbal Euro jazz, filmed in someone’s beautiful kitchen, French Food at Home actually does involve great food.
The charm of the show, though, comes from Calder. Never, ever failing to appear in a low-cut summer or cocktail dress, she radiates the charm of someone you might bump into by accident in a store where you can’t afford anything. She has an unflappably elite posture, and so her show leaves you with the feeling that you’ve been invited into her kitchen under false pretenses: As someone who’s on the same social level, as someone who might someday roll their own puff pastry, as someone who looks up new words for “delicious” in the dictionary, the way she does.
In tribute of this excellent half-hour, and to spark some discussion among our readers on who your favorite television chefs are, I have composed this string of haiku poems (they are only faintly perverse):
Food Network weekends:
The bright light amidst CanCon?
It’s French Food at Home.
Food I’d never eat,
recipes that are hard, but
who cares? Laura’s hot.
Oh Glamorous chef!
Are you ever not found in
your slight cocktail dress?
Wait! Don’t answer! Is
fancy-dress cooking wrong? I
don’t want to be right.
Your appeal is like
a high-school drama teacher’s:
The regal cougar.
Tina gets jealous,
but we both admire cleavage.
Yours, specifically.
Plus your dorky jokes,
and the food seems good also.
Oh right, and: cleavage.
When’s the new season?
Don’t delay, Laura Calder!
FoodTV needs you.
Open thread, folks! Who do you watch? Whose show do you admire? And, c’mon, who do you secretly wish you were friends with?
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