Getting a taste for a place where the drama is delicious

Kevin Cowherd

September 21, 2008

Let me begin by saying I'm not a foodie. I don't cook. The only thing I know about food is that I like stuffing my fat face with it. Yet somehow, I've gotten hooked on Food Network.

Who knows how these things happen? But they happen fast. One minute you're watching an ESPN SportsCenter update on Peyton Manning, the next minute you're clicking over to Paula Dean rubbing herbs into a pork loin.

Part of the reason I watch Food Network is that I've never seen people get so excited about food.

The other day, for instance, I watched Rachael Ray pound veal shoulders with a frying pan, a look of pure bliss on her face.

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"It's really fun . . .!" she chirped at one point. I felt like going into the kitchen right then and there and pounding a veal shoulder myself. Except I didn't know what a veal shoulder was and whether we even had one.

Another thing I discovered is that people don't just cook food and talk about food on Food Network - they also have food competitions.

One took place on a show called Food Network Challenge for Pizza that featured four men billed as the "greatest pizza acrobats in the world." Who knew pizza acrobats even existed?

Yet there they were, competing to see, among other things, who could toss pizza dough the highest and who could roll the dough across his shoulders the fastest.

OK, it wasn't the Beijing Olympics. But it was kind of exciting to watch, in a weird way.

It seemed even more exciting the next day, when I clicked on The Essence of Emeril and watched celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse preparing fish stock.

Let me tell you, there's really not a whole lot of action to watching someone prepare fish stock.

"You really don't want to boil this because it'll get cloudy," Lagasse said at one point, listlessly stirring the pot. Which is when I thought: Where are the pizza acrobats when you need them?

There are lots of foodie rock stars on Food Network: Rachael Ray, Emeril Lagasse, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, the British temptress Nigella Lawson.

But I'm curiously drawn to Guy Fieri, the spiky-haired, goateed, board-shorts-wearing star of Guy's Big Bite and Greatest Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

When he swaggers into an eatery with those linebacker shoulders straining against his Hawaiian shirt, you're never sure if he's there to try a dish or kick some butt.

When he tastes a dish, he's also prone to using expressions of pleasure that sound at once macho and corny, such as "See the sauce in that? Money!" and "That's out of bounds!"

To go from Fieri to the fey, theatrical Alton Brown, star of Good Eats, is to go from a Metallica concert to an accordion recital.

The other night's topic for Alton was: "Whipping up world-class sauces."

This was at 11 at night, and I imagined viewers all over the East Coast clicking off the remote and thinking: "Well, time for bed ..."

I also imagined Guy Fieri, watching at home, rolling his eyes, draining a beer and shouting: "Pour some tequila in that @#$%&* sauce, Alton!"