Cooking Shows

Food Fight!

Top Chef Seattle: It's over. Really. We Promise This Time.

The Top Chef: Seattle season finale was really good last night. Kristen and Brooke competed for the Top Chef title in front of a live audience and had to serve up dishes for the whole audience of 160 people, plus past winners of Top Chef, plus the judges. They were told to plan for five courses, but ... More >>

Tyler Florence Signing Books at Williams-Sonoma Today at Noon

Tyler Florence, host of several Food Network shows including "Iron Chef," "Food 911" and "Tyler's Ultimate," will be at Williams-Sonoma at NorthPark Center at noon today (Monday, Dec 10), signing copies of his new cookbook, TYLER FLORENCE FRESH. After a peek at the book online, in the introduction ... More >>

A 'Stache, a Ginger and a Tesar: Top Chef: Seattle Features Three Badass Dallas Chefs

Every week, I will watch Top Chef. I will not recap the episodes scene-by scene, because that is dumb: if you wanted to watch it, you watched it already and you don't need me to tell you that there were opening credits, chefs got sweaty, and someone yelled "fuck" at food. If you want that kind of re ... More >>

The Fieri Effect

Local restaurants try survive the crush of customers that follows a visit from Food Network's frosted-tip rainmaker.

Private Social Hears No Evil, and That's the Problem

The loudest restaurant in Dallas can't hear (or see or taste) its mistakes.

Top Chef Texas Episode 3: Pre-Cooked Shrimp A Few Tears, and a Quinceañera

​Each week, we move a little closer to the best episodes of Top Chef, the ones where you know the characters' styles, tastes, personalities and Achilles' heels. This week, the third episode of the season and the first single-elimination episode, tugged, however lightly, at viewers' heartstring ... More >>

Top Chef: Texas Episode 2: Painful Moments, Best Dishes, and Other Highlights

via BravoLast night's City of Ate-Deemed 'Best Dish,' jump for delicious details. ​Last night's episode of Top Chef: Texas should have come with a five-minute bonus Colicchio-lead meditation at the end -- it was INTENSE. I get it, the show's in Texas where everything's bigger, and hence this s ... More >>

Top Chef: Texas Claims Some More Public Money, This Time for a Slick Tourism Web Site

​We're still waiting to see whether a judge thinks we're entitled to more details on how the producers of Top Chef will spend the estimated $400,000-plus the state paid to see its brand integrated into the show, which the show has thus far accomplished with lots of boots, Texas flags, and dish ... More >>

Top Chef: Texas is Official; Emeril Lagasse and Hugh Acheson Will Judge

Emeril: Top Chef's new jurist.​Official word just came from Bravo: The next season of Top Chef will be set in Texas. You already knew that if you've been following any number of blogs, including City of Ate, where we broke the story that the state will shell out an estimated $400,000 to see ... More >>

Top Chef To Cost Texas Taxpayers $400,000, Give Or Take the Bacon Budget

"Mmm. Taxpayer-funded chocolate is delicious."​For several weeks now, as Top Chef crews have bounced around the state shooting next season's Texas-centric version of the popular Bravo reality show, journalists and food bloggers have wondered: How much, if anything, did the state pay for the sh ... More >>

Yes, Top Chef is Shooting in Dallas; No, the City Didn't "Pay to Play"

​News broke a couple weeks back that Bravo's Top Chef, the king of reality food TV's very crowded hill, is busy shooting its next season in cities around Texas, including Dallas. And last week, things seemed to take a turn for the sinister, when Eater reported that a Dallas-based advertising c ... More >>

The Bizarre that is Ms. Mazar

Cooking ChannelDebi Mazar throws wannabe cooks a curve.​This may sound superficial, but I'll say it anyway: Debi Mazar is not thin. The near washed-up actress has got some desirable curves goin' on. Awkward segue alert: But those Latvian-origin hips are about the most substantial part of her ... More >>

A Guy's Guy: Food Network's Fieri is Awesome, Dude

Food NetworkYou go, Guy.​There may be no other Food Network personality worthy of not just one but, count 'em, two Screen Bites reviews than Guy Fieri. Already the raucous center of a previous appreciation of his kitchen-bound program, Guy's Big Bite, which single-handedly proved that Fieri p ... More >>

Five Food Shows Ready to Have a Fork Stuck in Them

Food Network Humor​After 12 years of growing grouchier and more haggard, Alton Brown announced a few weeks ago that he's putting Good Eats out to pasture. Presumably, he's ditching science class for something more lucrative, like Welch's grape juice and the warmed-over Iron Chef: America, leav ... More >>

Too Much Drawlin', Paula

Food NetworkPaula Deen​It may risk a certain level of blasphemy, or more likely be a "duh" revelation, to say Paula Deen is one of food television's most grating on-screen presences. This is, perhaps, a politically incorrect conclusion to draw, given the travails she's faced throughout her s ... More >>

The Bestest of The Best Thing I Ever Ate

​One of my pet peeves about most cooking shows is how often a program's uber-foodies -- from the four-star guys in the starchy aprons to the home cooks who've lucked into a spot on television -- are reluctant to express any real emotion about how much they love the actual taste of good food. ... More >>

Asador's Dean James Max: What a Lucky Man

Asador's Dean James Max​Some people just end up doing the things they are meant to do, and the lucky ones end up being successful at it. Dean James Max, concept chef at the new Asador Restaurant in the Renaissance Dallas Hotel, is one of the lucky ones. What he's dreamed up for Asador is what ... More >>

Chopped All-Stars: A Cut Above the Rest

Food NetworkRobert Irvine wields a blade.​I've watched enough of the regular episodes of Food Network's Chopped to see through its paint-by-numbers plotting. Within the first couple of minutes of an average episode, I can all but predict which aspiring chef, caterer or cooking instructor, wres ... More >>

Bitchin' Cook Nadia Giosia Sexes Up the Kitchen

​It only took me seven seconds to fall for Nadia Giosia -- a.k.a.Nadia G., the fully-functional nutso charmer on her grunge-named Cooking Channel show, Bitchin' Kitchen. In those vital 7 seconds of Nadia G.'s promotional sound-bites, I was hooked: "If you were to ask me whether I'd rather make ... More >>

It's Game Day at Big Daddy's House

Aaron McCargo Jr.​Everything about Aaron McCargo Jr. -- a.k.a. Big Daddy of Big Daddy's House -- is larger-than-life, from those dueling, glimmering earrings to the ingratiating grin as wide as the Rio Grande to that infectious laugh that serves as constant exclamation point to every brashly f ... More >>

Couch Potato: What Is It With This Guy?

Matthew McConaughey (left) and Guy Fieri​Everything about Guy Fieri is big and boisterous, and has been that way ever since he walked off a winner in the Food Network's second season of the Next Food Network Star. His voice's volume and rasp call to mind an overworked cattle-auctioneer. His sh ... More >>

Quizzing Brownstone's Casey Thompson
On her Idols, Dead Trends and her Last Meal

Casey Thompson​Yesterday, we gave you an in-depth profile of Casey Thompson, Top Chef star, former executive chef at Shinsei and currently parking her toque at Fort Worth's Brownstone. Today, we lob a few questions her way, yielding such important personal tidbits as her fondness for The King ... More >>

Tre Wilcox Gets the Iron Chef-Style SmackDown at Le Cordon Bleu: For a Good Cause!

Stephen MaskerTre Wilcox of Loft 610​There was no back-flipping chairman or electric-green squeeze bottle of Bobby Flay's signature sauce, but Iron Chef (or Bravo's Top Chef) food nerds got their fix of food competition with Chef SmackDown at the Le Cordon Bleu College for Culinary Arts on Sun ... More >>

Hash Over: Movember, Mojito Monday,
Melting Pot and More

October is long gone folks, and we here at City of Ate couldn't be happier. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and we've almost recovered from yesterday's sugar high. So let's all put away the Halloween costumes and get ready for a week of food events, many of which are benefiting charitable causes. ... More >>

Gail Simmons Sees How the Cookies Crumble on Top Chef Just Desserts

Gail Simmons​The Emmy-winning and highly rated Top Chef franchise on Bravo puts the icing on its cake with this week's debut of Top Chef: Just Desserts (10 p.m., Wednesday, September 15, then moving to its regular slot at 9 p.m. the following week). Hosting the competition among 12 top-flight ... More >>

Chefs Under Fire D/FW: Viva La Raza,
Iron Chef-style

Northwood Club's Joey Guzman at work at Chefs Under Fire D/FW​"That's what it's about. That's what we do. We represent," said chef Joey Guzman of Northwood Club, when asked about the significance of three Latino finalists in the Chefs Under Fire D/FW semifinal at Milestone Culinary Center, an ... More >>

Drink or Appetizer: Sorting Out the Definition of Lobster Shooter

It lives in water, so it must be a drink, right?​Although the staff at Abacus doesn't consider the restaurant's lobster scallion shooters a beverage, the Food Network this week featured the liquid dish on its drink edition of The Best Thing I Ever Ate. "It's not actually a drink," Kent Rathbu ... More >>

Sweet Deal from Bravo's Top Chef Just Desserts

Ritz-Carlton executive pastry chef Morgan Wilson​Reality TV just got a little sweeter. To celebrate the September 15 debut of Bravo's Top Chef spinoff, Top Chef Just Desserts, OpenTable.com is offering free dessert with meals purchased at more than 30 restaurants in Dallas and Fort Worth. Make you ... More >>

Get Wined, Then Watch Top Chef

​There's a little over an hour to get your Bravo-loving ass to Sigel's (5757 Greenville Ave.) to taste the latest in one of the few libations appropriate for a proper reality TV-watching Wednesday night: Top Chef wines. The swirl-fest features Quickfire Cabernet and Quickfire Sauvignon and is free ... More >>

Chef Tre Wilcox, of Bravo and Food Network Fame, Wants to Make a Celebrity of his Restaurant, LOFT 610

Tre Wilcox Has Lofty Ambitions

​Loft 610 Urban Restaurant and Lounge recently named Chef Tre Wilcox their new executive chef--and announced plans to open a second concept driven by the popular cook.Yes, popular: You might know him as the former Chef de Cuisine at the five-star Dallas eatery Abacus, and he was on season three o ... More >>

Allez Cuisine!

Top 10 Greatest Cooking Shows Ever

Programs on Food Network and Bravo and such have become a kind of obsession with some folks. But as current hot shows lose their sizzle and new stars emerge, will we remember Throwdown, Top Chef and the like?Certain shows remain in our thoughts, however, popping to mind at odd moments. Others influe ... More >>

Keeping Score

Zorilla, via FlickrSix months (plus a couple) into City of Ate and I'm still trying to figure out blogging. In the past couple of months, we've also added twitter--fortunately handed to someone else, since my response to the first mention of it was along the lines of 'I've read about it in the paper ... More >>

Kitchen Wasteland

Just how many food shows do we need hanging out in and around Dallas, distracting our chefs and disrupting meals?Oxygen will be shooting the Naughty Kitchen at Central 214 for the next few months. The contest winner with the hair was back in the area--this time in Cowtown. A mom from Keller is vying ... More >>

10 Questions: Melissa D'Arabian, Food Network Contestant

When contestants for the upcoming series of The Next Food Network Star were announced, she was labeled the 'stay at home mom.' Indeed, the Keller resident tends to four young children--which, of course, means cooking three meals a day, just about every day of the week. Producers for the show ap ... More >>

Cook or Kook?

Yan shows Central Market how it's done

Food For Thought? Nah.

"Food Network Doesn't Have a News Show." But a Dallas Woman Could Be Its Next "Star."

I Keep Saying We Need to Eat at Suze More Often ...

His Tre-ness

Casey Thompson is America's Sweetheart -- And $10,000 Richer For It

Casey Thompson's Pork Belly Just Wasn't Crispy Enough

Everyday Angel

Is You a Top Chef? Then Pack Your Knives and Go.

Cam Bam

Do chefs watch cooking shows?

Naked Ambition

Jamie Oliver shows his twist at Central Market

Lovin' in the Oven

Tanya Holland puts soul into her cooking at Central Market

Celebrity du Jour

Big-name chefs saturate an uncertain market