Hale Kilinahe: Pith of Pop: Food 911

Now, before I tell you how I feel about Food 911, I'm going to say this: Tyler Florence is a really good chef.

He is, however, a little overly impressed with his own abilities. He uses phrases like "phenomenal" and "off the hook" a lot. Plenty of chefs went to Johnson and Wales, but not all of them get to hype their own skills to such a degree.

The whole idea of Food 911 is this: he goes into a person's house and teaches that person how to do a dish that they can't seem to get a handle on. A lot of the guests seem to have zero in the way of kitchen skills but want to impress their friends and family. Others are sincerely flummoxed. Ultimately, Tyler makes three or four insanely complicated and fancy dishes all by himself. He gets his guests to taste his dishes and they reliably roll their eyes in rapture and exclaim "so good!".

I think the show would work better if Tyler adopted Rachael Ray's approach: simple stuff that takes less than an hour to make. Because as it is right now, Food 911 is less an instructional show than it is an excuse for Tyler to go hang out with pretty women.

The women are always properly appreciative and adoring and never have very much to say. One girl, during the soul food in Brooklyn episode, wore a low-cut top and practically sat in Tyler's lap through the whole show. I can't blame them, really; what girl doesn't want a cute guy to cook for her? Sometimes Tyler visits guys. Around male guests, he becomes Uber Frat Boy. He uses embarrassing hip-hop speak and throws around high fives.

It's a paradox; often, the better the cook, the less the cook's personality and intelligence comes through. Mario Batali is amazingly gifted but not horribly articulate on TV. When Tyler is forced to slow down and go step-by-step, like on How to Boil Water, he's much easier to watch. But on Food 911, he's working way too hard and talking way too fast to be much use to a home cook.

I like to watch this show, but would probably never make any of the dishes. He has to have one of the best jobs in the world doing this show. I would guess he's probably dissappointed when he has to go to a male's house. Most of the women love to fawn over him in a pretty obvious manner, and he's usually willing to oblige. For some reason, almost all of the FTV chefs like to gush and gloat about their dishes and how wonderful they taste. Probably the two worst offenders are Giada De Laurentis and Paula Deen. It's really a turn off for me to watch someone taste their own food and brag about how great it is. The other thing about Tyler is that he likes to use his fingers a lot to taste things and then licks them off, not particularly appealing behavior. I suppose it could be worse, he could allow his female hosts to lick his fingers off instead, and they would probably jump at the opportunity :)
Posted by LeV at February 23, 2005 2:23 AM

I disagree with entirely! Not only is Tyler amazing to look at he is also an amazing chef. He is SUCH a people person and that is what I love most about his shows. He is incredibly passionate and loves to share wonderful food with persons that have not had the opportunities to travel etc. and experience as much as he has. I am hoping he can come into my home and cook with me and my husband. We would love it.
Posted by Anna at April 5, 2006 10:37 AM

Some of us appreciates Tyler you can see the passion in him,however we do feel insulted by someone like Giada De Laurentis, she offers "NOTHING" to us that love the art of cuisine. Get her off the food chanel and give Tyler more a chance to shine
Posted by pia rosaria thomas at February 14, 2007 2:46 AM