Pizza has been a large part of my life, as you can tell by my posting history.  Today I don’t want to strictly speak of pizza, but of pizza expectations.

The Rolling Stones once wrote, “You can’t always get what you want.”  And Charles Dickens once wrote, “WTF?  I went to this pizza joint in Andersonville and tried to order a pepperoni pizza and they wouldn’t make it for me.  So much for my great expectations!”  A blessing and a curse, people are curious about this small pizza joint because of an article in a men’s magazine.  That’s it.  Of course, a lot of people just skimmed it, which is, well, quite evident from the behavior of customers I witnessed.

1. If you want a pepperoni pizza, go to Domino’s.

One guy who sits down near my group of friends is threatening to do just that.  He’s incensed.  He read that stupid article in GQ and wants the best pizza in America, damn it!  The staff sighs and points to the chalkboard, where 3 pre-determined pies are available for order.  On a given night (depending on the availability of fresh produce and meat), there is usually a veggie pizza, a meat pizza and a white available to order.  All are $20 plus a pizza.  They don’t make pizza on demand.  The guy gets up with his girlfriend (who is hilariously mortified) and leaves.  The waitress shrugs and tells us it happens at least three times a night at this point.

2. If you want a short wait, go to Pizza Hut

If you go to the Yelp page devoted to Great Lake, most commenters complain about the wait.  Waiting half an hour to forty five minutes for a pizza is, seemingly, forever.  Hmm…why don’t we look at home-made pizza recipes online and see how long they take to cook?  Well, most recipes have a pizza cooking for 20 to 30 minutes.  So, wait.  Because the GQ article predisposes you to the idea that the wait is long, waiting a completely normal amount of time for a pizza to cook is too long?  A freaking Digiorno takes 23 minutes, for christ sake.  You’re here to eat quality food, not a fucking Marie Calendar’s Insta-meal.  Waiting an extra 15-20 minutes never killed anyone.  Unless you’re insane and under the assumption that eating uncooked pizza is great.  Or you eat raw dough.  Weirdo.

3. If you want to make snap judgements

Go to Yelp!  There are millions of them!  In fact, I’m thinking I should start combing the catacombs of the webbernet looking for the worst and most obnoxious Yelp! reviews out there.  You know the ones I’m talking about:

Karen M. – This place sux!!!  My mom’s pizza is SOOOOOOOOOOOO much better.  And the service was trble.  Awful.

WHO GIVES A SHIT?!  You don’t go to a restaurant to eat your mom’s pizza.  And as I will point out in the upcoming weeks, the reason it doesn’t taste like your family meals is because YOU SPENT AT LEAST FIVE YEARS BEING EXPOSED TO THE COOKING IN YOUR HOME.  You build up a natural affinity for your mother/father’s cooking (as long as it doesn’t suck butt), and it tastes specific and wonderful.  It should.  But when you go out to eat at a specialty pizza shop like Great Lake Pizza expecting everything to be traditional and just like home cooking, you should just cut yourself some slack.  Stay home.  Order in from Sarpino’s, they have those trucks and their fliers are everywhere!  Kick back and enjoy your perfectly bland experience as you watch reruns of “Farscape.”

Because heaven forbid that anything is new or different!  You might just have to complain to an online review site and potentially ruin other people’s experiences with completely groundless claims of mediocrity.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Great Lake is a fine pizza establishment with wonderful pizza made with farm-fresh produce and meats.  Just order it for pick up if you’re a pansy and can’t wait a bit.

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Flavor: A little bit of honey, a little bit of peanut and cashew, and a little bit of cardboard.  It somehow manages to taste dry.  It’s as if they are actively trying to make me not like granola.

Texture: Flavor like cardboard, and sadly textured like cardboard.  It crumbled in my mouth, but in a strange manner.  I can imagine eating Styrofoam and getting the same affect.  In fairness, chunks of it were okay.  Thankfully the peanuts actually crunched like nuts.  Otherwise I would assume I’m just eating a spherical NASA-substance meant for astronauts containing nutrients but no actual food.

Appearance: Oh god, SO STRANGE.  I enjoy granola because there are giant glaciers of flavor amidst bits and chunks.  The flotsam and jetsam at the bottom of the bag are part of the deal for me, so it was strange to see this bag full of intact granola glaciers.  I blame this on my own pre-conceived notion of granola, but still, so bizarre.  Kind of looks like an owl pellet sans the bones and feathers.  Appetizing!

Verdict: I’d never buy them, but that’s because I enjoy either home-made or at least hand-made granola.  They should stick to the granola bars, because these nuggets seem like uncooked balled-up versions of the bars yet to be rolled out.  Once again, a simple all-natural food falls prey to mass production’s soul-crushing maw.

Image from the General Mills website, product received through MyBlogSpark.

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Now, what dare I ask are Mega Mighty Bites?

When I consult their wonderful website, I am told there isn’t any Trans Fat in MMB’s.  Also, it’s made of all white chicken.  That great!  You see, according to the commercial, Mega Mighty Bites are:

“Fully cooked all-white-meat-chicken stuffed with four wholesome fillings, such as cheeseburger, pepperoni or cheese pizza.”

So, we know that there is chicken, and not the evil dark chicken of legend.   Beyond that, I don’t know the sodium count, the caloric intake or anything at all in terms of nutritional value.  I hate to split hairs, but if you claim to provide nutritional information and then provide none, I’m going to raise a red flag of, “This product is probably not good for you.”  As far as I know, the chicken is filled with styrofoam and bits of rubber.

Now, let’s wrap our minds around eating a stuffed chicken product.  Good lord.  Imagine eating chicken and pizza simultaneously.  Or, the even more repulsive chicken and cheeseburger combo.  The prospect of that sounds overwhelming, if not completely nausea-inducing.

This is not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional stuffed mushroom or pepper.  Stuffed vegetables are incredible (and usually terrible for you), and a decent turducken would at least be fascinating to consume.  Mega Mighty Bites, however, are not fresh vegetables or meats.  This is a shredded chicken nugget filled with tomato sauce and weird chunks of either beef chuck or pepperoni bits, as well as cheese.  And it is chock full of preservatives and other ungodly acts of nature.  I wish I could defend these Mega Mighty Bites, but I simply have no idea what they’re made of.

This product asks us to imagine a world where Hot Pockets are so yesterday.  It pushes the envelope from “Barely Edible Lazy Fat Food” to “Holy Shit I’m Eating This For Novelty Purposes,” and it does so in stunning fashion.

Perhaps I will expose myself to this bastard of nature soon.  Perhaps I will one day pull a bag (yes, they come in a bag!) of Mega Mighty Bites out of my freezer and use their super catchy slogan, “Three minutes from freezer to face!”

Hopefully, it won’t be my face doing the eating.

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In no way am I calling for a bacon boycott.  I will still consume bacon on a semi-regular basis.

I’m just sick of the saturation.  Bacon in every food imaginable.  Bacon on t-shirts.  Bacon lube.  Bacon alternative fuel.  Bacon-replicas of famous bacon-cities and bacon-landmarks.  Bacon  has made its mark, but something occurred two days ago that made me believe that bacon is over.

Eick gives me coupons for free Taco Bell, so of course my interest is piqued by whatever insane burrito/taqui/nacho creation they are featuring.  In this case, it is the blood pressure escalator New Bacon Cheesy Potato Burrito. Stare at the picture.  Become mesmerized by the weird ground beef.  The strange bacon pieces.  The traditional oozing cheese, sour cream and special sauce exuding from within.

My first bite is awful.  All potato and sour cream.  And with the second bite, I encounter something soggy, wet, and long.  I pull it out of my mouth quickly.  BACON.  Not a neat little bacon crisp as shown in the advertisements, but a terrifying microwaved bit of porkstuff that had not crisped.  It has simply gone limp, like the body of a drowning victim.

Eating an entire Bacon Cheesey Potato Burrito is possible.  One must be intoxicated, and not eating any breakfast or lunch should help.  Otherwise, you’re in a for a horrible state of being – over-full.  You know, that feeling you get after you accidentally eat a foot-long sub even though you promised your girlfriend you’d save the other half for later?  Or you eat five plates of China Buffet King just because?  Any simple task after this act of consumption terrorism is simply impossible.  It’s as if your stomach is holding your body prisoner.  And the bacon……….oh man…

I tried.  I really did.  I wanted to write a point-by-point review of this Bacon Abomination, but my taste buds and stomach told me otherwise.  I felt nauseous from eating this Taco Bell product, which is painful for me to admit.  I’ve stood by Taco Bell for years, espousing it as the greatest late-night fast food option in existence.  Sober or intoxicated, veg or non-veggie, I defended it.

Who cares if the meat has the texture of belly button lint?  Who cares if the special sauce tastes like two week old mayo left out in the sun?  Taco Bell rarely has anything on the menu too insane to try, and…well…

I BLAME BACON!!!

The internet, newsprint and food television have created a perfect storm of bacon.  If you’re a fast food chain without bacon, GOD HELP YOU.  Bloggers won’t blog about you, twitterer’s won’t tweet shit, and people still reading the newspaper will bemoan the crumbling state of newsprint rather than try your bacon-less drivel.

I demand we take back bacon by not mentioning it every five seconds when talking about food.  In ten years time, bacon should then be under-appreciated, and we can all join together and start Bacon Fad 2.0 in 2019.

But for now, thanks to massive over-exposure and Taco Bell, me and bacon won’t be speaking for a while.  If you run into bacon on the street or something, just tell him I meant to call last night.  And yeah, I’ll totally call bacon back tomorrow, it’s just that I lost my phone.  And my facebook password.  Someone poke bacon for me.

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Far be it for me to complain about a free meal, but there is something about a Steakhouse chain restaurant that I don’t trust.  A burger joint?  Sure.  Ice cream?  Count me in.  But Australian steaks, when the only thing that seems to make the place Australian are the embarrassing Crocodile Dundee-sound-alike commercials?  Before I get ahead of myself…

The Gift Card: One would think a 25 dollar gift card would go far, especially in a chain restaurant.  Not in the world of Outback Steakhouse.  It barely covered my part of the meal.  My poor wife-to-be was forced to cover her own end.  That’s what she gets for marrying a blogger.

The Ambience: Dim red lighting, with a little bulb hanging over each table.  A play-off hockey game (yawn) played in the background.  Most of the waiters wore red-and-white striped uniforms with…flare.  The Office Space reference is sad and easy.  But there, I wrote it anyways.

Prices: It’s all kind of expensive.  All of it.  I know it’s a steak house, but let’s be honest.  This is a chain restaurant.  You don’t go to a chain restaurant to murder your wallet.  In my tiny mind, a chain restaurant should offer decent food at an affordable price.  Make sure you’re ready to spend 40-50 dollars if you want to take your loved one to Outback Steakhouse.

The food: We decided to take chances, and now look back and regret that NEITHER of us ordered steak.  Rats.  I order the Ribs and Alice Spring Chicken.  The ribs are fine, but alas, the chicken is suffocating.  A dense, claustrophobic eating experience, it is covered with mushrooms, bacon, cheese and a honey mustard sauce.  Oh yeah, there are Australian fries too.  Good lord.  I eat the ribs and fries first, and then go for the chicken.  What makes it an “Alice Spring Chicken” is beyond me, and not by choice.  They might have put a shoe underneath the toppings and I wouldn’t have been able to tell.  It’s as if Cholestoral has manifested in front of me in the form of a high school bully, who instinctively punches me in the heart and stomach.  The fries are great by the way, especially dipped in the honey mustard sauce.

My poor date orders the filet tenderloin.  Look up filet tenderloin on wikipedia.  Nope.  Nothing there, because it seems to only exist on the menu at Outback Steakhouse.  It is a bastardized version of a beef tenderloin, and it is was interesting to say the least.  My date received a pink piece of meat in a pool of diluted blood.  And that blood?  Soaked up into her garlic mashed potatoes.  I tried a bite.  It tasted like it was once a steak, until someone chewed it up piece by piece.  They then spit all the pieces into a bucket and re-formed the pieces into the shape of a steak, cooked it for a while and served it.  My date likened the experience to eating a damp gym sock that melts in your mouth.  But the potatoes were great!

(picture via Outback.com)

Service: Was great, no hovering,

Overall Outback Steakhouse Fun Rating: 4 out of 10.  Wasn’t awful, wasn’t great.  I didn’t get the feeling this was a family joint (as it is often advertised), as there were more older gentlemen nursing giant containers of Foster’s than family units enjoying Australian delicacies.  Another irksome quality was brought to the fore during our visit: What about this restaurant chain makes it Australian?  Is it the Australian Fries, which are french fries with salt and pepper?  Perhaps the restaurant exists as a cultural high-five, where Americans and Australians look at each other and say, “We have the same eating habits-HEY!  We’re NOT THAT DIFFERENT!” and everyone rejoices while men and women drink giant cans of beer and children devour Flinstone’s-style racks of ribs while Men at Work, Russell Crowe, and Silverchair play “Give Peace a Chance” with Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bob Thorton and Stone Temple Pilots.  Either way the food wasn’t up to snuff that night.  Perhaps next time I’ll order steak.

Speaking of which, will I ever go back to Outback Steakhouse?  Maybe in a year, if you gave me a 70 dollar gift card.

PS – If any of our readers actually LIKE filet tenderloin, please tell me why and where you ate it.  I just need to know why this happened to us.

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(Photo via Dan Perlman)

How do you feel, reader?  Angry?  Hurt?  Kind of fat when you think about how much pizza you’ve consumed?  Well, you’re not alone.  Since the dawn of pizza (or time, whichever came first), people have made it their business to proclaim their regional pizza the greatest in the world of worlds.  A lot of this amounts to pride in their hometown, which isn’t a foreign concept to me.  Growing up in upstate New York, outside of Utica, I ate two kinds of pizzas: circular thin pies and thicker square pies.  I naturally gravitate towards the former, probably because I don’t feel bloated after two slices of the thick pie.

When I lived in NYC, I worked near an amazing shop called Koronet that had GIANT slices for a buck fifty.  That’s not bad when you’re broke as shit out of college.  Now I live in Chicago, and although the allure of a thin slice of pizza exists, it is a dream not made for this reality.  Getting pizza by-the-slice in Chicago is a rare thing.  Not an impossibility.  But people prefer getting a pie, and I can’t say I haven’t conformed my taste to Chicago’s style.

I haven’t been to California yet, but I’m sure I’ll hate their pizza.  Freaking pear on pizza?  If I want pears, I’ll eat a goddamn pear.  If I want pizza, I’ll be as close-minded as I damn well please about it.  Give me meat or veggies on that pizza, preferably both please.  Otherwise, get your terrible Wolfgang Puck-endorsed toppings out of my personal space.

Ah, that felt great.  Now I would like to give So Good readers the chance to do the same.  Vote on your favorite regional pizza, and use the comments to either lambaste someone else’s pizza, trumpet your own pizza’s superiority, or just criticize me!  Fun for all ages!  Also, make sure to watch the results.  I will be insulted if California-style beats Chicago or New York.  California, consider yourself pwned.

NYC Pizza – giant tombstone slabs with a minimal amount of sauce and cheese.  They are giant and cheap, and they usually come by the slice.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza – a true goliath that starts with crust, then finishes with cheese, toppings and sauce in that order.  More of a casserole than pizza to some, heaven to others.

California-Style Pizza – usually akin to NYC pizza, but with hilariously off-beat toppings like pear and Gorgonzola or Mango Tandoori.

Sicilian Pizza – popular in the aforementioned Utica, NY, this pizza has the same cheese-first-sauce-on-top approach of Chicago, although it employs pecorini cheese with anchovies or endives.

New Haven-Style Apizza – weird New England pizza, oh, excuse me: apizza.  That’s not a typo, even though the spell-checker tells me it is.  They call it apizza, and sometimes they don’t even put cheese on it.  SACRILEGE.  It’s essentially NYC-style thin crust, sometimes served with clams.

St. Louis-Style Pizza – yeast-less-thin-crust pizza that is crispy like a cracker, sweet Sicilian-influenced sauce and an interesting choice for cheese: the tangy Provel.  Cut into squares they refer to as “Party Cut.”  Yeah, I’m giggling too.

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Option #1: You have to eat a squishy over-ripe banana every day for the rest of your life.

Option #2: You can never eat anything that could be classified as “dessert” ever again.

Things to consider:  Have you ever brought a banana to work thinking you were so swell?  “Hey, look at me, I try to eat fruit once a day!” you say to yourself.  Your smug feelings are soon replaced by a gag-inducing realization:  YOUR BANANA HAS GONE SOFT.  Like super-soft, to the point, that it is barely able to maintain its banana-form when you peel away its epidermis.  And you have to eat one of theses monstrosities once a day…for the rest of your life.  Now when I say eat, I mean EAT. As in straight on, just the banana. You cannot grind it up into a smoothie, chop it up and put on top of cereal, or slather it in peanut butter. You must eat it all by itself.

Unless you decide to give up dessert.  No more creme brulee? Dah!  It’s terrible just writing that sentence.  And I can’t even put the little accent over the “e” at the end of brulee.  Sad.  For others, this means no more strawberry ice cream.  Or cheese cake.  Or this heart-rending scenario: It’s the end of another brutal day at work, and the only thing you want to do is sit down and watch your favorite episode of Magnum P.I. while clutching a pint of Haagen Daaz.  Only you don’t have that option anymore.  It’s just you and Tom Selleck’s mustache.  Here’s the thing: there is no cheating.  You may say, “Oh Cary, it’s so simple to give up sweets.  No one is that weak.”  What I mean is this: you can’t ever have it, EVER again.  So yes, in the short term it may seem like an easy decision.  But ten years down the road, when you’re still working the same job, and that same episode of Magnum P.I. comes on where Ted Danson’s character is killed by a boat propeller, YOU’LL WANT THAT ICE CREAM.  Trust me.

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Option #1: You can never drink coffee again

Option #2: You can never drink soda again.

Things to consider: A wonderfully legalized drug, caffeine chews you up, spits you out and laughs in your face. You feel great one minute, the next you’re crashing, staring at your computer screen and refreshing the page of your favorite website as you wished you could just pass out in the supply closet. It tastes good (if you find a good shop) and it keeps you regular by golly! Can be incredibly addictive.

Soda is sugar, and if you’re like me you enjoy the added allure of caffeine that Coke, Diet Coke and Mountain Dew among others provide. On a hot summer day, it sometimes doesn’t get any better than an ice cold Coke in a glass bottle. That being said, if you leave a tooth in a glass of Coke for 20 minutes it will dissolve. Can also be incredibly addictive! Fun!

Also, feel free to comment on how you don’t drink coffee and that tea is truly the superior hot caffeinated beverage. You’re just lying to yourself.

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Idea:  Take the Big Three pizza toppings from any NYC pizza-eatery (Parmesan cheese, oregano, red pepper flakes) and combine them in one easy-to-use container.  You now have Pizza Zing! And yes, if you didn’t know what the Big Three Pizza Toppings were, you’ve never eaten New York City pizza.  And if I may go one step further, if you reveal this to a native New Yorker, you will most likely be pelted by shoes.  Beware the truth, it hurts. Like thousands of New York City shoes, raining down from the heavens.

Presentation: It’s essentially a modernized Parmesan cheese container, as it should be.  Its ridiculously bright yellow and red color scheme makes me think about eating pizza, which is strange.  Perhaps this container has a hypnotizing effect? So yeah, bonus points for making me wonder if I’m getting programmed a la Manchurian Candidate.

Favorite Visible Catch-Phrase: FLAVORFUL HEAT!  Oh wow.  LOVING THIS CATCHPHRASE.  Let it roll off your tongue.  Use it as your Facebook status.  Let’s get together and create the new meme: FLAVORFUL HEAT. Just as one can apply Pizza Zing to any food, apply Flavorful Heat to any situation or person. Trust me, this is the new FAIL.

Taste: We made an incredible mistake in ordering a deep dish pizza from Edwardo’s, one of the great Chicago deepdisheries. Myself and my companions applied vigorous amounts of Pizza Zing to the pizza, making sure to fit the word ZING! into the conversation as much as possible. This was fun. However, I would not advise one to apply Pizza Zing to top-of-the-line pizza products. It’s powerful stuff, and the 7 spices completely overwhelm the 2 “hearty” cheeses the bottle advertises.  I mean, throwing red, jalapeno and cayenne pepper into the spice-blend is one thing, but adding in habanero as well? Overkill in my honest opinion, especially for those with an aversion to truly spicy seasoning. Remove the habanero, and lazy people every may indeed rejoice in a spice combo that will aid in pizza-loving.

The Verdict: While spicy and flavorful, Pizza Zing lends itself to the frozen pizza crowd.  On a Tombstone, Digiorno’s or Red Baron, this topping would help kick the flavor up a notch. Will it replace my Frank’s Hot Sauce or Sriracha hot sauce? No, probably not. But if you’re jonesing for those pizza seasonings, and find yourself bereft of a local shop that sells slices, Pizza Zing is right up your ally.

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Premise: Four chefs of varying backgrounds (head, sous, nutritionist, amateur) battle..to not…get chopped.  They create a 3-course meal, and after every course someone get eliminated.  For every  30 minute round, disparate foods and food products are placed in a basket, and the chefs are asked to incorporate all of the items into the course.  The judges then decide whose is terrible and who isn’t.  Whoever doesn’t get chopped wins a smooth 10,000 dollars.  Did you notice how long it took me to explain the premise.  It takes them twice as long to do it on the show.  Woof.

Tagline: “You have been chopped.”  Ugh.  UGH.  At least we don’t get bad punnery with Top Chef.

Ted Allen as host: Sorry, I don’t buy it.  For some reason, he comes off as…well…strange.  While trying to inject some kind of tension into the show, his voice takes on a stern, automaton-like rhythm.  He falls prey to the Food Network Syndrome championing wholesome over interesting.  Sad thing is, I used to really like him on Top Chef and QEFTSG (don’t make me break down that acronym).

Judges: This is where Top Chef and Chopped begin to differ.  For every single episode of Chopped, there is a new panel of celebrity chef judges.  The episode I watched featured chef/internet talking head/Top Chef guest judge Scott Conant, chef Amanda Freitag, and NYC chef Geoffrey Zakarian.  Not a bad cast of characters whatsoever (although I could do without the “I’m listening to myself speak on TV” Conant), but the fact that they are immediately rotated out after this show is disappointing.  Who am I supposed to get to know?  The only thing that draws one to competition-based reality TV are the relationships between viewer and cast.  You’re with these people for weeks, and you feel their pain/experience the joy vicariously.  How else could anyone explain this behavior?

Contestants: This is the kind of show that makes me wonder how many times the show will reference itself.  How many times will a contestant turn to the camera and say, “Only 30 minutes?  This is impossible!”  We know it’s impossible, hence the “challenge” set-up.  Couldn’t the producers/editors find anything compelling?  I heard this twice last night: “I don’t want to be chopped!”  We know, that’s the whole point of the show.  Like the judges, there is little to no connection to these contestants.  You get to know them and *BOOM* they get CHOPPED.  POW!!!  Say goodbye, guy who couldn’t find a way to incorporate bananas with bacon and wontons.  Boo yah guy who put salt in a plum cake instead of sugar (WTF?!)!  Without any kind of formed relationships, this show is just an exercise in sucker-punching.

Baffling Network Incest: When watching my episode of Chopped, I noticed that one of the contestants was Einat Admony.  Which is strange.  Because she was featured on Bobby Flay’s Throwdown recently.  Why is she suddenly back in a contest for 10,000 dollars?  She beat Flay in a Throwdown, so isn’t it a given that she’ll murder her opponents and win the money?  Sounds fishy to me.

Music: Definitely stock material, can’t hold a candle to Top Chef’s drum n’ bass bubble.  Not to say they don’t try to emulate (or even directly copy) the style though.  Any reality competition show on Bravo uses cymbal and percussion strikes to enhance tension.  Once again, Food Network cribs those very flourishes.  Not.  Cool.

The Verdict: F is for FAIL.  The show’s utter lack of originality hurts it.  Making the contestants stand in the back room while the judges confer is just embarrassing.  It follows Top Chef’s formula shot-for-shot at times, and makes me wonder what Food Network’s future holds.  I’ll watch Ace of Cakes and Alton Brown material, but most of their new programming comes off as cloying or a direct rip-off.   It’s been a strange chain: Jacques Pepin and Julia Child begat the Food Network.  The Food Network begat Bravo’s and Travel Channel’s food shows, and now…well, we have Chopped and Ultimate Recipe Showdown.  Chopped just doesn’t measure up.  It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  Chopped is the margerine to Top Chef’s butter.  Alright, that’s about as much terrible retributive word play I can dole out on a given day.

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1. Guy Fieri

Show and Premise: Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  Guy Fieri (pronounced with extra Italian emphasis) showcases awesome eateries all over the U.S.  Great premise.

My Problem: My brother loves this guy, but anyone could do his job.  Here’s an idea: Why don’t we pluck Andy Rooney off of his old person’s couch.  You know, that ancient guy who wears glasses and is SALTY AS FUCK.  Let’s bring him to awesome diners, drive-ins and dives all over the country.  This would make insanely great television.  Who doesn’t want to see an old man muttering and trying to eat giant burgers while trying to suppress his “quiet” racism when forced to eat Mexican food?

Instead, we have a Van’s Warped Tour reject wandering around eating things.  This is considered entertainment.  His food criticism is terrifying.  This is probably the part of the show that makes me want to put my skinny white fist right through screen the most.  “Awesome.”  “Wow.  Wow.”  “This is great.”  “This is awesome.”  Thanks Guy, thank you for your insight.

My Solution: Shoot Guy Fieri out of a canon into outer space.  Replace him with either Rooney or a morbidly obese 14-year-old.

2. Mario Batali

Show and premise: Molto Mario and Iron Chef America.  Alright, I know that the show was canceled in 2004.  But it was done for a reason.  I loves me some Iron Chef, but tend to gravitate towards the classic version with AWFUL voice-over work.

My Problem: Pompous, terrible sense of humor, and the real nail in the coffin: He makes me agree with Mo Rocca.  I hate Mo Rocca, but apparently we both hate the fact that Mario wears Crocs.  I dislike Crocs footwear more than Mario, so it’s a deadly combination.

Let’s not forget his descriptions of food.  When creating a simple lasagna, you get this crammed into your ear-hole: “This is no simple ricotta.  No, this is prepared in the Southern-most tip of a’Italy, where the women were without proper cheese cloths.  In order to separate the curds from the whey, they would…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…Look, I like to learn about regional cooking, but not by a guy so in love with his own voice.  This problem is especially evident in Iron Chef, where it takes him approximately 4/5’s of the show to present his first two dishes.  He’s essentially the David Foster Wallace of cooking with no endearing qualities.

My solution: Put him on a PBS show with the actress-wife of epic fail Coldplay singer Chris Martin.  That way no…oh, they already did.  FANTASTIC.

3. Sandra Lee/Rachael Ray

Show and Premise: Sandra Lee’s Semi-Homemade Cooking/ 30 Minute Whatevs.  Anyone can cook when they don’t have to try!

My problem: Let’s keep this short and sweet.  They don’t want you to try.  They do this under the guise of helping people who don’t have time to cook.  They actively promote laziness.  No, don’t learn the proper technique of cooking!  Get everything pre-made, respect no tradition.  Spit on the memory of Julia Child.  Is this the new American tradition of cooking?  Will mom’s pass these half-assed recipes down through generations?  I shudder at the thought.

My Solution: Shoot them out of canons facing each other.

4. Andrew Zimmern

Show and Premise: Bizarre Foods.  He goes all over the world eating strange food.

My Problem: This show is essentially Fear Factor with no underwater cages.  Zimmern is like a cruel American caricature, a fat, bald, jolly tourist with khaki shorts and salmon golf t-shirts.  His show is an unfortunate victim of reality show over-exposure syndrome.  How many times can I watch an American talking about how weird things are everywhere else?

Also, Andrew, speaking to foreigners isn’t the same as talking to people with hearing aids; LOUD and SLOW is patronizing.  Especially when the show is painfully half-scripted.  Honestly, it’s a less interesting version of Man Vs. Wild with Bear Grylls.  That being said, I would kill to see Andrew Zimmern jump into glacial pools and drink his own urine (less bacteria when it’s fresh, kids)!

My Solution: Never mind.  Just keep sending him out there.  It’s just so embarrassing.

5. Marc Summers

Show and Premise: Unwrapped.  Summers narrates over informative stock footage of candy factories.

My Problem: That he is completely and utterly insane.  His show is like the films you watched in Technology class in Middle School.  Clean, precise, full of boring, boring information.  Oh god.  It’s just so creepy and lifeless.  The only thing besides a Mark Summers voice-over that will make me change the channel faster is Real Housewives of Orange County.  And that should tell you something.

My Solution: Make Mark Summers take a bunch of peyote and wander around in the desert.  That should really make the show interesting.

Dishonorable Mention: Anthony Bourdain

Show and Premise: Eternally hip No Reservations

My Problem: Let’s make it clear that I have no problem with Bourdain The Writer.  He’s great at his craft, and I’ve read one and a half of his books.  However, his show is bizarrely formulaic for being anti-celebrity chef in its scabrous nature.  How his show reads:

1. Tony shows up in city or country.  Comments on how he can/can’t drink/smoke.
2. Tony voices his pre-determined opinion.  He knows it’s going to be great/doubts the locale’s greatness.
3. Tony eats a ton of food, but usually saves his more orgasmic reactions for meat.  Which is understandable (I guess?).
4. Tony gets too drunk/complains about how one of his shoots is boring
5. In the last scene, Tony eats a traditional peasants’ food, and reminds everyone that we’ve lost our way.  Talks about how he is “truly happy,” and how that is a rare thing.

Again, great writer, hilarious guy, show is getting stale like no one’s business.

Hope this sparks some debate.  I left out Bobby Flay because he’d be too easy.

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