How Successful Are TV Food Chef Contestants?

Apparently your future success as a television career competition winner really various. Maura Dieringer of USA Today provides an interesting follow-up on the careers of various reality food/fashion/design competition show winners, and it’s not all peaches and cream.

Here are three examples out of several that USA Today gave:

HGTV Design Star, Season 2 (2007): Kim Myles

Myles, known for her use of unconventional design on a tight budget, is in her third season of Myles of Style. She was a hairdresser in New York before the show and earned an associate’s degree in theater in Bakersfield, Calif., her hometown. She lives in Los Angeles and has been a guest designer on several HGTV shows


Hell’s Kitchen, Season 2 (2006): Heather West

With a reality-show victory under her belt, West is working on two books while shooting the pilot of her own show, Eat This. As her prize from the show, West was the senior chef at Terra Rossa in the Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas for a year. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2003 and is chef Gordon Ramsay’s sous chef on this season of Hell’s Kitchen


The Next Food Network Star, Season 3 (2007): Amy Finley

Finley completed her six episodes of The Gourmet Next Door for Food Network, but decided not to sign on for a second season. In February 2008 she became the first columnist for Bon Appetit‘s new column, Family Style, and stayed for about a year. Then she left the magazine, moving to France with her family to write a regional cook book. She remains out of the public eye.


On the other hand, none of them can be called losers. Most in general of the food types are or have started their own restaurants, which many had wanted to do before the shows but couldn’t. So for many it has been career building, even if that career isn’t on television.

Who Wants to be a Famous Food Critic?

Who Wants to be a Famous Food Critic? Especially if no one knows it’s you.

That’s the question that’s being asked about the new Food Critic for the New York Times, who by design can’t let people know who they are in a time when all the money, fame, and power comes from being a recognized brand.

Recounts the New York Observer, here is part of the dilemma, as described by someone from the outside:

Mr. Ozersky is the 41-year-old restaurants editor for Citysearch who blogs at the Feedbag…

Mr. Ozersky now wants to be a food personality. He wants to be a judge on Iron Chef. He wants to host his own television show. He wants fame. He said he’s 55 percent there. And, he said, even though the Times restaurant critic holds an incredibly powerful position, it’s the last thing he would want to do. Not in a million, zillion years, he said.

“The Times critic can’t go on TV!” he said. “What would you do with that power? You can’t go to the restaurants you like, you can’t shmooze with the chefs and writers you like. You can’t go on Top Chef!”

“As far as I’m concerned, you have to be on television,” he continued. “You can win the National Book Award and you can write on the front page of The Times every day, and you’re still not as famous as some busty tramp on Tough Love on VH1.”

Mr. Ozersky is part of an army of writers who don’t profess to be critics, or to do what Mr. Bruni does—he, instead, is trying to do something entirely different, he said.

Too true, too true.

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New Tasteable T-shirt Idea


When we get around to it, maybe TasteTV will get our new line of t-shirts out the door before October 11th. One we like at the moment:

“Life is too short, so why waste precious thyme”

Of course, we think it’s sort of original. It’s based on a Pat Benatar lyric.

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Michael Jackson’s Personal Chef tells tale


PEOPLE Magazine has the scoop from Michael Jackson’s personal chef:

Michael Jackson’s personal chef says Dr. Conrad Murray was a fixture at the household of Michael Jackson – so much so that when his routine changed the day of Jackson’s death, she knew something was wrong.

“I thought maybe Mr. Jackson is sleeping late,” Kai Chase, hired by Jackson to cook the family meals, told the Associated Press of the morning of June 25, when she noticed that the singer’s doctor had not come down Jackson’s bedroom carrying a pair of oxygen tanks, as he did every morning.

The celebrity chef, 37, hired by Jackson in March, says the Jacksons’ was a happy home, with a focus on healthy living.

Jackson, preparing for a series of comeback concerts in London, had fruit drinks and granola for breakfast every morning, and ate healthy foods like chicken and spinach salad for lunch with the kids. Dinners might include a seared tuna steak, and Dr. Murray was often a guest at the table. Jackson’s daughter, Paris, 11, started each meal by saying grace, Chase says.

As for Chase, who expected to go to London with the family, she plans on publishing a cookbook – an idea that Jackson encouraged. The book will focus on her time with the family.

Not that it promotes her cookbook, right? Hopefully it comes with photos.

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“Twilight” Actors Made in Chocolate


Blockbuster video stores will have the “Twilight” and “New Moon” movie cast in chocolate for fans to buy… and eat.

Per andpop.com,

Necco sub-brand SkyBar is releasing these “New Moon” bars as well as special boxes of “Twilight” Sweethearts. But of course, they had to add a vampire twist to the flavours which include “Secret Strawberry,” “Passion Fruit” and “Tempting Apple.


If we’re lucky, we might be able to get samples for the 2009 Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon in October. (bar photo from E! online)

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SEXY DISHES Recipe Demo and Tasting

A fun cooking demo and tasting featuring chefs and mixologists featured in the recent TasteTV foodie book, “SEXY DISHES: A Guide to Who’s Hot in the Kitchen (Bay Area Edition)”

Meet these sexy chefs, who will demonstrate their sexy recipes and provide sample tastings of their sexy dishes at the Williams-Sonoma flagship store’s demonstration kitchen in lovely Union Square, San Francisco.

Featured at this TasteTV event:

* Cindy Chen, Owner and Chef, Shanghai 1930
* Taylor Boudreaux, Executive Chef, California Cafe
* Iris Eisenlohr, Wine Director, Piacere Restaurant
* Miriam Russell-Wadleigh, Executive Chef, Piacere Restaurant

Bring your copy of SEXY DISHES to be signed in person, or just come and meet and eat!

Saturday, July 11, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM Where: Williams-Sonoma 340 Post St San Francisco, CA 94108

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