Evolving Web

10 Recommendations for a Better Restaurant Web Site

Over the last two years, I’ve taken a rather keen interest in restaurant management and operations. Restaurants have incredibly thin margins, restaurant owners are generally overworked and, while they may get praised, they also take way more than their share of abuse from customers.

By and large, restaurant web sites are atrocious and restaurateurs have nary a clue how to make their web sites better. Often they punt and hire hacks who have “done restaurant web sites” and buy their way into quick contracts using the cache of previous clients.

But the sites are crap. They are either completely ugly or they have tons of unnecessary music and animation.  A large number are information poor.  A large number are outdated.

How many times have you clicked on a menu and found it to be from the previous summer or older?

So here are 10 quick recommendations to build a better restaurant web site based on mistakes I’ve seen restaurateurs make over and over again:

1. OWN YOUR OWN DOMAIN

If you are just starting, go to godaddy.com and buy your domain name. If you have hired someone to build your site, CHECK NOW. If they own your domain name, ask them to transfer ownership to you. Why is this #1? Because I’ve seen it happen that often. Your domain is your business – you never want anyone else to control it.

2. DON’T GIVE UP CONTROL

No one should ever control your web site but you.  You can outsource the work, but make sure you know where it is hosted.  Make sure you are paying directly for the hosting and giving access to your contractor.  Do not let the contractor control the hosting contract.  If the contract bails on you and you don’t have access to your site – you lose all that work.

3.NO FLASH

Flash animations are pretty, and pictures of yummy food blending into other yummy food is hot.  But Google doesn’t give a rip about your hot blending images. Google wants content. No content, no good indexing on Google.  Further, your customers want to eat food, not to watch animated food on their laptops. They don’t want to click ‘skip intro’ and they don’t want to wait. Customers want to eat your food.

4. NO PDFs

PDFs are used by many restaurant web sites because they can make the PDF directly from the menu. The layout is consistent, the logos are the same. It’s beautiful.  Except that PDFs also make sites less visible by Google.  PDFs also need to be uploaded – which is a pain.  This means that PDF menus are less likely to get updates.  In turn, this means that information is more likely to go stale. And nothing stale is attractive in a restaurant.

5. NO MUSIC!!!

Look, just no music, okay?

6. USE WORDPRESS.COM

$10 a year buys you a web site hosted by wordpress.com. You provide your domain name (e.g. BakersEscargotHaus.com) and Wordpress gives you easy steps to make a site.  The site will be built on a blog platform. Don’t be scared by the word blog – the only thing you need to know is that your site is now really easy to update. If you want, you can hire any number of people to set the site up – but when it’s done, you can update it, you can edit it, and you control it.

7. YES PICTURES AND CURRENT MENU

Why do you have a restaurant?! TO SERVE FOOD!!!! Let people know what you have. Get pictures (lots of them) up there showing the food, showing people eating the food, showing how much everyone loves the food … AND … always have ALL your current menus on the site – INCLUDING DAILY SPECIALS. The daily special should bring people in – not merely be a surprise for those lucky enough to pop by.

8. REWARD GROUPS AND REGULARS

Start a program for customer rewards that you (again) control. There are lots of people out there who want to take your money to set up a rewards program. Make sure the site details how you love your regulars and how you reward groups.  Not just “groups of 10 or more call for special discounts,” but make a hot dinner for 10 people and make it known that if you come with 10 – it will be awesome.  Out of all the restaurants I’ve been to world wide – it seems only high end Chinese restaurants get this right.

9. BLOG OR BE BLOGGED

This is the toughest one. I think every restaurant should have a blog because every restaurant has formed for a reason.  And those reasons, and the restaurateurs, are individualistic and fascinating.  Blogging doesn’t have to be hard. I could go on about this for hours, so I’ll leave it with this:  Blogging is the best way I know to make Google and other search engines love your site.  Why?  Because I provides constantly updated, new and unique content. Search engines love that.

10. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

This may seem like I’m perseverating, here, but web sites must be routinely updated for both customers and search engines to stay interested.  Your web site is now your maître’d.  That site isn’t a brochure, it’s your entry hall.  If it isn’t updated, it is shabby.

So these 10 recommendations for a better restaurant web site should be helpful, if only judging by most of the sites I’ve seen.  I fully understand that most restaurateurs are not web site designers and many wish the whole thing would go away.  But it isn’t, and with a 3% margin – you can’t afford to let any customers get away.

Blogged at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver, BC

Technorati Tags: restaurants,restaurateurs,web site design,social media,flash,pdf,horrific mistakes

A Thanksgiving Post About Food

A week or so ago I taught an informal cooking class for a small group hosted by @imjay and @afuller.  People have told me that they appreciate my posts about food and cooking – on Facebook, Twitter or this blog. 

So, for Thanksgiving, I thought I’d give you a few sources of information that can get you into cooking as well.

Elements of Cooking

Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking Site is awesome for the basics of cooking (like cookware to select) and finer cooking (like preparing bone marrow).

Epicurious

Epicurious.com is an awesome site for recipes, ideas, tips, shopping … anything you need for food.  There are many sites on the web with recipes, epicurious has recipes that have surprised and inspired me.

L2O

L2O is an awesome, beautiful blog.  In writing, photography, and execution – it is flawless. Done by Chicagoland’s L2O restaurant (my first stop on my next trip).  The blog is gorgeous and gives you a great appreciation of the beauty and versatility of ingredients.  

Chefs Catalog.com

When I need something new I will (I admit it) hit froogle or some other comparison site, but by and large I seem to end up at Chefs Catalog. They have basically everything.  I’ve bought pots, pans, utensils, gadgets and ingredients from them.

The quality of the materials you use from cooktop, to cookware, to ingredients all make a difference.  Chefs Catalog will fix you up.

The Kitchen Designer

Okay, so this is big time kitchenporn.  The Kitchen Designer blog basically gives you endless appliance envy.  But it’s excellent for keeping tabs on what’s out there for those big things that make a difference.  Like your cooktop, your oven and your grill. 

So that’s it.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. 

Technorati Tags: epicurious,l20,chefs catalog,kitchen designer,michael ruhlman,cooking,foodie,food

On Service Stickiness Or Service Sickening

Several years ago, my business partner and I picked up T-mobile Hot Spot subscriptions as part of our corporate cell phone accounts.  They were incredibly useful at first - any Starbucks I could see was a home away from home.  Plus, it was in both the San Jose and (in a very poorly implemented way) Orange County airports - where I spend a whole lot of time.

Over the years, the T-mobile hot spot account has become less and less useful. It's expensive and limiting.  For the same price, I can get a Verizon or Sprint data card and use my laptop anywhere.  Plus nearly any non-Starbucks coffee place has free wifi anyway.  So, I've been researching migrating away.

Today Starbucks announced that they'll be ditching T-mobile and moving to ... AT&T?  Now, I know that the Starbucks headquarters, while in high-tech Seattle, is actually located in a once-nearly-abandoned Sears store next to the railroad tracks.  But seriously, don't they know that wifi is free in every other coffee shop in Seattle?

Why bother charging for it?

What used to be a reason for me to go to a Starbucks has now become a reason to avoid them.  Before there was an open platform, I subscribed to a proprietary one.  But now there is a massive open platform in free wifi at other coffee shops.   There are also more open proprietary platform with ClearWire, Verizon or Sprint mobile broadband. 

Why would I ever go through the hassle of joining a location-locked system like AT&T's or continue using T-mobile's?

A sticky feature can therefore become a repellant one over time. 

One last note:

In the comments, Michael Lafferty notes that the T-Mobile service is available all over the place and that Starbucks has made a bad choice in switching to AT&T.  Maybe. But given that most other coffee shops have free wifi, it is now seen more as a standard feature than as a value-add.  Free wifi is now a cost of doing business for a coffee shop.

Technorati Tags: t-mobile, hotspots, wifi, coffee, starbucks, at&t, sticky

Duck Breast with Mixed Wine Pomegranate Sauce and Satsuma

The other night I found myself in the kitchen with half the ingredients necessary to make a nice duck dinner.  So I had to improvise.  Earlier that day, on Twitter, Robert Scoble was going on about how if you made bad videos, people would watch them.

So I shot video of our cooking experience from assembly to plating.  It is now my first video blogging effort.

Here's the recipe for :

You Need:

• 2 organic duck breasts good sized
• Dry white wine (we used a Roussanne)
• Dry red wine (we used a shiraz)
• 3 or 4 tbsp butter
• One small orange (we used a satsuma)
• 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• Salt and pepper

To Cook It:

• Mix 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses with about a quarter cup of red wine and set aside.
• trim and clean the duck breasts
• score the skin of the duck breasts (i forgot to video this step)
• Preheat oven to lowest setting
• Pan sear the duck breast until about 75% cooked
• Take the duck breasts out of the pan, season with salt and pepper, and place on a plate in the oven
• Clarify the duck fat and remove about 75%
• Using the white and red wine, deglaze the pan
• Allow the wine to cook down
• Add the pomegranate / wine mixture
• Allow mixture to cook down a bit
• Add the butter slowly
• Allow to cook way way down until it's thick
• Add the oranges
• Cook until the oranges are warm
• Add Salt and Pepper to taste
• Remove duck breasts from oven, plate and cover with the mixture from the pan.

The Video:

The video shows my wife and I creating an excellent meal.  But, the video has the following rookie issues:

1. Sometimes the shot isn't quite lined up.
2. The sound is not quite even and quiet throughout.
3. It's bloody long!  About 30 minutes.
4. As a celebrity chef, I haven't quite found my voice.  I'm earnest, but not funny.
5. I shot over an hour of initial footage, my Flip camera only has an hour of memory, so at the end, video is shot on my still camera.
6. My video editor was free and the text feature on it was amazingly bad.  Like, stunningly awful.

Technorati Tags: how-to, duck, duck breast, pomegranate, cooking, cooking videos

Jimmy Wales Grows Them Good and Organic

My first evening in Beijing my new friends Fred and Pockey took me to a beautiful restaurant on HouHai Lake in the center of Beijing.  Very pretty at night with the lights on the water.  It was very dark though and we all struggled to read the menus by the light on Fred's cell phone.

So I'm picking out what I want to eat and going through the menu and something stops me in my tracks.  A collision between Web 2.0 and food in my first hours of Beijing.

I look down at the menu and say to Pockey, "Okay, I know my Cantonese is barely passable and my Mandarin is non-existent, but you have got to tell me what 303 is."

She says "What number?"

"Sam ling sam"

She finds it and starts laughing.

It is Stir-fried wikipedia.

So, after much discussion, here is what we think happened.

"Hey I'm making the new menu, what's the english name for those flat crispy mushrooms?"

"Um, there isn't one."

"Well what should I put down here?"

"I don't know, look it up in wikipedia."

"What?"

"Wikipedia!"

Wikipedia with peppers looks like this:

And it is delicious.

So, thanks Jimmy Wales, for adding to the experience.

Update:  Many people asked what the name of the restaurant was.  While I was in China, things were happening so fast that I just didn't notice.  But Pockey was quick to tell me.  She says:

• "South silk road (cha ma gu dao) is the name and its at the (hou hai)"

Another Update: Mr. Codeman38 in the comments to this post directs us to another photo of Wikipedia in Beijing!  Utterly bizarre.

 

Technorati Tags: wikipedia, web 2.0, food, beijing, menus, translation, jimmy wales

Jim's China Tour 2007

On Sunday I leave for about three weeks in China.  I'm going for a conference and a tour of transportation technology facilities and an added seminar, but I'm really going for the food (of course).  I'll try to blog as often as I can.

Here's my itinerary:

Oct 7 - Fly out of Seattle

Oct 8 - 14 - Beijing

Oct 14- 17 - XiAn

Oct 17 - 21 - Hangzhou

Oct 21 - 24 - Shanghai

Oct 24 - Fly back home

Unfortunately, I'm fighting a cold at the moment as well, so it's going to be an interesting flight over.

If you are in any of these cities when I am, let me know!

Technorati Tags: china, intelligent transportation systems, its world congress 2007, its world congress

Scratching the Surface

This evening was the airing of Anthony Bourdain's new Hong Kong visit on his show "No Reservations."  We'd been waiting for it.

He started out the show by declaring it to be a food paradise and said "if you're smart you'll hit the ground running."  Essentially that you could go there and eat non-stop and leave  without being anywhere near finished.

On our last trip to HK, we were there for a little over two weeks.  We ate five meals a day, with only a few exceptions.  Each meal .. very large.  We walked everywhere.  In the end, we gained no weight.

I only slowed down for one day, during which my body told me that binge eating was not appreciated.  I told my body we'd discuss it when we got back to Seattle.

I was glad to see that he hit many places I'd been that were off the beaten path.  Due to the constraints of the length of the show, he wasn't able to hit many of my favorites.  Next time, perhaps he should give us a call.

Anthony missed the outer islands - Lamma and Cheung Chau most notably.  And he missed Bo Toi O (a fishing village not on an outer island), which was pretty much the unexpected highlight of my last trip.

What the episode did capture fairly well is the speed at which Hong Kong comes at you.  It is not a destination for the languid.  At one point, Tony and his food blogger buddy are looking at some food and the woman is yelling at them in Cantonese "I don't want to be on camera, just buy your food!  If you're not going to eat it, don't look at it!"  Fie Dee!  Fie Dee!

That sounds annoying and at times it is.  But it is really Hong Kong.  Undeniable and blatant.

 Whenever I arrive in Hong Kong, I really feel like I'm there.  I really feel like I'm at one of my homes.  It is palpable.  It is tangible.

When I saw it tonight on No Reservations I felt a strange disembodied feeling.  No other show I've seen has made me feel Hong Kong like that.  It was more than a little unsettling.  I feel like I should be able to step outside my door and find myself in Tsim Sha Tsui where I can walk a block and get a late night bowl of mein.  Alas, Ocean Shores, Washington, will not satisfy me tonight.

Technorati Tags: Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations, Hong Kong, Foodie, cantonese food

Jim Benson's Foodie Tour of Seattle - 10.5 Restaurants You Have To Try

Coming to Seattle and wondering where to eat?  I've lived in Seattle for 17 years now and think I've got a pretty good handle on restaurants.  Do you have a friend whom you always call for a restaurant recommendation?  Well, that's me.  About half my social calls are "I'm at this location and hungry, what do I do?"

Forever people have been telling me to start putting more food in my blog, since it's such a part of me.  Well, here it is... the Food in Seattle post.

I've come up with a personal top 10 for Seattle Restaurants.  But I should note that recently Seattle's been on a Food Rampage.  We have great places opening all the time.  I may do a few follow ups of specific restaurant types, but for now, here's my utterly unfocused list.  No Stars given here, they are all fives.

1. Crush

Jason Wilson does incredible things with food.  He and Nicole started Crush a few years ago and we've be fairly regulars.  The food is Northwest Contemporary, always extremely fresh and not horrifically expensive.  The average entree is about $14-16.  My always-favorites are the duck confit tart and the rhubarb martini.  Comfortable, but there are precious few tables (not small, but it ain't Denny's) so you need reservations regardless of the time or day of the week. 

Crush Web Site | 2319 E Madison St Seattle, WA 98112 | (206) 302-7874

2. Monsoon

Just a few blocks from Crush is Monsoon.  Eric Banh and his sister Sophie started Monsoon back when Vivian and I were dating.  Monsoon's food is unclassifiable.  The Banh's Vietnamese roots show through their innovative and inspiring dishes.  Their menu changes all the time, but something that is a mainstay that I try to feed every guest that comes to Seattle is their Cognac Filet Mignon with Oxtail Stock.  It is amazing.  I've decoded the recipe and made it myself several times, but I have not and will never get it right.  This dish alone is a reason to visit Seattle.  

Monsoon Web Site |  615 19th Ave Seattle, WA 98112 | (206) 325-2111

3. Salumi

If you visit Seattle and don't go to Salumi, you have likely missed the best part.  Located in the smallest restaurant space imaginable, Armandino Batali and his crew make some of the most amazing cured meats you will ever put in your mouth.  These aren't just salami's you chew and swallow.  You put them in your mouth and hold them there, letting the flavor penetrate your soul.  You think I'm kidding?  Well, I'm so food-jaded it's kind of sad.  It takes a lot to get me this worked up and Salumi has never disappointed me.  One note, Salumi opens at 11 and there is always a line.  My recommendation is to check out the web site, order ahead over the phone (don't just get sandwiches, make sure you get at least a quarter pound of something to enjoy on its own), and then go pick it up.  If you order on the phone, you can walk around the line.  Then go to a park or back home or to your hotel room and enjoy it there.  Oh, and did I mention they ship worldwide?  I HIGHLY recommend, or even demand, that you try the Mole Salami.  It changed my life. 

Salumi web site | 309 Third Ave South Seattle, WA 98104  | 1 (877) 223 0813 (toll free) | (206) 223 0817 (local or outside the continental US)

4. Bakery Nouveau

About a week after William Leaman opened Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle we were there.  Since Vivian has been looking at opening a chocolate shop, she was out to eat everything chocolate that Seattle could kick out.  The verdict ... William is gooooood.  He has amazing tarts and cakes.  Our favorite is the Praline Cake which is absolutely incredible.

Bakery Nouveau Web Site  | West Seattle at the Alaskan Junction | 4737 California Ave SW Seattle, WA 98116 | 206 923 0534

5. Chiang's Gourmet

You have to go to an old XXX Root Beer place to have the best Chinese food in Seattle.  Chiang's Gourmet is located on the unlikely Lake City Way, a street better known for strip clubs and auto lots.  Chiang's is conveniently located just off I-5 and close to several bus routes - someday it will be only a few blocks from a Light Rail station.  Chiang's smoked Tea Duck is certainly the highpoint of their menu.  But fear not, they'll usually order for you.  You'll suggest your order and they'll say "Oh no, today you want this!"  Always take their suggestions.  Good Chinese food is an art form and requires excellent ingredients and a keen eye for detail.  They always have the eye and will direct you towards the food they have the best ingredients for.  Owned by a wonderful family who is always there and always helpful.

Chiang's Gourmet Doesn't have a Website | 7845 Lake City Way Ne, Seattle |(206) 524-6183

6. Palisade

Palisade is just down the street from our house and we go fairly often in the summer.  They have a nice, but small, deck.  We tend to go right after work and get a nice table overlooking Elliott Bay, Puget Sound, the Elliott Bay Marina (with all the pretty boats), the City of Seattle, West Seattle, and the Olympics.  This is nothing short of the most beautiful view you will find in Seattle.  During their happy hour they have great drinks and appetizers.  I've never been disappointed in either the view or the food.  For me the must try here is the macadamia encrusted brie with the balsamic reduction.

Palisade Web Site | Elliott Bay Marina | 2601 West Marina Place | Seattle, WA 98199 | (206) 285-1000

7. Shiki

I've been going to Ken-san for as long as I can remember now.  If you want to take the plunge, he's the only Fugu guy in Seattle.  But, even though it's not sushi, you have to try their Tonkatsu.  It's huge and it's done in the hottest oil imaginable.  It's perfectly crisp on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside.  Yamamoto Sensei is a wizard with sushi.  If they have live swamp crabs, you have to try those as well.  They're scary, but good.  Some people have remarked that it's a tad expensive, but it's still one of my personal favorites.

Shiki Web Site | 4 W. Roy Street Seattle, WA 98119 | 206.281.1352

8. Saint Germain

You want pain?  Delicious wonderful pain?  The S&M equivalent of good eating?  Go to Saint Germain and get their Mussel Casserole.  It is so rich that you have to have wine with it or you'll drop right at the table.  It is incredible.  I need to go back again and again.  Excellent food, wine and staff.  Saint Germain is the quintessential foodie restaurant.

Saint Germain web site | 2811 A EAST MADISON SEATTLE WA 98112 | 206.323.9800

9. Cafe Besalu

I used to live just up the street from Besalu and would go down at least once a week to get my fill of GINGER BISCUITS.  I really really liked the Ginger Biscuits.  You must eat the Ginger Biscuits.  James Miller makes scary good pastries.  My love of the Ginger biscuit is my own fetish, but you can certainly go crazy on the other things there.  You will love it.  You will be happy.  You will feel it worth the journey.

No web site for these guys | 5909 24th Ave NW Seattle, WA 98107 | (206) 789-1463

10.  Sichuan Bistro

I love the people who own this place.  Again, it's attention to detail that makes good Chinese food.  It ain't a steak that you can slap on and stare it.  These people know finesse.  The two ways to see it are their hand-shaved noodles and their spicy potato dish.  The latter has thinner-than-shoestring potatoes stir fried with peppers.  It's spicy and hot and miraculously crunchy.  The potatoes are amazing and incredibly difficult to do right.  A hole in the wall restaurant par excellance!  I love this pace.

Yelp it! | 212 N 85th St Seattle, WA 98103 | (206) 781-1818

And Believe me even as I write this I'm having trouble separating out another restaurant that I'm going to go ahead and make 10.5.

10.5 663  Bistro

In Seattle's International District. This is a huge place to be called "Bistro".  There is one reason you must try this place ... Pepper Salt Eggplant.  Cooked perfectly, Seasoned perfectly.  Perfect Perfectly.  Pepper Salt Eggplant is very rare.  You must go.  Good food, good prices.

No web site here either | 663 S Weller St  Seattle, WA 98127 | (206) 667-8760

Closing

I'll likely do another top ten sometime soon.  I couldn't even stop at 10 this time.  So, come to Seattle, eat at these restaurants and let me know what you think!

Technorati Tags: restaurants, seattle, chinese, french, vietnamese, food, foodie, reviews

Thrillseeking and the Challenge of Creating Content

A few months ago, Vivian and I went to a family run Chinese restaurant we use to visit nearly weekly around the turn of the century.   The woman said, as she seated us, "We hardly see you two any more."  It was very much like a mother to a son who has been away at college.  Sad and abandoned.

And we felt bad.

So I was pondering why we didn't get to Hing Loon as much as we used to.  The people are still wonderful, the food is very good, and there's plenty of things to order there we can't find anywhere else in Seattle (or at least not done right).

So I mentioned to Vivian that perhaps Foodies were thrillseekers.  And there were so many new restaurants to try, it's almost impossible to be both a Foodie and a regular.

Today, my blogfriend Jason at Webomatica said something in a similar vein about Battlestar Galactica. He says:

This is another episode where I liked many developments, while others felt lacking. I think the bar is raised so high, it’s hard for me to feel satisfied any time an episode is less than awesome.

I had to stop reading there because I do intend to get the DVDs and actually watch everything past the Season 2.0 - which is when I stopped watching.

There has been a rapid increase in quality and quantity of a lot of things lately - restaurants (at least in Seattle), television dramas, software, video games, blogs, etc.  And that's been wonderful.  I've been excitedly going to various restaurants, trying new things, and coming home to try and re-create them in my kitchen or on the grill.

And I've been pondering Hing Loon.  They always had the quality.  They always made me feel welcome.  Yet, they've suffered due to the massive influx of restaurants in Seattle.

It strikes me that this is an issue faced by all content providers today.  Take a look at my blogroll in the right column of this blog.  I have a lot of blogs I follow, but I follow them like "Today I think I shall read Jerry Michalski" and then I read what he's written over the last two weeks or so.  I'm lousy at reading them as they come.

In my blogroll are a lot of people I care about, but there's so much content being generated that I can't possibly read it all as it happens.

This isn't just true for me.  I have over 200 subscribers to my blog, but only about 100 people actually visit the blog site every day and about 60% of those are search traffic.   I know that people save up my posts and then read a bunch at a time.  And my posts are so long that I know most only skim.

But there's always something new.  There's always something else to grab your attention.  And, as Jason notes, with the sheer volume and general increase in quality, it's easy to dismiss something really good because it isn't "awesome".

Ed Vielmetti and I have discussed blog posts that get repeat visits long after posting and ones that get tons of immediate attention.  My Twitter post this week received a lot of attention, but it was all SXSW hype.  In a week it will be forgotten.  However, my post on various Torrent search engines gets regular attention.

I wonder if Hing Loon is like my Torrent post.  Actual value, good quality, and meeting a long standing need.  While my Twitter post is like some of these new delicious yet overproduced restaurants that will tantalize me this week and bore me next week.

Photo: Excellent Hing Loon by Ario

Technorati tags: webomatica, torrent, web 2.0, content, hing loon, twitter, jerry Michalski, ed Vielmetti

Blogged at my house in Seattle with Live Writer

Bourdain's Disdain

There were not a few times when Anthony Bourdain's studied cranky behavior annoyed me.  However, his guest blog entry on Michael Ruhlman's site neatly and rather viciously sums up why my personal viewership of The Food Network has waned over the last few years.

Bourdain is an indignant chef.   He is obviously offended by the devolution of the Food Network from a channel that showed people how to cook well to a channel that plays with its food.  He is even more offended of the treatment of top-tier chefs on the network.

To be fair to the food network, they seem to be trying hard to balance between good cooking shows and the mass-market pointless shows.  Vivian has commented that she is watching more of Emeril now because he's actually migrated to cooking more interesting food and less things to "Bam".

It was a relief to see someone have my reaction to Rachel Ray.  Restaurant owners I know who were featured in her various speed-eating eye-rolling pointless-moaning shows have uniformly had less than favorable reviews of her in person.

But even more than the eye rolling and moaning, what has always totally annoyed me about her shows is the stupid pointless mini-plotlines where she walks in and says to people "Hi, what's good here?"  And her cameras are all in the shop rolling and it's obvious that people have all signed wavers and told what to say.  No one ever says "HOLY CRAP!  IT'S THE CHICK FROM THE WHEAT THINS BOX!  WHAT DO YOU TAKE TO MAKE YOU SO UNIFORMLY PERKY?!"

I mean really, take a look at these two pictures:

I truly believe that chefs exposed to Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels end up feeling like Stephen Colbert's "black friend."

Anyway, the Food Network has migrated alarmingly to these drive around and eat at ten places in a half hour shows.  In a few weeks, my business partner William is coming to my house with his partner Ryan. Vivian and I are teaching them how to cook.  They, like many Americans, are realizing that eating out of a box, while convenient, is highly toxic to both body and soul.

It's a shame The Food Network couldn't have been a better reference.

What do I want to see on The Food Network?  I want to see a nightly show that rotates the chef.  And I want it to be entirely about technique.  I don't want them to make a whole meal.  I want them to make the perfect Hollandaise Sauce.  I want the art of deglazing.  I want dough preparation.  And I want to see the food being prepared.  Close ups!

It's the FOOD Network, after all!

 

Technorati tags: Anthony Bourdain, Food Network, Rachel Ray, Wheat Thins, Cooking, Emeril.Michael Ruhlman, Stephen Colbert, rant, snark

Blogged at The Sainte Claire in San Jose, California Using Windows Live Writer