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Flay flew the coop
The departure of Food Network’s signature personality represents the changing face of food television
UPDATE: Flay has worked out a contract with Food Network after all…
ORIGINAL POST:
When I first got access to Food Network, I was thrilled. For years, I had watched various cooking shows that aired Saturdays on public TV — Julia Child, Jeff Smith, Justin Wilson, Martin Yan, Nick Stellino, and so on. Now, I could watch cooking shows all week. At the time, Food Network was more about straight cooking shows than about competition shows. Emeril Lagasse, who was at that time the face of the network, had both “Emeril Live” (with a live studio audience) and “The Essence of Emeril.” Sarah Moulton had “Cooking Live” — which really was live; Sarah took telephone questions from viewers as she cooked, and had to deal with the occasional misstep in real time. Alton Brown was just cranking up “Good Eats.”
The few competition or gimmick shows that Food Network aired at that time were fun and inventive. I loved the dubbed-into-English episodes of the original Japanese “Iron Chef” in a way that I haven’t loved any food competition show since. Gordon Elliott had “Doorknock Dinners,” in which he and a professional chef would go door-to-door in a middle-class neighborhood looking for a…
