Are YOU Killing the Food Network?

Look, I think I’ve been honest right from the get-go.

I’ve never been a foodie. In fact, I’ve always been a little squeamish about diehard foodies. And I stumbled into food writing because I was an out-of-work English professor who needed a job, not because I stayed up nights dreaming of the perfect creme brulee.

God knows, I haven’t hidden this. My 2006 essay on Salon.com, Food Slut, provoked quite a stir, including daggers from Hans Eisenbeis, then editor of this very publication, who called me dyspeptic and narcissistic, and said that writers such as I "try to reduce the cacophony of their little corner of the world into a trickle valve of distilled meaning, but they must be careful not to let it be curdled by the acid of falsehood-by-simplification." (I swear, he said exactly that. You can read the entire stream of metaphor here.) And while much of what Eisenbeis said may be true, I think if he were a real, serious reporter, he would have interviewed my ex-husband to find out exactly how dyspeptic I can be.

But I digress. . . .

My point is, I’ve been dissing TV chefs and ice sculpture openings for years. But don’t think I’m not aware — painfully aware — that I am, in a sense. . . .all food writers are. . . .riding on the coattails of Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray and all those other hyper-irritating people who’ve made cooking the modern equivalent of Olympic ice dancing.

And NOW, I read in yesterday’s New York Times that the Food Network has cancelled Lagasse’s show and plans to restructure its programming because — ye Gods! — ratings have dropped (and dropped significantly) for the first time in four years.

Well, here’s my question: What’s your problem? Why have you — epicures of the first order who use the word chef as a proper noun (as in "Chef is one of my best friends") — abandoned the Food Network? And does this spell the end for dyspeptic, narcissistic writers who are curdled by. . . .oh, whatever. Is America’s romance with chefs and restaurants and all things "foodie" actually coming to an end?

There are signs, you know. My co-blogger, Jeremy Iggers, recently wrote a piece about Zagat, the popular everyman’s reviewing system which has been picking up a head of steam. But also, consider this:

On Tuesday, I went into a Juut Salon at Southdale. But this was not just any Juut; it was the one occupying the former Louis XIII space. Now, Treize (as it was called in the business) was the most anticipated new restaurant of all time — according to many — the year I started writing about food. Its owner, David Fhima, was sexy and long-haired and he had a suave accent. Everyone wrote articles about him and talked about his genius and showed him in Spandex, jogging around Lake Calhoun, while his palatial, Spectacurama restaurant on the edge of Southdale was being built.

When Louis XIII finally opened, after a series of delays, there were chandeliers and velvet drapes and an $1,800 bottle of Remy Martin cognac socked away in the wall. That was 2004, during food’s heyday. Now, can you name a single restaurant opening in Minneapolis or St. Paul that will get the same level of media coverage or bring the glitteratti out to mingle while holding mango duck lollipops on a stick?

Also, in case you missed this part, Treize has since closed and they’re now doing bikini waxes in the place where the kitchen used to be. It’s my assessment that the wave has receded. Restaurants are fast going back to being establishments where we, uh, eat. Damn.

Seriously, folks, if you’ve found things to do that are more important than watching the Food Network — say, reading a book or taking a walk or having really good sex — I can get behind that. Narcissistic as I may be, I’m hoping you have more to do than sit rapt while Rachael Ray smacks her lips. And if this means the end of my free ride restaurant reviewing career, then so be it. I’ll find something else to write about. Don’t worry about me.


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