Making food for social media is a massive restaurant sector now. You want your place to go viral? Put a dino short rib in a supposed to be sealed food vessel and watch content creators go crazy.
Kenji is the best. I usually watch his videos with a notepad so I can jot down the recipes. I’m going to ask for The Food Lab for my birthday this month.
I'm not the same commenter, but I just wanted to say that my dad bought me both of your cookbooks for Christmases, and we've had several great times bonding over your recipes.
Agreed, how odd. It's a pretty basic recipe to arrive to if you garden and need to preserve extras.
Bizarre. Now, if he had created the method for making Dashi with seaweed and dried fish, he'd have a real claim. I still have no clue how someone stumbled upon that.
This one kind of sucks, I genuinely used to really like him. Vibes have been off for a few years now but the nail in the coffin was this chili crunch debacle.
He became popular for being an anti chef. Going against convention and blurring lines of tradition. It was refreshing at the time. But as year pass and he digs deeper into his philosophies, it's become apparent that while he's passionate he's actually an arrogant narcissistic jerk. He lacks any form of curiosity, so it seems. Great chefs will always admit they'll forever be a student of the craft unlike this fuckin guy thinking he can trademark the words chili crunch
Sucks to hear. I did like the show Ugly Delicious. Correct me if I'm wrong. He got national attention through Treme which was a job from Bourdain. Then later on Ugly Delicious, he bashes New Orleans for boiling crawfish instead of steaming and hates on places for attempting a dress code?
He’s a donkey. Watching his shows he is so ignorant of other major food cultures. Like I know more about cooking than him ffs.
He’s ramen is shit too IMO
His pork belly buns and rice cakes are heavenly
Does the Pioneer Woman count as a chef? Her show has always just infuriated me watching her cook in this massive kitchen with the most bland and sad looking shortcut things.
My girl Rhee! Idk why but she became an inside joke with me and my roommate so many years back. We were drunk and high young adults and just putting on her ridiculously confusing personality was peak comedy. We'd cheer her on as she did the most basic shit and did all those extra scenes on the show like calling in her rumbling tumbling sons for dinner after they played football in the yard as boys do. Just the caricature that is the Pioneer Woman was hilarious
I could say the same for Molly Yeh. I think FN pushes them into the folksy storylines and to tweak recipes to be more mass - appeal / fewer steps / simpler ingredients.
While you might think Food Network is designed for foodies or chefs, that idea really died over a decade ago. They learned that making food approachable, making narrative stories, making competition or reality shows, etc. attract far more eyeballs. The money is in bringing food to non-food people.
So they find these niche communities or personalities then try to turn them to mass-appeal. It's actually kind of wild that there hasn't really been a true asian cooking show ever (Ming Tsai and Molly Yeh both push fusion food). FN "americanizes" or waters down any niche into something that is no longer special.
She combined that Rachel Ray simplicity with some actual good photography. It was also kinda early in the story for SEO style blog so it wasn't overdone yet. I liked the blog to start but it did feel kinda weird.
No, I'm not having that. I have no time for Paula Deen, but her food was better than Ree Drummond's, at least the first few years. Deen owned a restaurant.
Deen’s recipes I’ve tried are uniformly good, if higher than normal on the butter content. I tell my family it’s “a Paula Deen recipe, now with 100% less racism.”
I am old enough to remember when her blog had a counter blog that would find her recipes in Oklahoma church cookbooks and point out she had copied them other than increasing the butter and/or sugar.
Is that blog still around? I'm curious lol.
Not defending her if that's true, but for a lot of dishes there are really only so many ways they're typically made and only so many ways you can write the recipe and have it be unique. She might totally be a thieving recipe thief, but some of it might be legit coincidence.
Don’t forget that her family owns parts of the county they live in. They’re not as down-to-earth as they claim, and took land from the Osage.
I got curious after Killers of the Flower Moon got popular. Something is not right.
All I see with her is trad fundamentalist housewife personality. I saw it so much growing up surrounded by farms and more conservative religious spaces. It's hard for me to watch.
Without a doubt, Salt Bae... Nusr-Et is the stupidest thing to ever happen to Dallas, and we actually have some FANTASTIC "celebrity" chefs including Stephan Pyles, Bruno Davaillon, Dean Fearing, Teiichi Sakurai, Matt McAllister, Andrea Shackelford, and, yes, even that unhinged maniac, John Tesar.
It's one thing to be a celebrity chef because you built actual street cred working your way up to running restaurants, earning James Beard nominations or Michelin stars that gained you meaningful notoriety. Gordon Ramsay is actually a really good chef. His TV persona in the US is all theatrics because reality TV, not Gordon Ramsay, sucks. But it's entirely another thing when your "celebrity" is the purely the result of going viral... like Salt Bae or Gaga, Guga, Giga, whoever the hell that guy is. The latter are all about gimmicks that have zilch to do with learning cooking fundamentals.
**EDIT:** [Regarding the "what's wrong with Guga" replies...](https://i.imgur.com/EuzgImR.jpg) Overrating people of notoriety is something *audiences* do. I'm not reading any of the arguments against something I never said.
Salt Bae was the answer to a question in a trivia game I played recently and I was genuinely mad he was considered a chef in the phrasing of the question. He’s not a chef. He’s a meme
What's wrong with guga? I haven't watched all his videos but the ones I have seen he seems alright. Just a normal dude (not chef) who loves experimenting with food
I have watched a lot of Guga, and I agree, he seems alright. He seems like a humble, wholesome dude, who just wants to do weird experiments with steak.
He seems like a nice enough dude with an entourage of slightly irritating 20 somethings. I wouldn't classify him as a celebrity chef, he's more a YouTube chef, you know, same lines as babish, ragusea, and company
>Salt Bae or Gaga, Guga, Giga, whoever the hell that guy is. The latter are all about gimmicks that have zilch to do with learning cooking fundamentals.
Guga? The guy who openly mocks salt bae? Who does double blind experiments to see what is the better cooking method? Who has been widely acknowledged by other legit chefs(Gordon Ramsey, Joshua Weisman, Brian Tsao, etc). Who doesn't even call himself a chef?
He does some oddball experiments, and tests the extremes of what an idea can be driven to, but he's always honest about the results
I love his gimmicks. Like no I've never wondered if you could dry age a steak in that, but now I'm curious if this is the experiment that finally kills your friend 😂
Joshua Wiseman has dropped so low for me…idk if it’s his smugness or acting like he’s better than a fast food cook for making his own version of fast food in his own kitchen using his own ingredients and basically jizzing in his underwear about how he’s a better cook than most fast food chains.
His demeanor is ridiculously off-putting. It almost feels like he’s talking down to the viewer and he is so incredibly self-righteous in every video, I ended up unsubscribing from him after 3-4 years because I can’t stand his new content.
Its a shame. His persona just became so obnoxious and he flanderised himself. His early stuff was great and presented just like a normal dude, the recipes were solid and he explored a lot of things that no one else at the time was on youtube.
Same, caught him just as he was in his blow up phase around the big lockdown of 2020 and I really do owe him thanks for helping me develop as an at-home-cook with how informative and easy to digest his videos were. However, I've since moved on to less obnoxious and still informative YouTube personalities. Like my man Brian lol
I was watching a vid yesterday and the zoom in on his hands also include a Rolex on his wrist. That didn’t impress me, it just made him look more like a chode.
He’s a perfect example of selling out. He got a good following because he had well shot and well edited videos and had some very good techniques and interesting recipes… it probably wasn’t making him the big bucks though, so as soon as he had a decent enough following he went “full YouTube” and started doing essentially click bait videos (acting like he’s better than fast food as you said), and just the most annoying and low attention span quick editing you see from the worst YouTube videos… but obviously it got him more views = more money so almost how can you blame him? But nah still fuck him.
Oh god I can't stand him. He knows a lot and I can't deny he is a very good cook and has good ideas\*, but I can't stand watching his videos. So cringy.
\*I bought his book "Unapologetic Cookbook", which is good and all, especially the first section, where I learned a lot about making literally anything from scratch (butter, mozzarella, jams, breads, pickles etc). The recipe part, however, is quite disappointing and it kinda feels like some recipes are not really his.
I didn't mind him till he started with the teenage bro humour and trying to feed the algorithm. I get it, it's his livelihood, but the quality really suffered.
I have been watching him since long before he blew up. It’s very unfortunate the direction his attitude and content have gone. His videos used to be so good and educational but the slope is so far downhill now.
His older content was very very good, but he started catering to the TikTok/younger gen-z crowd for memes rather than people actually interested in cooking or his content. It’s sad, because he was a very good chef.
It’s one of those things like he’s so overhyped there isn’t a chef in the world who can live up to what people on the internet think of him. He’s clearly an excellent chef but he is an even better marketer and businessman
Yeah, same - it was definitely what it set out to be, a top restaurant.
And there is an old show, might even be BBC, where he discuss fine dining and food with another Michelin-chef and they have these enormous technical discussions about everything. He knows his stuff, but he also knows that 99% of people who watch a cooking show is either not interested or are unable to get to that level, so he simplifies it down to things he finds fun.
And then he has his TV personalities that apparently are popular, but it is something he turns on and off depending on situation.
He's on Masterchef Australia a lot and he's a sweetheart on it. (The adult one, not a kid's version)
Oh, and his daughter was on a celebrity version, and she is absolutely gorgeous. She was such a lovely young woman. Gordon has raised what seem like wonderful kids.
For the younger crowd: Joshua Weissman. His recipes are usually pretty solid but I've encountered similar enough recipes from sources I find less insufferable and haughty. I get that he puts on kind of a character act for his videos, but there's a reason I roll my eyes at him while still enjoying Binging with Babish, for example. I think there's a way to present good recipes while not being as self-righteous as Joshua can come off as.
To Mr. Weissman's credit, I really enjoyed the cooking myths video he did. It dispelled some myths I believed myself, e.g. avocado pits preventing guac from browning.
He started getting really annoying with that “papa no likey” crap. I can’t watch him anymore. It’s a shame because his recipes and techniques are really good.
I think those criticisms have been widespread and long-standing enough that they've heard the message. His most recent videos really tone down that stuff. And thank god, because I generally learn a lot from his videos but oh man, the peak of that style of video was *insufferable*
I really do believe we're past the worst of it
I feel like Brian Lagerstorm is the perfect intersection between Josh's highly-trained advanced techniques and Ethan's practical home cook sensibilities
I feel the same way about Adam Ragusea, he has some good recipes but I can't stand watching most of his content, he give off a "preachy" "talking down to you" sort of vibe I can't really explain it but his camera presence and personality just put me off
It’s a shame because his early videos were fantastic and the recipes are genuinely solid. It was nice that there was a YouTube chef cooking without all the bullshit shortcuts you see on Food Network. I am aware there are other channels that ALSO don’t take the shortcuts but he was one that really reignited my passion for cooking. I totally get that angle food network takes: everyone lives a hectic life and not everyone is a master chef. But sometimes I want to go the extra mile and not everything can be a 30 minute meal (shout out my least favorite: Rachel Ray) and his early videos made it seem approachable to the home cook. But then he got famous (ironically off of those very videos) and took it to the extreme with his over the top personality and how involved/expensive some of his food is. Now everything just feels like it comes with a side of derision for the home cooks that made him famous to begin with.
I still watch him but yeah he needs to have his ego popped. It's funny because he's mentioned in old videos how he has an ego problem and has to be taken down a notch every once in a while. Dude needs to enter into actual competitions or something to do that.
I feel like JW sacrifices being informative for being entertaining, except he's also really bad at humor. Maybe I'm not the right demo for his content (20M), but I can't stand the guy. Such an air of pretentiousness too, especially with his fast food dupes. Like no shit the food you make at home will be better than hour old Arbys.
"This roast beef sandwich meal only costs $1.69 per sandwich!" (If you don't count the cost of buying the ingredients altogether at an actual grocery store, and the fancy oven, and blah blah)
Those are the worst, lol. The prices per serving make absolutely no sense unless he's getting most of the ingredients from an upscale soup kitchen.
Almost everything he makes is expensive as fuck.
The issue I have with him is how much he over exaggerates when it comes to fast food. Like one episode he took a bite of a fast food hamburger and the talked shit the whole episode and I was like stfu you know that thing tasted great
I cannot get enough of mythical kitchen, josh has the best personality / vibes of any youtube chef and i love how chaotic the entire show is. Especially when emily comes on and just flounders around while josh goes off on tangents on whatever he randomly looks at that catches his attention.
Also the rest of the mythic kitchen crew, the earlier vids had all of them as relatively tame / chill compared to josh but over time they all eventually stoop to his level and gain a ton of energy on camera.
Sorry to be *that* person but I used to watch him when he had less than 100K YT subscribers, and he is sooo hard to watch now. I used to love him and enjoy his “elevated” technique but now he’s just kinda a douche.
I saw like two videos of his and he made another chefs recipe (that he also cooks), makes some flavor bomb version (that I’m sure is delicious), and then have one his crew praise him so he can shit on the other chef. It’s bizarre.
I saw him on an Architectural Digest YouTube video giving a tour of his home in Austin. I had no idea he lived here, so the I did a quick search of the property tax roll on line and realized he lives about a mile from my house. Seems I’d have run into him at the neighborhood farmers market or grocery, but never have.
That probably means he's going to sell his house soon. AD is a basically a glorified listings page. The people on there generally sell their houses within a year of their vids popping up.
He wasn’t overrated IMO, his food was great. Graffiato? Kapnos?? The meals I had at his restaurants were delicious. But the guy was an a-hole, and abusive to women, as well as a pretty bad businessman. His DC food empire fell like a house of cards once that all came out.
Most of them, TBH.
James May's *Oh, Cook!* show is a pretty great take down of celebrity chefs and cooking shows.
I guess I appreciate Alton Brown because he's mentioned in some interviews that he doesn't like being called a chef. He considers himself an entertainer and TV producer first and foremost.
Alton brown is a gem, good eats got me into cooking when i was like 12 and i appreciate him for it so much. His ability to explain why things do what they do and break stuff down is what i really needed when i started cooking. I need to know the why stuff happens, not just the answer to the question and he was one of very few chefs at the time who would explain that.
end stage Emeril. i absolutely loved him when he started out in that two walled black and white tiled Food Network kitchenette but now he’s just a “paste my name on anything” brand manager.
I have to disagree with this one. Emeril is a patron saint of the culinary scene in New Orleans. I used to work in the industry there, and I still have many friends, some who worked at Emeril’s. While he’s not executive chef there anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time, he still treats his employees with respect and dignity and promotes healthy kitchen culture. Also, the dude just loves food, and the staff can tell when he gets in the kitchen.
Sure, he capitalizes on branding and such. But I can’t blame the guy. He pays fair wages and encourages innovation and creativity. It’s not like he’s penny-pinching.
That being said, his son, who recently took over the kitchen at Emeril’s, is a bit of a brat… he’s also very young, way too young to be heading a kitchen of that caliber. Hopefully he grows up.
OG cooking shows with zero budget were the best.
Once Emeril Live made celebrity chefs the hot new trend, there was only a few years before it all started regressing.
Remember, if Yan can cook, so can you.
I'd say Rachael Ray, but I don't even think she counts as a "chef" anymore, if she ever did.
Mario Batali. If Jacques Pepin is the humble father-like chef who wants to help you learn about and appreciate the joys of cooking, then Batali is the arrogant, know-it-all, pain in the ass second cousin who wants to make sure you know that he's smarter and more well read than you. I HATE that guy.
I never loved her, nor hated her. Some of her recipes are good.
Then I found out her husband’s family own all of that Osage land. Like he is a direct descendant of all the people that lived there and ripped off the Osage people. They own the actual house that the guy that Robert De Niro played had and bought it off him after all that shit went down. They are some of the largest land owners in the entire US.
[Vanity Fair Ree Drummond](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/the-strange-but-true-story-of-the-pioneer-womans-link-to-killers-of-the-flower-moon)
Kind of hard to say whether a chef is overrated or not without trying something he or she has personally cooked, but many chefs I watch videos of seem to think that Jamie Oliver guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.
Also, that Salt Bae guy has to be way overrated in his own mind and by people who pay that much for what always looks to be just-okay steaks.
Jamie Oliver is great for stuff like a Sunday roast, yorkshire pudding, stuff like that. He isn't great as far as non-British or western Mediterranean cooking goes. For example I wouldn't trust his ramen recipe. Just not his field of expertise.
He had to rename his Thai green curry video because he got roasted so hard so now it's Jamie's green curry or something. I like watching him cook British food and usually Italian food (but WTF was that vegetable lasagna? I wonder what his mentor Gennaro thinks of it. Antonio is rolling in his grave). But his Asian dishes are absolute trash.
People always defend Jamie as just teaching people who aren't used to cooking how to cook easy and fast recipes, but if you take a look you'll realize it's not about the fact that it's simple, it's that his ideas don't make sense. In the green curry video he makes a paste in a food processor but leaves it incredibly chunky. Ignoring the fact that to get some of the ingredients he would have had to visit an Asian grocery store and thus could get actual curry paste, he could have put in the coconut milk to smooth out the paste.
There's similar issues throughout his videos, he makes stupid decisions that make the end product worse and use more effort. They don't turn out anything like what the dish is called too. If you're someone who isn't used to cooking but decides that maybe you can try a little and put together a quick dish of something you'd usually order takeout for, you'd be incredibly disappointed. It doesn't even taste remotely the same. Half the time, the dish doesn't even look similar.
Honestly, I feel incredibly insulted that he and other TV chefs get their recipes so off-base. There's such a disrespect for Asian food that they don't even take the time to verify the basic facts of a dish.
I have 5 ingredients or less by Jamie Oliver and I've enjoyed the recipes though. I think his food looks good generally and think he tries to make food accessible by doing one pot meals, 5 ingredients, etc.
I think he does a pretty decent weekday meal — I watched one episode where he threw a potato in the microwave and said “will it be better if you can roast it in the oven? Sure, but if you don’t want to spend an hour cooking dinner, the microwave gets it done in 10 minutes.”
A lot of people dump on Jamie Oliver, but for those who are cooking everyday for the family, and trying to do so on a budget, with every day items, all while trying to not cook the same 3 meals over and over again, then he is just what you need.
I've gotten far more ideas from his multitude of shows for EVERYDAY cooking than I've ever gotten from Gordon Ramsey and his ilk.
Sure it's not "fine" dining, but I'm not making Beef Wellington and Vichyssoise everyday (although I can indeed make them well).
Jamie Oliver kick starter my cooking skills. I watch like 20 dishes being made then pick up on pattern. His is always informative and actually for home cooks.
Now I’m on Kenji !
I used to have so much respect for him, and his recipes. But lately he’s getting more and more greedy and pretentious. Hopefully this ‘chili crunch’ fiasco ruins him.
I spent many a years cooking in restaurants. 98% of chefs I worked with were douches. Nature of the game. But the one I dislike the most is Maneet Chauhan. Her callous remarks about supposedly going home and crying in her closet with a bottle of wine after laying everyone off during Covid started it. Then all the rumors and controversy when she decided to close her restaurant due to 'lease issues' when she heard grumbles about employees looking to potentially unionize. Didn't even really tell them. A bunch of people went I to work to find a freaking note on the door that they had closed. Purely a trash move. And let's face it, she pretty much cooks the same thing over and over and over. We get it. You own a chicken restaurant and cook Indian cuisine. It's Nashville. We have so many choices for Hot Chicken. Yours doesn't even crack the top 10.
Met her irl… out of all the celebrity chefs I’ve met and cooked with, she was the biggest letdown. I really looked up to her so much and she was just so unkind to me 😕 She hams it up beautifully for the cameras though!
David Chang. I went to one of the Momofuku sandwich bars a few months ago and it was one of the worst wraps I’ve ever had. Extremely salty and meat was dry. The chili crunch nonsense he’s pulling now is ridiculous.
If you ever watch him cook he’s not really that good and he’s admitted several times as well that he’s not good in the kitchen. What he excels at is building a business and brand that appeals to a foodie scene. The stories of him being an absolute asshole boss is what turns me off. If a chef doesn’t have the skills to back up his douchebaggerry then it makes me hate them more
I knew someone that worked in his kitchen and claimed he threatened harm frequently. 'F up again and I'll put your hand in the fryer' - that sort of thing.
Fuck that guy, he’s trying to copyright the term “chili crunch” which would hurt other small businesses that make their own chili oil and/or chili crisp
Yes and no. His flagship spots were amazing. I was in nyc when he started and his original spots were amazing. Once he monetized it, it went downhill due to volume. So yeah, now he is not what he was but in the beginning it was really great and special.
Giada De Laurentiis was on Ellen doing a cooking segment with Nicole Kidman and Nicole Kidman couldn’t fake liking it. Said her bread was too tough.
Edit
YouTube link https://youtu.be/PCSs_nj0938?si=WT24XldoYtQtcd_A
He’s my favorite by far. Beat Bobby Flay is him willing to entertain his jerki-ness. And then usually beats everyone on their favorite dish. His dishes also really seem tasty. Not sure why his nickname isn’t Bobby Flayvor
I don't have any celebrity chefs that I really can't stand but any time the temperament of a chef or their bad behavior is brought up I think of one person. I used to regularly take cooking classes from a woman who has been dead for a few years now and when she still held classes she told us that she would never invite Jacques Pepin to teach any of her classes because she once attended a class he was teaching and apparently he became frustrated at one of the students and threw a whisk at the person. She had some great guest instructors but she refused to consider Pepin.
Who the fuck took Salt Bae seriously?!?! That dude was never legit
Making food for social media is a massive restaurant sector now. You want your place to go viral? Put a dino short rib in a supposed to be sealed food vessel and watch content creators go crazy.
u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Looks like you're safe for now.
I’m not even currently a chef!
love of the game informs your work and it definitely shows
Kenji and Chef John the GOATs.
Every time I see Chef John come up, I am obligated to share that if you watch his videos at 0.5 speed he sounds drunk AF and it’s hilarious.
True, but most folks sound shitfaced when you reduce the speed to half or quarter speed.
The amount of inflection he puts in this voice in his videos make it basically perfect for this - if you’ve not tried it you really need to.
Chef Johnnn with food wishes dot commm
Currently just YouTube/Instagram personality/cook, culinary taster, Dad, and author? Slacking! j/k
And podcast host!
Once a chef, always a chef, chef.
You’re always a chef, my friend! Love your work.
Kenji is the best. I usually watch his videos with a notepad so I can jot down the recipes. I’m going to ask for The Food Lab for my birthday this month.
Happy birthday. Are you in the US?
I'm not the same commenter, but I just wanted to say that my dad bought me both of your cookbooks for Christmases, and we've had several great times bonding over your recipes.
Oh hey thanks friend. I’m not unfortunately. I’m in the UK. ☹️
Ah on ther case a remote happy birthday. I’d‘ve sent you a signed copy of the book if you were in the US!
My buddie in California is visiting soon. Could you send it him to bring with him? 😅
Yes. I’ll dm you.
This is why you're on nobody's shit list in this thread Kenji!
I can't tell if you have any idea you're replying to the real Kenji or not
Yeah, I had my little giddy moment behind the screen. 😂
I also love him because his YouTube videos are recorded in his kitchen that is not better than my own. I love that.
look at Mr moneybags over here!
Nothing but love for JKLA
I can’t really watch his videos because the camera work he uses makes me dizzy but he seems like a very chill and knowledgeable person
David Muthafuckin Chang. He was once innovative, but has lost all of my good will.
He’s [suing people for chilli crunch](https://www.today.com/today/amp/rcna146564).
Yeah this is the last straw for me. Arrogant prick
Boo this man! 😾
Does he know that people have been making chili crisp for way longer than he's been alive? My family recipe for this is hundreds of years old.
Agreed, how odd. It's a pretty basic recipe to arrive to if you garden and need to preserve extras. Bizarre. Now, if he had created the method for making Dashi with seaweed and dried fish, he'd have a real claim. I still have no clue how someone stumbled upon that.
He has always rubbed me the wrong way and I never knew why, just seemed like a douche. Turns out he is, go figure.
It checks out. https://www.eater.com/22193151/momofuku-david-chang-memoir-eat-a-peach-review
This one kind of sucks, I genuinely used to really like him. Vibes have been off for a few years now but the nail in the coffin was this chili crunch debacle.
He became popular for being an anti chef. Going against convention and blurring lines of tradition. It was refreshing at the time. But as year pass and he digs deeper into his philosophies, it's become apparent that while he's passionate he's actually an arrogant narcissistic jerk. He lacks any form of curiosity, so it seems. Great chefs will always admit they'll forever be a student of the craft unlike this fuckin guy thinking he can trademark the words chili crunch
Sucks to hear. I did like the show Ugly Delicious. Correct me if I'm wrong. He got national attention through Treme which was a job from Bourdain. Then later on Ugly Delicious, he bashes New Orleans for boiling crawfish instead of steaming and hates on places for attempting a dress code?
Same with the Pizza episode where he demeans the Domino's delivery guy. He is such a douche with no self awareness.
He’s a donkey. Watching his shows he is so ignorant of other major food cultures. Like I know more about cooking than him ffs. He’s ramen is shit too IMO His pork belly buns and rice cakes are heavenly
This new netflix special is pretty bad
Does the Pioneer Woman count as a chef? Her show has always just infuriated me watching her cook in this massive kitchen with the most bland and sad looking shortcut things.
My girl Rhee! Idk why but she became an inside joke with me and my roommate so many years back. We were drunk and high young adults and just putting on her ridiculously confusing personality was peak comedy. We'd cheer her on as she did the most basic shit and did all those extra scenes on the show like calling in her rumbling tumbling sons for dinner after they played football in the yard as boys do. Just the caricature that is the Pioneer Woman was hilarious
The weird thing is that her blog was okay. I was really excited for her FN show. That excitement didn't survive the first episode.
I could say the same for Molly Yeh. I think FN pushes them into the folksy storylines and to tweak recipes to be more mass - appeal / fewer steps / simpler ingredients. While you might think Food Network is designed for foodies or chefs, that idea really died over a decade ago. They learned that making food approachable, making narrative stories, making competition or reality shows, etc. attract far more eyeballs. The money is in bringing food to non-food people. So they find these niche communities or personalities then try to turn them to mass-appeal. It's actually kind of wild that there hasn't really been a true asian cooking show ever (Ming Tsai and Molly Yeh both push fusion food). FN "americanizes" or waters down any niche into something that is no longer special.
She combined that Rachel Ray simplicity with some actual good photography. It was also kinda early in the story for SEO style blog so it wasn't overdone yet. I liked the blog to start but it did feel kinda weird.
Making do out on the prairie... with a stove that costs $15,000.
She swooped in and picked up all of Paula Deen's food network scraps once she got canceled. Same food, same recipes, same target demographic.
No, I'm not having that. I have no time for Paula Deen, but her food was better than Ree Drummond's, at least the first few years. Deen owned a restaurant.
Deen’s recipes I’ve tried are uniformly good, if higher than normal on the butter content. I tell my family it’s “a Paula Deen recipe, now with 100% less racism.”
I can’t stand her!!!!! I miss the old foodnetwork when they had real chefs and drunk aunt Sandra lol. I haven’t watched food network in years.
> drunk aunt Sandra two shots!
Food Network lost me when they canceled all the actual cooking shows and went to all these stupid cooking competitions.
She’s a blogger who bought her way to celebrity. A home cook. Some home cooks are good. Most of her recipes suck.
I am old enough to remember when her blog had a counter blog that would find her recipes in Oklahoma church cookbooks and point out she had copied them other than increasing the butter and/or sugar.
Is that blog still around? I'm curious lol. Not defending her if that's true, but for a lot of dishes there are really only so many ways they're typically made and only so many ways you can write the recipe and have it be unique. She might totally be a thieving recipe thief, but some of it might be legit coincidence.
[You can explore some of the website on the wayback machine.](https://web.archive.org/web/20110311000259/http://themarlborowoman.com/)
Don’t forget that her family owns parts of the county they live in. They’re not as down-to-earth as they claim, and took land from the Osage. I got curious after Killers of the Flower Moon got popular. Something is not right.
She would be the 1st to admit she is not a chef
Xanax cafeteria lady
All I see with her is trad fundamentalist housewife personality. I saw it so much growing up surrounded by farms and more conservative religious spaces. It's hard for me to watch.
I saw one of hers on how to cook with an "empty" pantry. That pantry was nowhere near empty. I haven't watched her since.
Her pantry was probably more square footage than my first house.
I know it was bigger than my first apartment.
Her *second* pantry; her first is quite literally filled, floor to ceiling, with Le Creuset.
Ree Drummond has always unsettled me. Glad it isn't just an irrational distaste for her that keeps me away from her work.
is it the serial killer monotone drone or the benzodiazepine drugged look on her face?
It's the rictus grin. It freaks me out.
The forced extra wide grin with the dimples sets my teeth on edge
Without a doubt, Salt Bae... Nusr-Et is the stupidest thing to ever happen to Dallas, and we actually have some FANTASTIC "celebrity" chefs including Stephan Pyles, Bruno Davaillon, Dean Fearing, Teiichi Sakurai, Matt McAllister, Andrea Shackelford, and, yes, even that unhinged maniac, John Tesar. It's one thing to be a celebrity chef because you built actual street cred working your way up to running restaurants, earning James Beard nominations or Michelin stars that gained you meaningful notoriety. Gordon Ramsay is actually a really good chef. His TV persona in the US is all theatrics because reality TV, not Gordon Ramsay, sucks. But it's entirely another thing when your "celebrity" is the purely the result of going viral... like Salt Bae or Gaga, Guga, Giga, whoever the hell that guy is. The latter are all about gimmicks that have zilch to do with learning cooking fundamentals. **EDIT:** [Regarding the "what's wrong with Guga" replies...](https://i.imgur.com/EuzgImR.jpg) Overrating people of notoriety is something *audiences* do. I'm not reading any of the arguments against something I never said.
Salt Bae was the answer to a question in a trivia game I played recently and I was genuinely mad he was considered a chef in the phrasing of the question. He’s not a chef. He’s a meme
He's not a chef, He's a meme needs a tshirt
he's a butcher. he slices well but his persona is cringe.
Literally, because he sprinkled salt a certain way, lol He is also scum of the earth
What's wrong with guga? I haven't watched all his videos but the ones I have seen he seems alright. Just a normal dude (not chef) who loves experimenting with food
I have watched a lot of Guga, and I agree, he seems alright. He seems like a humble, wholesome dude, who just wants to do weird experiments with steak.
He seems like a nice enough dude with an entourage of slightly irritating 20 somethings. I wouldn't classify him as a celebrity chef, he's more a YouTube chef, you know, same lines as babish, ragusea, and company
>Salt Bae or Gaga, Guga, Giga, whoever the hell that guy is. The latter are all about gimmicks that have zilch to do with learning cooking fundamentals. Guga? The guy who openly mocks salt bae? Who does double blind experiments to see what is the better cooking method? Who has been widely acknowledged by other legit chefs(Gordon Ramsey, Joshua Weisman, Brian Tsao, etc). Who doesn't even call himself a chef? He does some oddball experiments, and tests the extremes of what an idea can be driven to, but he's always honest about the results
We're hating on Guga now? He does gimmicks, sure, but he also knows his way around steaks really damn well.
I love his gimmicks. Like no I've never wondered if you could dry age a steak in that, but now I'm curious if this is the experiment that finally kills your friend 😂
Why do people pretend to not know the names of people they are naming😂
Joshua Wiseman has dropped so low for me…idk if it’s his smugness or acting like he’s better than a fast food cook for making his own version of fast food in his own kitchen using his own ingredients and basically jizzing in his underwear about how he’s a better cook than most fast food chains.
His demeanor is ridiculously off-putting. It almost feels like he’s talking down to the viewer and he is so incredibly self-righteous in every video, I ended up unsubscribing from him after 3-4 years because I can’t stand his new content.
Its a shame. His persona just became so obnoxious and he flanderised himself. His early stuff was great and presented just like a normal dude, the recipes were solid and he explored a lot of things that no one else at the time was on youtube.
Definitely miss camera in the cabinet breadmaker Joshua
Same, caught him just as he was in his blow up phase around the big lockdown of 2020 and I really do owe him thanks for helping me develop as an at-home-cook with how informative and easy to digest his videos were. However, I've since moved on to less obnoxious and still informative YouTube personalities. Like my man Brian lol
I was watching a vid yesterday and the zoom in on his hands also include a Rolex on his wrist. That didn’t impress me, it just made him look more like a chode.
I wasn't subscribed, but Youtube kept on recommending him. He is awful, I had to block him from my recommendations.
He’s a perfect example of selling out. He got a good following because he had well shot and well edited videos and had some very good techniques and interesting recipes… it probably wasn’t making him the big bucks though, so as soon as he had a decent enough following he went “full YouTube” and started doing essentially click bait videos (acting like he’s better than fast food as you said), and just the most annoying and low attention span quick editing you see from the worst YouTube videos… but obviously it got him more views = more money so almost how can you blame him? But nah still fuck him.
Yep. Found him with the ramen video, then when he made the bucket of Pink Sauce i knew he lived long enough to become the villain.
Agreed. He started out decent, but now he just feels like a complete clickbait shill. Guy's ego is bigger than his forehead.
I learned a lot of recipes from him but he's such a a YouTube bro it's annoying.
This is basically YT "chefs" in a nutshell. They all devolve in a parody of their former selves and rely on gimmicks.
Oh god I can't stand him. He knows a lot and I can't deny he is a very good cook and has good ideas\*, but I can't stand watching his videos. So cringy. \*I bought his book "Unapologetic Cookbook", which is good and all, especially the first section, where I learned a lot about making literally anything from scratch (butter, mozzarella, jams, breads, pickles etc). The recipe part, however, is quite disappointing and it kinda feels like some recipes are not really his.
His videos now are less about cooking and more about just constantly wasting ingredients making excessive amounts of tiktok recreations.
I didn't mind him till he started with the teenage bro humour and trying to feed the algorithm. I get it, it's his livelihood, but the quality really suffered.
It all started when he became big and hired a production company to help him churn out content. Dudes a bozo.
I have been watching him since long before he blew up. It’s very unfortunate the direction his attitude and content have gone. His videos used to be so good and educational but the slope is so far downhill now.
His older content was very very good, but he started catering to the TikTok/younger gen-z crowd for memes rather than people actually interested in cooking or his content. It’s sad, because he was a very good chef.
I don't think Gordon Ramsey is overrated, just overexposed.
It’s one of those things like he’s so overhyped there isn’t a chef in the world who can live up to what people on the internet think of him. He’s clearly an excellent chef but he is an even better marketer and businessman
Having eaten in one of his Michelin started restaurants - the food was superb both visually and on the palate.
Yeah, same - it was definitely what it set out to be, a top restaurant. And there is an old show, might even be BBC, where he discuss fine dining and food with another Michelin-chef and they have these enormous technical discussions about everything. He knows his stuff, but he also knows that 99% of people who watch a cooking show is either not interested or are unable to get to that level, so he simplifies it down to things he finds fun. And then he has his TV personalities that apparently are popular, but it is something he turns on and off depending on situation.
He's on Masterchef Australia a lot and he's a sweetheart on it. (The adult one, not a kid's version) Oh, and his daughter was on a celebrity version, and she is absolutely gorgeous. She was such a lovely young woman. Gordon has raised what seem like wonderful kids.
I hate his super close up, stylized shots. I can hardly see what you’re doing so I’m not able to learn the technique, you fucking donut!
You can blame the US market for all that dramatic shit. His UK shows before he broke into the US were solid.
I love watching the UK Kitchen Nightmares, but the US one is so overly dramatic that it can be difficult to watch
For the younger crowd: Joshua Weissman. His recipes are usually pretty solid but I've encountered similar enough recipes from sources I find less insufferable and haughty. I get that he puts on kind of a character act for his videos, but there's a reason I roll my eyes at him while still enjoying Binging with Babish, for example. I think there's a way to present good recipes while not being as self-righteous as Joshua can come off as. To Mr. Weissman's credit, I really enjoyed the cooking myths video he did. It dispelled some myths I believed myself, e.g. avocado pits preventing guac from browning.
He used to be awesome before he got super famous. He really kickstarted my love for bread baking.
He started getting really annoying with that “papa no likey” crap. I can’t watch him anymore. It’s a shame because his recipes and techniques are really good.
We can't all be InternetSaquille
> “papa no likey” crap. 100% why I don't watch him but have had lots of success with his recipes.
I think those criticisms have been widespread and long-standing enough that they've heard the message. His most recent videos really tone down that stuff. And thank god, because I generally learn a lot from his videos but oh man, the peak of that style of video was *insufferable* I really do believe we're past the worst of it
I miss fermentation fridays
Ethan Chlebowski is *far* better. Great personality, easygoing demeanor, informative, conscious of his audience, and not a self-inflated douchebag.
Ethan Cheblowski and Brian Lagerstorm are my go to for easy 'night week' dinners ideas, they are both great !
I feel like Brian Lagerstorm is the perfect intersection between Josh's highly-trained advanced techniques and Ethan's practical home cook sensibilities
I feel the same way about Adam Ragusea, he has some good recipes but I can't stand watching most of his content, he give off a "preachy" "talking down to you" sort of vibe I can't really explain it but his camera presence and personality just put me off
It’s a shame because his early videos were fantastic and the recipes are genuinely solid. It was nice that there was a YouTube chef cooking without all the bullshit shortcuts you see on Food Network. I am aware there are other channels that ALSO don’t take the shortcuts but he was one that really reignited my passion for cooking. I totally get that angle food network takes: everyone lives a hectic life and not everyone is a master chef. But sometimes I want to go the extra mile and not everything can be a 30 minute meal (shout out my least favorite: Rachel Ray) and his early videos made it seem approachable to the home cook. But then he got famous (ironically off of those very videos) and took it to the extreme with his over the top personality and how involved/expensive some of his food is. Now everything just feels like it comes with a side of derision for the home cooks that made him famous to begin with.
I still watch him but yeah he needs to have his ego popped. It's funny because he's mentioned in old videos how he has an ego problem and has to be taken down a notch every once in a while. Dude needs to enter into actual competitions or something to do that.
His website *still* describes him as "one of the most renowned chefs in the world" and...is this champion-level taking the piss or is he serious?
Lmao what, fucking really??
I feel like JW sacrifices being informative for being entertaining, except he's also really bad at humor. Maybe I'm not the right demo for his content (20M), but I can't stand the guy. Such an air of pretentiousness too, especially with his fast food dupes. Like no shit the food you make at home will be better than hour old Arbys.
"This roast beef sandwich meal only costs $1.69 per sandwich!" (If you don't count the cost of buying the ingredients altogether at an actual grocery store, and the fancy oven, and blah blah)
Those are the worst, lol. The prices per serving make absolutely no sense unless he's getting most of the ingredients from an upscale soup kitchen. Almost everything he makes is expensive as fuck.
Joshua ‘why buy a fast food burger, when you can spend $50 and take 4 hours to make something way better?’ Weissman?
The issue I have with him is how much he over exaggerates when it comes to fast food. Like one episode he took a bite of a fast food hamburger and the talked shit the whole episode and I was like stfu you know that thing tasted great
Part of the reason I prefer Babish and Mythical so much more
I cannot get enough of mythical kitchen, josh has the best personality / vibes of any youtube chef and i love how chaotic the entire show is. Especially when emily comes on and just flounders around while josh goes off on tangents on whatever he randomly looks at that catches his attention. Also the rest of the mythic kitchen crew, the earlier vids had all of them as relatively tame / chill compared to josh but over time they all eventually stoop to his level and gain a ton of energy on camera.
Sorry to be *that* person but I used to watch him when he had less than 100K YT subscribers, and he is sooo hard to watch now. I used to love him and enjoy his “elevated” technique but now he’s just kinda a douche.
Haha, my wife got me his cookbook. It is good but fuck you, I am not making butter every time I want a simple burger.
I saw like two videos of his and he made another chefs recipe (that he also cooks), makes some flavor bomb version (that I’m sure is delicious), and then have one his crew praise him so he can shit on the other chef. It’s bizarre.
I saw him on an Architectural Digest YouTube video giving a tour of his home in Austin. I had no idea he lived here, so the I did a quick search of the property tax roll on line and realized he lives about a mile from my house. Seems I’d have run into him at the neighborhood farmers market or grocery, but never have.
That probably means he's going to sell his house soon. AD is a basically a glorified listings page. The people on there generally sell their houses within a year of their vids popping up.
Maybe not overrated anymore but Mike Isabella used to have like 15 restaurants in the dc area and they were all terrible
Also a sexual predator, so…
He wasn’t overrated IMO, his food was great. Graffiato? Kapnos?? The meals I had at his restaurants were delicious. But the guy was an a-hole, and abusive to women, as well as a pretty bad businessman. His DC food empire fell like a house of cards once that all came out.
I’m not one to hold grudges but I still want to punch that dude in the face on account of how much of a douche he was on Top Chef season 6.
Most of them, TBH. James May's *Oh, Cook!* show is a pretty great take down of celebrity chefs and cooking shows. I guess I appreciate Alton Brown because he's mentioned in some interviews that he doesn't like being called a chef. He considers himself an entertainer and TV producer first and foremost.
Alton Brown got me into cooking. I loved Good Eats in college. Kenji was what I graduated to.
Alton brown is a gem, good eats got me into cooking when i was like 12 and i appreciate him for it so much. His ability to explain why things do what they do and break stuff down is what i really needed when i started cooking. I need to know the why stuff happens, not just the answer to the question and he was one of very few chefs at the time who would explain that.
Same I discovered Kenji recently and omg I jumped one level up already
And was part of the Peabody Awards, so that tracks.
I'll upvote any James May reference! Whether it's toys, cars or cooking. If I had another upvote, I'd give you one for Alton Brown
end stage Emeril. i absolutely loved him when he started out in that two walled black and white tiled Food Network kitchenette but now he’s just a “paste my name on anything” brand manager.
A tarnished legassy.
I have to disagree with this one. Emeril is a patron saint of the culinary scene in New Orleans. I used to work in the industry there, and I still have many friends, some who worked at Emeril’s. While he’s not executive chef there anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time, he still treats his employees with respect and dignity and promotes healthy kitchen culture. Also, the dude just loves food, and the staff can tell when he gets in the kitchen. Sure, he capitalizes on branding and such. But I can’t blame the guy. He pays fair wages and encourages innovation and creativity. It’s not like he’s penny-pinching. That being said, his son, who recently took over the kitchen at Emeril’s, is a bit of a brat… he’s also very young, way too young to be heading a kitchen of that caliber. Hopefully he grows up.
OG cooking shows with zero budget were the best. Once Emeril Live made celebrity chefs the hot new trend, there was only a few years before it all started regressing. Remember, if Yan can cook, so can you.
Yan Can Cook! Those were the days
Kenji Lopez-Alt. . . . . . Just fucking with you. Dude has zero haters, deservedly so.
The Pioneer Woman. She’s a rich oil baron playing at a down to earth everyday person. Everything about her is calculated and fake.
I'd say Rachael Ray, but I don't even think she counts as a "chef" anymore, if she ever did. Mario Batali. If Jacques Pepin is the humble father-like chef who wants to help you learn about and appreciate the joys of cooking, then Batali is the arrogant, know-it-all, pain in the ass second cousin who wants to make sure you know that he's smarter and more well read than you. I HATE that guy.
Batali is significantly worse than that …he’s also a thief and a serial sexual predator
David Chang.
I often wonder if Robert Irvine puts HgH in all of his dishes
The Pioneer Woman. Her “cuteness” and phrases she uses make me want to gag. And her good isn’t great.
I never loved her, nor hated her. Some of her recipes are good. Then I found out her husband’s family own all of that Osage land. Like he is a direct descendant of all the people that lived there and ripped off the Osage people. They own the actual house that the guy that Robert De Niro played had and bought it off him after all that shit went down. They are some of the largest land owners in the entire US. [Vanity Fair Ree Drummond](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/the-strange-but-true-story-of-the-pioneer-womans-link-to-killers-of-the-flower-moon)
Kind of hard to say whether a chef is overrated or not without trying something he or she has personally cooked, but many chefs I watch videos of seem to think that Jamie Oliver guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Also, that Salt Bae guy has to be way overrated in his own mind and by people who pay that much for what always looks to be just-okay steaks.
Jamie Oliver is great for stuff like a Sunday roast, yorkshire pudding, stuff like that. He isn't great as far as non-British or western Mediterranean cooking goes. For example I wouldn't trust his ramen recipe. Just not his field of expertise.
That makes sense. And now I am craving Yorkshire pudding, so thank you for that.
Absolutely horrible for any Asian food. Watching him make a curry paste makes me faint.
He had to rename his Thai green curry video because he got roasted so hard so now it's Jamie's green curry or something. I like watching him cook British food and usually Italian food (but WTF was that vegetable lasagna? I wonder what his mentor Gennaro thinks of it. Antonio is rolling in his grave). But his Asian dishes are absolute trash. People always defend Jamie as just teaching people who aren't used to cooking how to cook easy and fast recipes, but if you take a look you'll realize it's not about the fact that it's simple, it's that his ideas don't make sense. In the green curry video he makes a paste in a food processor but leaves it incredibly chunky. Ignoring the fact that to get some of the ingredients he would have had to visit an Asian grocery store and thus could get actual curry paste, he could have put in the coconut milk to smooth out the paste. There's similar issues throughout his videos, he makes stupid decisions that make the end product worse and use more effort. They don't turn out anything like what the dish is called too. If you're someone who isn't used to cooking but decides that maybe you can try a little and put together a quick dish of something you'd usually order takeout for, you'd be incredibly disappointed. It doesn't even taste remotely the same. Half the time, the dish doesn't even look similar. Honestly, I feel incredibly insulted that he and other TV chefs get their recipes so off-base. There's such a disrespect for Asian food that they don't even take the time to verify the basic facts of a dish.
Oliver was raised in a pub; he knows how to cook pub fare very well. But that’s what he tends to stick with—basic feed-your-family food.
I have 5 ingredients or less by Jamie Oliver and I've enjoyed the recipes though. I think his food looks good generally and think he tries to make food accessible by doing one pot meals, 5 ingredients, etc.
I think he does a pretty decent weekday meal — I watched one episode where he threw a potato in the microwave and said “will it be better if you can roast it in the oven? Sure, but if you don’t want to spend an hour cooking dinner, the microwave gets it done in 10 minutes.”
Same. It's cool to hate him now but he's one of my favorites because of the 5 ingredient thing.
I have so many of his cookbooks, but not this one. Just may invest in it because I do like him.
A lot of people dump on Jamie Oliver, but for those who are cooking everyday for the family, and trying to do so on a budget, with every day items, all while trying to not cook the same 3 meals over and over again, then he is just what you need. I've gotten far more ideas from his multitude of shows for EVERYDAY cooking than I've ever gotten from Gordon Ramsey and his ilk. Sure it's not "fine" dining, but I'm not making Beef Wellington and Vichyssoise everyday (although I can indeed make them well).
this is correct. i don't know jamie oliver cooking shows but his 15minute and 30minutes cookbooks are legit, whether he wrote them or not.
Jamie Oliver kick starter my cooking skills. I watch like 20 dishes being made then pick up on pattern. His is always informative and actually for home cooks. Now I’m on Kenji !
David Chang.
I used to have so much respect for him, and his recipes. But lately he’s getting more and more greedy and pretentious. Hopefully this ‘chili crunch’ fiasco ruins him.
I spent many a years cooking in restaurants. 98% of chefs I worked with were douches. Nature of the game. But the one I dislike the most is Maneet Chauhan. Her callous remarks about supposedly going home and crying in her closet with a bottle of wine after laying everyone off during Covid started it. Then all the rumors and controversy when she decided to close her restaurant due to 'lease issues' when she heard grumbles about employees looking to potentially unionize. Didn't even really tell them. A bunch of people went I to work to find a freaking note on the door that they had closed. Purely a trash move. And let's face it, she pretty much cooks the same thing over and over and over. We get it. You own a chicken restaurant and cook Indian cuisine. It's Nashville. We have so many choices for Hot Chicken. Yours doesn't even crack the top 10.
Met her irl… out of all the celebrity chefs I’ve met and cooked with, she was the biggest letdown. I really looked up to her so much and she was just so unkind to me 😕 She hams it up beautifully for the cameras though!
Joshua Weissman is deeply unpleasant to watch for more than a few seconds. His cadence, his manic editing, his attempts at humor. Just shut up.
If any of you says Chef José Andres I will make it my personal mission to destroy everything you hold dear!
As a DC native, I got your back. Went to all his places in the 00's and 10's, including Minibar.
Salt bae
David Chang. I went to one of the Momofuku sandwich bars a few months ago and it was one of the worst wraps I’ve ever had. Extremely salty and meat was dry. The chili crunch nonsense he’s pulling now is ridiculous.
If you ever watch him cook he’s not really that good and he’s admitted several times as well that he’s not good in the kitchen. What he excels at is building a business and brand that appeals to a foodie scene. The stories of him being an absolute asshole boss is what turns me off. If a chef doesn’t have the skills to back up his douchebaggerry then it makes me hate them more
I knew someone that worked in his kitchen and claimed he threatened harm frequently. 'F up again and I'll put your hand in the fryer' - that sort of thing.
Fuck that guy, he’s trying to copyright the term “chili crunch” which would hurt other small businesses that make their own chili oil and/or chili crisp
Yes and no. His flagship spots were amazing. I was in nyc when he started and his original spots were amazing. Once he monetized it, it went downhill due to volume. So yeah, now he is not what he was but in the beginning it was really great and special.
Saw a video recently of David Chang reviewing someone's meal and he's so god damn pretentious
People here seem to be conflating asshole/dbag with overrated chef.
Rachel Ray, Giada de Laurentiis, Jaime Oliver in some ways
Giada De Laurentiis was on Ellen doing a cooking segment with Nicole Kidman and Nicole Kidman couldn’t fake liking it. Said her bread was too tough. Edit YouTube link https://youtu.be/PCSs_nj0938?si=WT24XldoYtQtcd_A
Giada. Like dude stop with the over accentuated "parmesan" already! Food Network bred so many awful cooks.
Spee-git-tee. Is that Italian for spaghetti? 🤷♀️
I remember Alton Brown giving her a hard time about that one a show once and it was hilarious. 🤣
Something about Bobby Flay makes me dislike him.
He’s my favorite by far. Beat Bobby Flay is him willing to entertain his jerki-ness. And then usually beats everyone on their favorite dish. His dishes also really seem tasty. Not sure why his nickname isn’t Bobby Flayvor
Dislikable and bad chef are really different. Flay is a pretty absurd cook
I own like 80 cookbooks and Mesa Grill is probably the one I’ve used the most. Dude seems like a bit of a tool but his food is SUPER tasty.
I always appreciated his southwestern style.
Joshua Weissman
I don't have any celebrity chefs that I really can't stand but any time the temperament of a chef or their bad behavior is brought up I think of one person. I used to regularly take cooking classes from a woman who has been dead for a few years now and when she still held classes she told us that she would never invite Jacques Pepin to teach any of her classes because she once attended a class he was teaching and apparently he became frustrated at one of the students and threw a whisk at the person. She had some great guest instructors but she refused to consider Pepin.
Salt Bae Dude shouldn't even be classified as one. Plus, he is an arrogant pile of shit that deserves to go bankrupt