It was 1995. I was eight. My mom let me stay up past my bedtime because there was no school the next day, and I decided to watch television. I curled up on the couch (I may or may not have been wearing my favorite pink footsie pajamas) and was channel surfing. Just before I decided to go upstairs to go to bed, I came across a man with a thick Boston accent standing in a simple, white-tiled kitchen. He was chopping parsley for a marinade for chicken. I had just come across my first-ever episode of "The Essence of Emeril," and from that moment on, I was hooked. I was instantly transformed into an eight-year-old Food Network junkie.
In the 14 years since, the Food Network has been a constant companion. But lately, as I've flipped through the channels, I've been confused.
Let's take a look at some of the primetime programming on TV these days. FOX offers "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Hell's Kitchen." Bravo has "Top Chef" and the upcoming "Top Chef Masters." NBC recently aired "The Chopping Block" before it met the fate of its own name. "Man v. Food" and "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern" are on The Travel Channel, along with my perennial favorite "No Reservations."
Despite all of this programming, I can't help but wonder: Where have all the cooking shows gone?
The thing that drew me to "The Essence of Emeril" 14 years ago -- the actual act of food preparation -- seems to be hard to find on TV these days. The Food Network's weekday "Food Network in the Kitchen" lineup and a handful of shows on PBS seem to be all that's left of cooking shows that are actually about ... cooking. What happened to shows that were more about teaching new techniques to home cooks and introducing them to different recipes than selling the lifestyle brand of a celebrity chef? Today's "stand and stir" programming is a far cry from the original instructional cooking shows like Graham Kerr's "The Galloping Gourmet" or Julia Child's "The French Chef" from the 1960s. How much does our current crop of cooking shows even inspire people to cook?
"Food programming" seems to be a better phrase for what you find on television now. Reality food competitions like "Top Chef" or "The Next Food Network Star" are fun to watch, but they don't make me want to jump into the kitchen. I've even had "Top Chef: The Cookbook" (2008) for close to six months; I love reading all the behind-the-scenes stories, but I've yet to use it as an actual cookbook. Food-themed travel shows are also entertaining, but they're more of a fantasy. I get a kick out of watching Andrew Zimmern eat his bizarre foods, but I can rarely have the same experience myself.
The fact that food programming is so prevalent -- the American public is more enamored with chefs and the restaurant industry than ever before -- speaks volumes about how food has become so mainstream. I just wonder if there is still enough emphasis on the actual food and not the culture around it. The Food Network should take a page from music-themed stations that have perpetually been under fire for not actually airing music videos. I'd love to see the VH1 Classic of Food Network shows -- a station that airs Food Network series like "East Meets West," "Too Hot Tamales" or "Taste." These were the shows I fell in love with as a child and what made me want to actually interact with food and cook. Would an eight year old who watched today's food programming have the same dream?
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Caryn Horowitz is a junior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.
