The funny thing about 24-year-old local pastry chef Carter Holton winning the Star Wars Cake Challenge on the Food Network Challenge series last week is that the competition required Holton and his three competitors -- all bakery owners and professional cake designers -- to create a cake based on a character from the Star Wars film series. And Holton had never seen one of the films.
"I had to learn a ton about Star Wars after we got the assignment," Holton says. "But until then, I had never seen any of the movies. I've since seen a couple of them. They're OK. You know, it's science fiction."
Last Sunday, Holton invited 75 of his nearest and dearest friends into his new loft in the Stuart Hall building to watch the airing of the Food Network episode -- filmed last March -- in which he won the grand prize: $10,000 and the opportunity to re-create his cake -- featuring C-3P0 -- at Walt Disney World last May.
Chef Michael Smith isn't the only Kansas City chef getting a bit of tube time on Friday -- the Cooking Channel's host Jeffrey Saad is heading over to Julian tonight for the dinner service.
The United States of America crew will be at Extra Virgin during the lunch hour -- 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. -- and then it's off to chef Celina Tio's kitchen to get some shots of her prepping and making the Brookside restaurant's signature dishes.
If you were kicking yourself for missing The Food Network cameras at Extra Virgin earlier this month, you've got a shot at redemption tomorrow. The lights and action return to chef Michael Smith's restaurant, which will be featured on the Cooking Channel show, "The United Tastes of America," with host Jeffrey Saad.
"Things are very busy for sure," Smith says. "But we are having a lot of fun and encouraging our patrons to have some, also."
The cameras will be rolling at Extra Virgin (1900 Main) this afternoon as the Food Network and chef/host Curstin Stone stop by the Crossroads restaurant from 1 to 5 p.m. Chef Michael Smith will be filmed making the duck-tongue tacos, which went on the menu last year. Extra Virgin is offering another incentive to diners with half-price duck-tongue tacos and happy-hour drink specials this afternoon.
Love, or as Celine Dion might sing it, "lurve," was in the air on Top Chef Masters last night. As if to prove that nobody scores after taking a date to a fast-food joint, host Curtis Stone dumped Danyelle Freeman for fellow Top Chef franchise host Gail Simmons, and critic James Oseland was reunited with former tablemate Gael Greene. In the best hour of the show so far, we discovered that ordinary people can love ordinary food and fall in love while Ms. Greene, oh sweet Jesus, may once have had something going with Elvis Presley.
Sometimes a man just wants to eat a corn dog and doesn't care what he looks like. And sometimes that corn dog slaps mustard all over his face as he stands there open-mouthed while his girlfriend covers the the eyes of the carnival teddy bear that he won for her.
This is the world presented by a new advertisement for Tums -- it ensures that you'll never look at a corn dog the same way again.
Reality programming is begging to resemble a Taco Bell menu. There are only so many ingredients, but inventive marketing guys keep finding ways to package them together in seemingly new ways.
The latest reality smash-up might just star one of this city's own. The Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart reports that Stretch (Jeff Rumaner) is the headliner in a new pilot, "Hungry Men at Work," for Spike TV. It sounds like a cross between "Ax Men" and "Food Detectives."
Practice ordering from a window in your backyard because this weekend is your big opportunity to order from a food-truck window on national television.
Although you better be prepared to stand in line because, as Fat City discovered earlier this week, there are a lot of people eager to find out more about the second season of The Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race -- which pits eight teams in a six-city, six-week elimination-style cooking show hosted by celebrity chef Tyler Florence. And now that the production team has pulled into Manhattan, the details are starting to flow on where the truck-testants will be parked.
Seven Eight food trucks hit the road, and one rolls home with $100,000 in prize money. That's the premise for the second season of the six-city, six-week show, The Great Food Truck Race, that is currently being filmed for the Food Network.
Last weekend, the trucks set up shop in Denver, and right now they're on their way to Manhattan, Kansas, where they'll be filming from Thursday to Sunday. Host Tyler Florence is tweeting the entire journey, noting that Kansas State University is the next stop.
And lo, the most talented chefs in the land were brought down from on high into the fryer, and it was declared that they must serve guests within five to seven minutes as per their expectations of fast food.
"The best chefs in the nation are putting on a headset, wrapping things up in paper and putting them in a to-go container. We're a little out of our element," chef George Mendes suggests.
Which out-of-town restaurant would you lobby to bring to KC?
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