I'm sick of all these boring cooking shows.
I became friends with a lot of chefs. I was a judge on 'Top Chef' last year. It was a dream come true.
I love food shows: Anthony Bourdain, Iron Chef, Chopped, you name it.
A lot of food shows need only to tempt. Some food shows only need to inspire, to empower. And there are a lot of shows that do that.
From Julia Child to 'The Galloping Gourmet' and the Food Channel and Cooking Channel, our fascination with the spectacle of cooking has been a mainstay of TV entertainment.
I like cookery programmes: Anthony Bourdain going around the world eating stuff; Rick Stein - he's another favourite.
Lidia Bastianich, sorry, but kind of boring. I mean, I love Lidia, but you can fall asleep watching her. And Mario Batali? I love Mario to death... but he's not romantic or sensual. Those are the things I bring to the table.
The Travel Channel had success with their 'Food Paradise' series, '10 Best Places to Pig Out' and those types of specials, so they knew there was a market for comfort food and wanted to develop a show around it.
We are not really privy to all that crazy stuff that goes on in the show. I go to work, eat, and talk about food. The wild things happen when we aren't around. I expected Top Chef to last three or four seasons and we are now shooting season ten.
In my opinion, the best of the knockout cookery series is 'MasterChef', which I have watched since Loyd Grossman's day, back in the 1990s.
