Before There Was EVOO …
There was Julia.
TV food personalities we miss.
Sure, we now have an entire network devoted to food and cooking shows, but what about those bygone cooking hosts we watched and loved before the deluge of BAM! and EVOO? Here are some we miss the most. (We would have included Jacques Pépin but are reliably informed that he’s got another season of Fast Food My Way coming out.)
1. Julia Child. From The French Chef to Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, the undisputed grande dame of cooking shows spent more than 30 years demystifying some of the most daunting dishes for an adoring audience of home and professional chefs alike. Julia made us realize that both butter and making mistakes were OK in moderation, all in those signature plummy tones that always made it sound like she had a mouthful of something delicious.
2. The Two Fat Ladies (Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson). Cavorting around the English countryside on their Triumph 950 and Watsonian sidecar, the Two Fat Ladies baked fish pies for Welsh choirs and flirted with fishermen while despairing over the thickening ranks of vegetarians. Even as they jugged kippers for a brewery breakfast, they still managed to crack ribald jokes about “old cocks” and use tea sandwiches to compare the behavior of various royal mistresses.
3. Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. Filming in the kitchen of their London-based River Café, Rogers and Gray brought rustic Italian cooking into our homes, stifling the idea that Brits don’t know good food. They also made pilgrimages to the sources of their favorite ingredients, camera crew in tow. They visited Maldon’s salty banks and tasted sticky balsamic gold in Modena, Italy, giving us an idea of how important individual ingredients are. And hey, they also gave us our first lascivious glance at a wet-behind-the-ears Jamie Oliver before he got Naked.
4. The Swedish Chef. Before Garrison Keillor was around to poke fun at Scandinavian accents, we had The Muppet Show’s own pot-hurling Swedish Chef. We never really knew exactly what he was saying—snatching only tidbits of muddled culinary lingo like hot doggies or shzouppa—but we loved watching his curiously dexterous hands groping around sharp knives and hot food. What with the gun-toting lobster banditos and a bemused chocolate moose, though, we wonder if the Swedish Chef wasn’t trying to turn us all into vegetarians. BORK! BORK! BORK!
5. Justin Wilson. Speaking of needing subtitles, do you remember this Cajun chef with the red Colonel Sanders tie? With his thick accent and charming stories (punctuated by his famous promise, “Ah garr-on-tee!”) on Louisiana Cookin’, it was impossible not to fall completely in love.
6. Martha Stewart. Yes, she’s still on television, and yes, we can still watch her cook, but can we please have the overproduced, perfect Living-era Martha back? The one who calmly held off a hogtied Cookie Monster while she showed us how to bake cookies in his likeness? Not this new “humanized” Martha whose awkward interactions with her audience and guests totally obscure whatever Good Thing she’s frosting, gluing, or creaming.
7. Graham Kerr. Long before he swore off alcohol and heart-harmful fats, Kerr attracted swarms of swooning women with his luxurious BBC accent and butter-happy hands. Although he made other televisions shows, Kerr was best known for Galloping Gourmet, which served up 455 episodes from 1969 to 1971.
8. Joyce Chen. Dubbed the “Chinese Julia Child” in the ’70s, Chen had her own eponymous restaurant in Massachusetts (Julia was a frequent diner) as well as a popular cooking show on PBS. In 1968, Joyce Chen Cooks was instrumental in bringing simple Chinese dishes into homes all over the country. Not only did Chen demonstrate cooking methods, she demystified the specialty ingredients by explaining how to find, store, and prepare them.
9. Jeff Smith. From 1988 to 1997, Smith’s message on The Frugal Gourmet was not about money but about being careful with time and ingredients in the kitchen. Also a Methodist minister, Smith taught “Food as Sacrament and Celebration” at a Seattle-area college before PBS beamed his white goatee into household televisions, and before he was accused of (though never charged with) sexual harassment.
10. Martin Yan. Give him 18 seconds to tell you—with knives flashing at warp speed—that the most important thing about boning out a whole chicken is to make sure the bird is relaxed. That’s your cue that Yan Can Cook’s host is all about fusing humor with cooking. And his knife skills—which will be on display again in January in a new program, Martin Yan’s China—aren’t too shabby, either.
Illustration by gregma
Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic is a freelance writer, editor, and sometime cheesemonger in San Francisco. She blogs at The Grub Report and KQED’s Bay Area Bites, writes for Cowgirl Creamery, and is a staff writer at Television Without Pity. She also rewrites culinary manga for Viz Media and is the author of CocktailSmarts (2006).