How Successful Are TV Food Chef Contestants?

Apparently your future success as a television career competition winner really various. Maura Dieringer of USA Today provides an interesting follow-up on the careers of various reality food/fashion/design competition show winners, and it's not all peaches and cream.

Here are three examples out of several that USA Today gave:

HGTV Design Star, Season 2 (2007): Kim Myles

Myles, known for her use of unconventional design on a tight budget, is in her third season of Myles of Style. She was a hairdresser in New York before the show and earned an associate's degree in theater in Bakersfield, Calif., her hometown. She lives in Los Angeles and has been a guest designer on several HGTV shows

Hell's Kitchen, Season 2 (2006): Heather West

With a reality-show victory under her belt, West is working on two books while shooting the pilot of her own show, Eat This. As her prize from the show, West was the senior chef at Terra Rossa in the Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas for a year. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2003 and is chef Gordon Ramsay's sous chef on this season of Hell's Kitchen

The Next Food Network Star, Season 3 (2007): Amy Finley

Finley completed her six episodes of The Gourmet Next Door for Food Network, but decided not to sign on for a second season. In February 2008 she became the first columnist for Bon Appetit's new column, Family Style, and stayed for about a year. Then she left the magazine, moving to France with her family to write a regional cook book. She remains out of the public eye.

On the other hand, none of them can be called losers. Most in general of the food types are or have started their own restaurants, which many had wanted to do before the shows but couldn't. So for many it has been career building, even if that career isn't on television.

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Wear more Vegetables

PETA is working on multiple strategies and ad campaigns to get people to treat animals more humanely, stop wearing fur, and possibly.... expand their wardrobes.

Expect to see these items in your local farmers markets. (celebrity models not included)

TasteTV Events include:

• The San Francisco International Chocolate Salon
• The Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon
  


• ChocolateSalon.tv
  


• The New Media Tastemakers Summit

This blog from the contributors, producers and correspondents at TasteTV at TasteTV.com. technorati tags:TasteTV, restaurants, video, content, food, Chocolate, wine, recipes, cooking, Restaurant Reviews, Chef, ITV, fashion, seafood

Who Wants to be a Famous Food Critic?

Who Wants to be a Famous Food Critic? Especially if no one knows it's you.

That's the question that's being asked about the new Food Critic for the New York Times, who by design can't let people know who they are in a time when all the money, fame, and power comes from being a recognized brand.

Recounts the New York Observer, here is part of the dilemma, as described by someone from the outside:

Mr. Ozersky is the 41-year-old restaurants editor for Citysearch who blogs at the Feedbag...

Mr. Ozersky now wants to be a food personality. He wants to be a judge on Iron Chef. He wants to host his own television show. He wants fame. He said he’s 55 percent there. And, he said, even though the Times restaurant critic holds an incredibly powerful position, it’s the last thing he would want to do. Not in a million, zillion years, he said.

“The Times critic can’t go on TV!” he said. “What would you do with that power? You can’t go to the restaurants you like, you can’t shmooze with the chefs and writers you like. You can’t go on Top Chef!”

“As far as I’m concerned, you have to be on television,” he continued. “You can win the National Book Award and you can write on the front page of The Times every day, and you’re still not as famous as some busty tramp on Tough Love on VH1.”

Mr. Ozersky is part of an army of writers who don’t profess to be critics, or to do what Mr. Bruni does—he, instead, is trying to do something entirely different, he said.

Too true, too true.


TasteTV Events include:

• The San Francisco International Chocolate Salon
• The Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon
  


• ChocolateSalon.tv
  


• The New Media Tastemakers Summit

This blog from the contributors, producers and correspondents at TasteTV at TasteTV.com. technorati tags:TasteTV, restaurants, video, content, food, Chocolate, wine, recipes, cooking, Restaurant Reviews, Chef, ITV, fashion, seafood

Chocolatiers for the Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon

Here's the current lineup for the LA Chocolate Salon on October 11th:

The Third Annual Los Angeles Luxury CHOCOLATE SALON participants include over 30 chocolatiers, confectioners, wineries and other culinary artisans, such as: Choclatique, Happy Chocolates, Rushburn Toffee Co., The Tea Room chocolate, Quady Winery, Chocolatl, Jade Chocolates, San Francisco Toffee Company, CJ's Bitz and CJ's Stix, Marti Chocolatt, Alter Eco Fair Trade Chocolate, Artisan Cocoa / Amella Caramels, AF-squared Chocolatiers, Brown Sugar Pastries, Clarine's Florentines, Helen Grace Chocolates, Mignon Chocolate, TCHO, Amano Artisan Chocolate, Landrin, Sterling Confections, Chocoveda, Republica Del Cacao, Dove Chocolate Discoveries, Valerie Confections, Plush Puff Gourmet Marshmallows, The Chocolate Traveler, Ococoa chocolates, Sweet Beauty Organic Chocolate Spa, Le Creuset, Swissmar, Putumayo World Music, Chocolate Television, TasteTV, Yelp, California School of Culinary Arts - Le Cordon Bleu Programs, and many more. All this in over twice the delicious tasting space as 2008

A list of events and speakers to come soon.

TasteTV Events include:

• The San Francisco International Chocolate Salon
• The Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon
• ChocolateSalon.tv
• The New Media Tastemakers Summit

This blog from the contributors, producers and correspondents at TasteTV at TasteTV.com. technorati tags:TasteTV, restaurants, video, content, food, Chocolate, wine, recipes, cooking, Restaurant Reviews, Chef, ITV, fashion, seafood

SF Chefs. Food. Wine. Highlight Reel - Lick My Spoon

We weren't there, but the Lick My Spoon has a great highlights reel from the first SF Chefs. Food. Wine. event in August:

To quote Mayor Gavin Newsom, “Aspen, eat your heart out.”

An epic event 2 ½ years in the making, SF Chefs. Food. Wine. was like a food-lover’s Disneyland with approximately 200 of the Bay Area’s finest chefs, 70 wineries, and mixologists aplenty strutting their stuff.

Over the past four days, Union Square was transformed into a playground of tastings, seminars, and demonstrations from a who’s who list of culinary legends, rising stars, artisans, and experts.

Ahh, the good old days...when food events were fun, tasty and a good value.

Great to see everything old is new again. We'll be there next year, we hope!

TasteTV Events include:

• The San Francisco International Chocolate Salon
• The Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon
• ChocolateSalon.tv
• The New Media Tastemakers Summit

This blog from the contributors, producers and correspondents at TasteTV at TasteTV.com. technorati tags:TasteTV, restaurants, video, content, food, Chocolate, wine, recipes, cooking, Restaurant Reviews, Chef, ITV, fashion, seafood

New Tasteable T-shirt Idea

When we get around to it, maybe TasteTV will get our new line of t-shirts out the door before October 11th. One we like at the moment:

"Life is too short, so why waste precious thyme"

Of course, we think it's sort of original. It's based on a Pat Benatar lyric.

TasteTV Events include:

• The San Francisco International Chocolate Salon
• The Los Angeles Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• The Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon
  
• ChocolateSalon.tv
  
• The New Media Tastemakers Summit

This blog from the contributors, producers and correspondents at TasteTV at TasteTV.com. technorati tags:TasteTV, restaurants, video, content, food, Chocolate, wine, recipes, cooking, Restaurant Reviews, Chef, ITV, fashion, seafood