Results tagged “hellskitchen”

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In spite of the occasionally cringe-worthy dishes on Top Chef and the bumbling and blubbering of Hell's Kitchen, you know you're insanely jealous of those judges. Well, now you have the opportunity to eat like the judges--yes, even the actual recipes they picked apart like bits of carrion on the small screen.

Jon Hamm aka Don Draper aka Dr. Drew Baird is available for a date ......for charity. Paul Rudd, Kevin Smith, Nathan Fillion, Patrick Duffy, David Schwimmer, Julianna Margulies and others are also available for dates so take your checkbook to the Adrienne Shelley Foundation website who is auctioning off these wonderful people on eBay.

Tonight is all about the final episode of "ER" and/or how to avoid it. NBC is pretty much devoting all of its prime time programming to "ER", what with retrospectives, and the two-hour finale. We admit that we used to watch "ER" about 10 years ago because we had a girlfriend that was an "ER" addict, kind of like the way one becomes a vegetarian because one's significant other is a vegetarian. At some point though, the show jumped the shark - was it the multiple helicopter crashes? The myriad of fatal diseases stalking their way through the staff? The constant replenishment of characters so that the "young" part of a "young doctors in love" soap opera could still fit the definition?

CNBC's host of "Mad Money", Jim Cramer, will appear on "The Daily Show" tonight to finally have it out face-to-face with Jon Stewart, who castigated the network for a skewed perspective that was harsh on President Obama's stimulus plan but soft on CEOs. Stewart has also pointed out specific stock recommendations made by Cramer last year that were wildly misinformed at best, if not downright criminally negligent.

If you thought that the local news was boring claptrap that only idiots watch, then you are outside of the ever-increasing popularity of the local newscast - Nielsen is reporting a 20% year-over-year increase in viewership. For TV, a fractional percentage change is big news but 20% is incredible.

Jerry Seinfeld will be returning to TV as the producer and creator of "The Marriage Ref", a new series for NBC. No premiere date or time slot has been selected.

One wonders why they would punish themselves by watching "Lost" and "Damages" back-to-back on Wednesday nights as the experience is thoroughly disorienting but that's probably the idea.

Anyone else watch programming on ABC.com? Get ready for more commercials on that web property as their research has shown that they can pump a lot more commercials at viewers than they thought they could. You gotta love the attitude of one of the members of the National Association of Television Program Executives, a panel that is supportive of the research findings: "The key is what is that very fine line and balance before we push them (the audience) over the edge of being pissed."

Late night TV is looking really good this week, with at least one good guest per show per night (with the exception of the deplorable "Last Call With Carson Daly").

If you saw my SNL post yesterday, you know I'm all high on live TV (always have been), and lookie, lo-and-behold, we're going to start getting live ads on TV: the Hollywood Reporter says that Jimmy Kimmel (featured below tonight) will start running at least one live ad per episode starting in May. Garmin ran a live ad on Leno a year ago and the "effectiveness and awareness" levels exceeded standard (dead?) ads enough for Garmin and other companies to line up to begin running the live ads regularly.

We have a bit of TV on tonight but it's not much unless you like cooking, which I do. I'm waiting for Thursday and the return of some programming to NBC.

Did anyone watch "Top Gear" last night on BBCA? They had a fantastic contest of who could cross London the fastest: a bicycle, a several hundred horsepower boat, public transportation, or a Mercedes SUV. The bike won! Followed closely by the boat and then public transportation with the SUV dead last by more than a quarter hour after public transport. Since LA doesn't have many viable waterways it looks like it's time to sideline cars and invest in bike lanes and public transportation exclusively.

Photo by kpe II via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

It all started with Anthony Bourdain's Mexican border episode of his show No Reservations. At one point he picks up a riding crop in a leather shop. He slaps it confidently against the palm of his hand, and says, "Yeah, this is coming home with me." I've always been attracted to his superior punk New York attitude. But the "whack" of that riding crop took it somewhere new. I confessed to my boyfriend, "I'm sorry...

People with too much time on their hands: Amy Ephron and other striking writers have whipped up a food blog. Our current food blog obsession: Luxeat, a Parisian model who eats at the finest restaurants in France and takes luscious pictures. Of the food. Over at the LA Times, food editor Leslie Brenner is really sticking it to the new Michelin Guide. Among her criticisms? "The book that purports to be the bible of...

In TV land, Tom Colicchio of Top Chef plays a kinda sorta pompous judge on the popular Bravo show. In real life, he's chef-owner of NYC's Craft (other restaurants include the Gramercy Tavern, Craft, Craftbar, and 'wichcraft in New York, Craftsteak at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and NYC). Gordon Ramsay plays another sorta pompous chef on FOX's Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. In real life, his latest restaurant venture is Gordon Ramsay...

I had been looking forward to settling in on my comfy couch in some comfy only-wear-around-the-house clothes with some snack foods and my television-watching co-conspirator to watch the season finale of Fox's Hell's Kitchen for a couple of weeks now. I say "couple" of weeks because those programming devils split the finale into two parts and unecessarily stretched the drama over two of my Monday nights for an hour apiece. But instead of seeing...

8:00pm So You Think You Can Dance FOX - Two dancers get the boot 9:00pm Fat March ABC - The fat marchers have made it all the way from southeast Massachusetts to Connecticut. The men face a strength challenge. but wait! there's more! 9:00pm Hell's Kitchen FOX - Finalist hell! The final challenge!!! The winner becomes the new head chef at one of Gordon Ramsay's Las Vegas restaurants! 10:00pm Weeds SHOWTIME - Season premiere!...

Since you know LAist is crazy about bacon, how about this burger made of ground bacon? [Serious Eats] In the meat-eating corner: Ted Nugent! In the meat-free corner: Paul McCartney! Read what Nugent really thinks about the folks in the music biz he knows who have been "Fired for eating meat by an animal-rights maniac, hard-core vegan bass player." [Waco Tribune-Hearld] David Haskell of Bin 8945: Chowhounds can be so tasteless, bloggers mean business...

With last night's (much anticipated) premiere of the third season of Top Chef on Bravo, there now exists a triptych of "reality" television programs each devoted to making one lucky chef a star (and the other contestants infamous). Over on the Food Network we've got The Next Food Network Star, which blends cooking and "star" quality, and on Fox we're two episodes into the blazing fires of the third season of Hell's Kitchen. And...

A Word or 100+: Ooops, I missed the Tonys, malhereusement. If there's a pick tonight, other than arena football, then it's the US version of Creature Comforts on CBS at 8:00 p.m. (from the creator of Wallace and Gromit). I love the UK version but my kids have a hard time with the various British accents and some of the various topics - I know it's a lot to ask for but I'm hoping...

For the past several days the Food Network's ubiquitous kitchen pixie, Rachael Ray, has been invading book and cook shops in California on a signing tour for her cookbook 365: No Repeats. Tomorrow night marks her last stop in the greater Los Angeles area, with a 7-8 PM slot at Pasadena's Sur La Table. We happened to stroll by there over the weekend and noticed that their sidewalk sandwich board urged those interested to arrive at least one hour ahead of Ms. Ray's arrival in order to line up.

Speaking of local TV, there's a lot of locally based television going on right now. The N -- Nickelodeon's brainy older sister -- just greenlit "South of Nowhere", a high school drama about a family who moves from Ohio to Los Angeles and finds itself in the middle of a fast-paced, metropolitan environment and a overcrowded "anything goes" L.A. public school. Considering how forward thinking and 'real' their current youth hit series, Degrassi: The Next Generation (yes, we watch. Shut up. If Kevin Smith likes it, we can like it, too), we have high hopes that "South of Nowhere" will give an accurate view of the tensions, struggles and triumphs that currently happen in our schools. They are casting now and plan to shoot in town.