After playing the part of resident connoisseur on the culture-bending Queer Eye and recurring guest judge on Top Chef, culinary expert Ted Allen dives into a whole new kettle of fish with Food Detectives (premiering Tuesday at 9 pm/ET, Food Network). But this is not your average food show: "We're taking well-known myths and creating scientific experiments to test whether they're true," says Allen.
TVGuide.com: So what makes Detectives different from other food shows?Ted Allen: We have a group of henchmen, called Food Techs, whom we submit to various forms of torture — everything from eating habanero chilies to test what's the best way to cool down your mouth to studying whether ginger really prevents motion sickness. Which means you have to come up with a way to nauseate people — just think hot dogs, taxis, carnival rides. [Laughs] There are lo
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The tastiest reality show is back, and this season the Top Chef contestants are whipping out their knives in a new city: Chicago. To get our mouths watering for the show's premiere (tonight at 10 pm/ET, Bravo), celebrity judge Ted Allen told us about the best and worst dishes he's sampled, what new challenges we can look forward to, and some of this season's memorable characters — including the Windy City itself.
TVGuide.com: Why Chicago?Ted Allen: You're looking for cities that have enough personality to be a character in the show. Every city has its own culinary traditions. In this season's first episode, they have a challenge with one of Chicago's best-known foods. If you think about Miami [where last season was filmed], you think of hot babes in bikinis and white buildings and beautiful sand... and Cuban sand
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There you have it baby! A thrilling end to a thrilling season of Top Chef. Unpredictable until the last 15 minutes, we saw twists and turns that at least I was not expecting. And we got a live reveal of the winner to finish it all up. For the finale, the chefs were at the Aspen Mountain Lodge, which costs more than $100,000 to be a member of. That's five zeros my friends. I don't know what's there, but for that much money, I'd expect naked women, bacon in my hand every time I snap my fingers and um… naked women. I mentioned that twice, didn't I? Hey, it's $100,000 — there better be a ton of naked women. Coincidentally, the winner of Top Chef gets $100,000, too. As is usually the case with the last episode, the chefs are told to make their best meal ever for the judges. They needed to come up with three courses and hand the menu to Tom. I like the handing-the-menu-to-Tom thing, as it forces the chefs to stick to their initial game plans and not go to plan C when their foam ...
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Turn the frowns upside down, friends! This week's episode was loads of fun compared to the stinker last week. There were just a ton of funny moments, some food that actually might have been good, and fan favorite Anthony Bourdain! That’s just a big old bucket 'o goodness there. I really enjoyed this quickfire challenge. I'm a breakfast man myself. If I could eat eggs and bacon for every meal, I would. Then I'd probably own a pig farm and some chickens too, seeing as I might want those things handy if I got hungry. But then I probably wouldn't have a pig farm and work at TV Guide so I wouldn't get to do this blog and that would be bad. Then again, I'd be eating bacon right now. Hmmm… I really might have to give this some thought. So anyway, a breakfast challenge is right up my alley. And what better way to start your day than have Padma walk through your door! Well OK, I'm sure my wife wouldn't want Padma just walking in our home and Dale would have rather had Ted Allen in ...
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Holy beef tenderloin, Batman! I usually like going in order when discussing an episode, and the past episodes this season really haven't had anything that shocking that would make me deviate from that norm. But this week was mighty different, wouldn't you say? I have to start off talking about the shocker: Tre is outta here. So many of you thought he was the favorite and even though I still think Dale's going to win, I can't say I would have totally disagreed with you in that assumption about Tre. But here it is with Dale, Howie, Brian and Sara all still in the competition while the talented Tre is packing his knives. The choice to send him packing wasn't wrong, either. Tre's been hit-or-miss this season, but when he's on, he's on. However, both Ted and guest judge Geoffrey Zakarian of Country, thought Tre's wild king salmon was one of the worst meals they'd ever had. Not just bad: the worst they'd ever had. We are still calling these people Top Chefs now, right? A crappy dish is on...
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