Anyone who's watched food TV since its inception has seen a steady evolution of the medium, from a staid Mario Batali cooking for three friends to Gordon Ramsay going batshit in Kitchen Nightmares to the snarky food soap opera that's Top Chef to Adam Richman snarfing down burritos as thick and long as an Amtrak train.
Face it, in not all that many years, we've become a bunch of jaded foodie voyeurs, requiring our gourmet heroes to go further and further to satisfy our lustful cravings. Since in America nothing succeeds like excess, here are six shows that boldly go where no TV production has had the cast-iron gonads to go before.
You get the whips and chains; I'll get the milk and cookies.
Dogs, Dumps, and Disasters. Guy Fieri ditches the '67 Camaro for a
vintage ambulance equipped with state-of-the-art stomach pump as he
searches for America's favorite crappy restaurants. In each episode, he
chokes down dishes like "burrata cheese stuffed with fresh strawberries
cooked in amaretto and vanilla bean" while proclaiming, "That's a
triple homicide in Flavortown!"
Celebrity Chef Deathmatch.
Watch Rachael Ray bitch-slap Martha Stewart in a Perky versus Sullen
grudge match. Snark along with Anthony Bourdain as he slices and dices
Padma Lakshmi with his razor-sharp tongue. Marvel at Mario Batali and
Tyler Florence going after each other, sumo style. Thrill as Giada De
Laurentiis puts Tom Colicchio down for the count with a single butt of
her enormous head.
Sarah's Home Cookin'. In preparation
for her 2012 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin stalks the wilds of
effete East and West Coast cities, hunting the wily
Liberal-Terrorist-Socialist-Muslim. After dispatching the animal with a
blast of her powerful moose gun, she skins and guts it and prepares it
in a variety of dishes, serving them to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl
Rove, and other right-thinking gourmands.
Eat Me. Finally
free of the need to pretend he can actually relate to normal human
beings, Alton Brown stars in this new series of annoyingly pompous
lectures about food and cooking, complete with stupid props and
sophomoric skits, proving that even though he looks like a geek and has
the personality of a tarantula, he knows more about food than you ever
will.
Throw Up With Iron Chef Bobby Flay. Bobby travels
the country trying to keep from gagging as he challenges home cooks to
Battle Green Bean Casserole and other abominations, all to show that a
chef who once had talent will do anything to keep his face on the idiot
box. Bonus: Bobby tries to smile without looking like his
producer is holding a cattle prod to his nuts off-camera.
The Real Deadliest Catch.
Five teams of blue-collar Americans journey into one of the most
dangerous places in the world: industrial food-production facilities.
Team members will eat salmonella-contaminated eggs, ground beef laced
with e. coli, and farmed salmon that swims in its own shit. The team that
eats the most wins free cremation and their ashes scattered over the
toxic waste dump of their choice.
