is a cable network whose main topic is food, food and more food — where to find it, how to prepare it, as well the people who do all the work behind the scenes. Founded in 1993 by the Providence Journal Company as the "TV Food Network" (this name was dropped in 1996 for the present one), FN was bought by the E.W. Scripps Company as a result of a trade with the A.H. Belo Corporation, who bought the Providence Journal Co. in 1997 (the trade was for CBS affiliate KENS-TV in San Antonio), and is co-owned with a few other channels: Home and Garden Television (or HGTV, which focuses on home improvement and construction, and was launched in 1994, three years before Scripps bought FN), DIY Network (a channel for do-it-yourselfers, launched in 1999), Cooking Channel (launched in 2002 as a general lifestyle channel called "Fine Living", it adopted its current name in May 2010), Great American Country (a country music channel inexplicably purchased by Scripps in 2004) and the Travel Channel (65% of which was bought from Cox Communications in 2009). In 2008, FN and its siblings were spun off into "Scripps Networks Interactive", which in turn was acquired by Discovery, Inc. (currently known as Warner Bros. Discovery) in March 2018.FN rose to fame in the late 1990s, after picking up Emeril Lagasse's show Essence Of Emeril and its hit follow-on Emeril Live; he was the face of the network for many years until Rachael Ray and 30-Minute Meals came along. The current torchbearer, taking over by the early-2010s, is Guy Fieri who, after getting his start on second season of The Next Food Network Star, has hosted no fewer than seven shows on the network (not counting spin-offs of those shows), including most prominently Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Guy's Grocery Games.
The network was also willing to take a chance on a certain offbeat cooking-science show back in 1999, as well as introducing most of the USA to Iron Chef, a show whose exposure had been limited mainly to the Bay Area before then.
Has been accused of some level of Network Decay, with the biggest complaint being that the how-to shows aren't as technically rigorous as they used to be (Semi-Homemade is usually held up as the worst example of this) and that the channel has been focusing too much on documentaries and reality shows (albeit, a bit of a natural progression from the popularity of Iron Chef). Despite all that, even the most ill-advised shows have been at least tangentially about food, thus sticking to the basic premise in some way.
Food Network shows and personalities with their own pages:
- Ace of Cakes
- Barefoot Contessa
- Chopped
- Cupcake Wars
- Cutthroat Kitchen
- Diners, Drive-ins and Dives
- Dinner: Impossible
- Giada De Laurentiis
- Good Eats
- Guy Fieri
- Guy's Grocery Games
- Iron Chef
- Mystery Diners
- The Next Food Network Star
- Rachael Ray
- Restaurant: Impossible
- Restaurant Stakeout
- Sweet Genius
- Supermarket Stakeout
- Tournament of Champions
- Worst Cooks in America
This network provides examples of:
- Achilles' Heel: In Beat Bobby Flay, Flay's notorious weakness is in baking and pastries, leading him to audibly groan and complain when a chef challenges him to a dessert-based round. Inversely, his own specialty is burgers, so any chef challenging him to make a burger is quite often met with a Squash Match.
- Ascended Extra:
- Anne Burrell started as Mario Batali's sous chef on Iron Chef America. Now she has two shows herself.
- Several stars on the network started out as competitors on Iron Chef America, including almost all of the Chopped judges. Alex Guarnaschelli is another standout, having been an ICA competitor and having her own show, but she broke out on Chopped and now serves as an Iron Chef herself.
- Some stars have been part of profiles on other people's shows. The Neelys on the Deen brothers' show and Paula Deen on Gordon Elliott's are just two examples.
- Author's Saving Throw: Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade has been widely criticized, not only for processed, unhealthy, cost-ineffective ingredients, but also for lavish sets and wardrobe changes (including her signature "table-scapes"), and her boozy cocktails. Sandra's Money Saving Meals features recipes made to feed a family of four on a budget, while Sandra's wardrobe has been stripped down and the set is almost entirely white (though the boozy cocktails remain). Having cooked for her impoverished family as a kid, on food stamps to boot, she probably didn't like the idea of someone calling her wasteful. Apparently, even Sandra Lee has standards.
- Breakout Character: Guy Fieri is the only winner of The Next Food Network Star to have actually become Food Network's next star, becoming a major presence on the channel and a well-known celebrity in his own right, unlike the winners of every other season.
- Brick Joke: On Kids Baking Championship, one of the contestants, Cody, asks what a certain herb is, to which Duff replies "Thyme, which you are running out of. Get it?" Later, when Cody is finishing his cream puffs:Cody: I need more thyme! (Beat) I mean 'T-H', not 'time-time' time.
- The Casanova: Tyler Florence, especially on Food 911, although many of the housewives he helped out had a definite Dirty Old Woman vibe about them.
- Catchphrase:
- Emeril Lagasse ("BAM!") and Rachael Ray ("E.V.O.O."), to the point of inducing nausea in audience members. Alton Brown has been known to gently mock both of them for it.
- Ina Garten is known to repeat the phrases "How bad could that be?" and "How easy is that?" She also loves to use the adjective "good" whenever she possibly can, often gently reminding viewers to use "good" ingredients, and very often when episodes end with a dinner party or a picnic she'll ask "Good food and good friends, how can it get any better than that?"
- On Worst Cooks in America, Anne Burrell is known to tell recruits "Brown food tastes good," in an enthusiastic, gravelly, Cookie-Monster-type voice. Some recruits fondly repeat it.
- Alton Brown has catchphrases of his own, including "golden brown and delicious", "just walk away", "oh bother", and "but that's another show".
- Guy Fieri has "that's money", "off the hook!", and "bananas!" as well as "that's on point". He almost lives entirely on catch phrases.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Mutually. More than a few fans have observed that Tyler Florence could pass for Bobby Flay's younger brother.
- Circus Episode: Halloween Baking Championship had an episode called "Circus of Dread" that featured a set and two challenges themed after a Circus of Fear. The first required the contestants to make desserts based on one of four Tarot Cards. The second had contestants making desserts based on one of four original Monster Clowns. (Three were mannequins, but one was a person in costume pretending to be a mannequin to Jump Scare the contestants.)
- Cooking Duel: Increasingly a part of the line-up. Showing re-runs of Iron Chef brought the trope to high visibility in the west.
- Cooking Show: The focus of the network; most of them are relegated to the "Food Network In The Kitchen" daytime block.
- Cool Old Guy:
- Wolfgang Puck was this for some people.
- One might also mention Rokusaburo Michiba from the original Iron Chef.
- Cool Old Lady:
- Paula Deen may be considered this for some people, especially on her Paula's Party show, though not so much anymore.
- Ina Garten probably counts too.
- The real holders of the title were the Two Fat Ladies (RIP both of them; Clarissa Dickson Wright died in 2014).
- Cordon Bleugh Chef:
- Sandra Lee.
- Paula Deen, whose recipes seem to consist of breaded sticks of butter coated in butter and deep fried in butter with butter on the side also counts. People were sadly not surprised when she revealed she has type 2 diabetes.
- Definitely averted with Eat, Shrink And Be Merry.
- Cultural Translation: The original Iron Chef gained enough success to earn the aptly-named spin-off Iron Chef America. The reruns of the original version on Fine Living were given the retronym Iron Chef Japan; Cooking Channel, to which the reruns were carried over from Fine Living, has also picked up the name.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Robert Irvine, mainly in Restaurant: Impossible where he often ends up delivering "The Reason You Suck" Speech to various people with failing restaurants. The fact that he used to be in the British Navy, and in fact got his start as a chef there, certainly helps.
- On Worst Cooks in America, Anne Burrell has something of a reputation as this. It might be a subversion though, because she can be firm, yet gentle with those who are trying but legitimately struggling.
- Facepalm: On Worst Cooks in America this is basically Bobby Flay's default expression. And considering the shenanigans he witnesses, who can blame him?
- Fag Hag: Ina Garten, whose parties are attended almost entirely by her gay friends.
- Fanservice with a Smile: Giada De Laurentiis is known for this.
- Fiery Redhead: Bobby Flay.
- Fighting Irish: Again, Bobby Flay. Besides having a rather feisty and spirited personality, he also says that when he was a teenager he frequently got into fights and hung out with a group of other tough guys, before getting involved in the food industry and turning his life around.
- Food Porn:
- And it often gets disturbingly close to literal porn with some of Giada's and Rachel's quasi-orgasmic tasting shots.
- Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, with some of the most surreal junk food you'll ever see.
- The Best Thing I Ever Ate, which features Food Network personalities and colleagues rhapsodizing about Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- Emeril Live took this up a notch this for 60 minute food "live sex show", featuring "ohh"s and "ah"s from the audience. Egregiously so when he added a great deal of butter or garlic and the camera cut to a closeup of someone reacting in the audience..
- Alex Guarnaschelli takes it to an even more disturbing level. Virtually every sentence she speaks describing food is practically dripping with a sensuous tone of voice, and such admiring physical descriptions of the food that she makes it sound like it's a person that she wants to date, rather than a piece of food. Her orgasmic facial expressions when describing the food just make it worse.
- She does it on Twitter too. Spoofed by Food Network Humor (which has since closed down due to the author's utter disgust of Food Network post-2012 that she refuses to update it), who created "A Sensual Reading of Alex Guarnaschelli's Tweets". There's also a Part 2. Don't worry, it is perfectly safe for work. Basically it's just the FNH editors reading Alex's Purple Prose in a rather exaggerated fashion.
- Then there's the Neelys, who somehow always find a way to slip in sexual innuendos during every show, as they endlessly flirt with each other. They pretty much embody the Sickeningly Sweethearts trope. Or at least, they did until their divorce in 2014.
- Alton tends to pick on his Food Network siblings over this. During the crossover Thanksgiving special, he mocked Giada's garnish by saying, "You're one of those people who eats with their eyes, aren't you?"
- Friend to All Children: Valerie Bertinelli on Kids' Baking Championship. She is known to comfort kid contestants when they have meltdowns or kitchen disasters, make suggestions to save floundering dishes, or offer a hug.
- Genki Girl:
- Rachael Ray and Paula Deen are by far the worst for this, but Giada De Laurentiis puts in some genki moments on a fairly regular basis as well.
- Sunny Anderson, of Cooking for Real, is this as well.
- Granny Classic: Nancy Fuller embodies the spirit, although she doesn't quite have the look.
- Gratuitous French: Ina Garten of "Barefoot Contessa" is probably the most notorious offender for this, as even the Francophilic Melissa D'Arabian doesn't name-drop French terms nearly as often as Ina. Ina seems determined to use French to describe anything she can. It gets especially ridiculous (and somewhat amusing) when she repeatedly uses Crème anglaise. note
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Sandra Lee. Towards the end of each episode of her shows, her eyes practically light up when she excitedly announces that "It's cocktail time!!!" In one Christmas episode, she actually decorated a Christmas tree by hanging cocktail glasses and wine glasses all over it. She then declared that "of all the trees I've ever decorated, this is my favorite!"
- Hurricane of Puns: John Henson hosted two seasons of Halloween Baking Championship, and was known for his puns in both. This is part of why season 4 contestant Cicely hated him.
- Duff Goldman falls into this during Kids' Baking Championship, with Valerie Bertinelli playing the straight woman.
- Jerkass:
- Alex Guarnaschelli, particularly on Chopped. She hates men, hates other women even more, and seems to be an extremely unpleasant person to be around.note
- Most of the female judges on Chopped seem to be more critical and less personable than their male counterparts; Guarnaschelli is just the most egregious of them.
- Guarnaschelli seems to be defrosting a bit in recent years. She seems much more likely now to show emotion/sympathy on Chopped, especially Chopped Junior, than she did before, and she seems to have something of a soft spot for some of her fellow judges, such as Amanda Freitag.
- Kerry Vincent, master cake decorator, became infamous on Food Network Challenge for exactly the same reasons, and to the point where FNC in turn became most notable and infamous for her judging. Sometimes her criticisms are perfectly valid, but at other times she criticises teams for things like time management, noting that they didn't organize themselves well even if they got their piece finished on time.
- Dante, of the 2014 version of Holiday Cooking Championship. A US Naval Academy instructor, Dante is shown to be highly dismissive of other candidates through his participation, complaining whenever other contestants’ dishes were selected over his even after the judges praised him. It also doesn’t help that he flaunted his skill and talents in nearly every shot he was in. By contrast, the rest of the cast were mostly affable and nice, and of more humble backgrounds. His brother joined the following season- with more or less the same attitude, but much nicer. He lasted two weeks.
- Daniel Mar of Worst Cooks in America season 10. He regularly put down the other contestants or otherwise acted arrogant, and Chef Anne warned him about "phoning it in" more than once. However, Daniel always ended up safe at the end of every elimination round. Plenty of viewers were incensed when he actually won.
- Alex Guarnaschelli, particularly on Chopped. She hates men, hates other women even more, and seems to be an extremely unpleasant person to be around.note
- Jobber: Bobby Flay is frequently this on Throwdown, owing to him being a more-or-less generalist restaurant chef being pitted against people who tend to be experts in their specialties. After eight seasons, Flay's record stood at 33 wins, 68 losses, and 1 draw. While Flay certainly cooks to win, he isn't broken up if he loses, since according to him the whole point of Throwdown is to get awesome local chefs some attention.
- Beat Bobby Flay is the
Spiritual Successor to Throwdown: two Food Network / Cooking Channel personalities each bring in a chef they think can beat Bobby Flay. Round One has the two chefs compete against each other by cooking a round-winning dish showcasing an ingredient of Bobby's choice. The two personalities then judge whose dish was better, and the winner takes on Bobby in Round Two, where they must cook a version of the winning chef's "signature dish." In this show, however, Bobby has a win record of 62.3% (as of August 2020). - Also, Chen Kenichi on the original Iron Chef came off like this with remarkable frequency.note
- Beat Bobby Flay is the
- Kaizo Trap: Guy Fieri is fond of doing an inversion of these in Guy's Grocery Games; he starts off cooking rounds by counting down from 3 to 1 and saying go, by slipping them into innocuous sentences as wordplay. Any contestants who have caught on to or known of this don't hesitate to rush for ingredients.
- Keet: Guy Fieri's persona is a Guido version.
- The Lad-ette:
- Anne Burrell appears to be this.
- Cat Cora definitely is.
- Large Ham: Mario Batali, Mark Dacascos (and Takeshi Kaga before him), Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri, Paula Deen, Gina Neely, Aaron "Big Daddy" McCargo, the entire cast of Good Eats... It would be easier to make a list of who isn't. Ironically, however, not George Duran (formerly of Ham On The Street).
- Brian Boitano, however, takes it to a rather corny extreme. But what would you expect from a Memetic Badass?
- Brian Boitano, however, takes it to a rather corny extreme. But what would you expect from a
- Laser-Guided Karma: Happens a lot in the reality shows and cookoffs.
- Padua in the 2015 installment of Holiday Cooking Championship. After spending the entire season sneering at other candidates behind their backs (offscreen during intermissions) and after viciously assigning the worst choices of vegetables to each contestant (knowing full well that some had no experience whatsoever with them, and he did it purely out of spite), he received a brutal dose of karma that gets him promptly eliminated: he broke his mixer and ruined the dough of the cookies he was asked to bake. He repeated the same dough, out of time, and tried to pass it off as a different cookie by merely changing the flavor. The judges were not happy in the least, and blasted him horribly for it. He left the show, eliminated and shamed.
- Lethal Chef: Generally averted. However some professional chefs have taken exception to some hygienic shortcuts taken on some shows (30 Minute Meals and the contest show Chopped may be the worst offenders), and the show Worst Cooks In America follows terrible amateur cooks learning how not to be a Lethal Chef.
- In the first episode of Chopped, one of the contestants basically mustard-gassed the others by cooking a pepper-heavy chicken in a pan without oil. She eventually made it to the semi-finals.
- Eating Paula Deen's food on a regular basis would lead to arteries clogged with lard and butter coming out of one's pores.
- Sandra Lee. Dear God, Sandra Lee.
- It's not uncommon for the judges on Chopped to refuse to taste a dish for sanitation reasons. In one episode, of three Cornish hen-based meals, only one was tasted (one was undercooked, and one was sliced on a contaminated cutting board).
- Lipstick Lesbian: Cat Cora. Technically more of what Ellen DeGeneres has called a "Chapstick lesbian" (i.e. no girlier than your average woman), but hey...
- Locked in a Room: The Network loves throwing judge Kerry Vincent and competitor Stevie Famulari together on Food Network Challenge, in spite of (or more likely because of) the fact that the two are oil and water, with one being a hidebound traditionalist and the other a postmodern iconoclast. The network even invited Stevie to compete in the challenge of making Kerry a birthday cake, which ended with Stevie memorably (though accidentally) lighting the cake on fire. Subverted in that despite several extended and often heated conversations, each still has little apparent appreciation for the other's point of view.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: The basic conceit behind Farmhouse Rules is that host Nancy Fuller is the mother of six children and a grandmother of 13.
- Ms. Fanservice: Giada De Laurentiis, Aida Mollenkamp, Rachael Ray, and, gender-flipped, Robert Irvine. As of her second season, apparently Claire Robinson as well.
- During the ICA battle where Flay and Giada went up against Rachael and Batali, Fark warned the kitten population to be on alert.
- Motor Mouth: Ever heard Rachael's voice?
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy; Guy Fieri describes his look as "kulinary gangsta". The loud clothing and the sunglasses seem to indicate something closer to "skater", or perhaps "midlife crisis."
- Product Placement: If you watch enough Food Network, you'll notice that certain products get pushed a lot. Worst Cooks In America, for instance, seems to be funded entirely by the Pork Council and the Broccoli Rabe Commission.
- Purple Prose: The Best Thing I Ever Ate basically encourages all the FN stars to go on and use Purple Prose to describe various dishes. Alex Guarnaschelli is by far the most egregious, though, both there and on her own show as well.
- Sassy Black Woman: Gina Neely. Stereotypes? You're soaking in it.
- Science Show: Good Eats, Food Detectives, and Ask Aida.
- Ship Tease:
- Alton and W on Good Eats. Despite the former being, y'know, married.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: The Neelys. Now subverted.
- Silver Fox: Geoffrey Zakarian.
- Spin-Off: Cooking Channel, which replaced Fine Living, can be considered one. It also shows some programs that used to be on FN (such as Two Fat Ladies and Good Eats).
- Southern Belle:
- Paula Deen, y'all!
- Cat Cora's pretty Southern, too.
- Gina Neely
- Nancy Fuller, despite being originally from New York.
- Straight Gay: Ted Allen, Cat Cora
- Three Cameras: Used for the shows shot live to tape in studio, but surprisingly frequently averted, especially with shows like Good Eats and the travel shows.
- Totally Radical: Guy Fieri. He really tries too hard to be "hip."
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Paula Deen and butter. A couple other chefs are noted for their favorites in terms of both using it and eating it, but Deen's love of butter has reached Memetic Mutation levels. One of Paula's shows focused on fried butter. Straight up FRIED BUTTER. A home viewer was even invited to share a recipe, who also had a variation on the recipe for weight-conscious viewers (it was still fried and it was still butter).
- Sandra Lee loves to use alcohol in her recipes.
- The Neelys have an amazing love for hot sauce in their recipes.
- Alton Brown carries a nutmeg seed in his pocket at all times. He also has a strong fondness for both kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepper (to the point that he has used the latter in a dessert).
- Giada looooves mascarpone cheese, and finds a way to incorporate it in probably half of her recipes.
- Bobby Flay and chorizo, to the extent that he would willingly lose a throwdown if it means he can stick chorizo in something not normally associated with it.
- On Kids' Baking Championship, it's well-known that Valerie Bertinelli loves lemon. A lot of kids make desserts with her in mind.
- Also from KBC, Duff Goldman loves bacon. One season opener had the kids baking with it specifically to honor him, because Valerie had gotten a lot of lemon challenges to that point.
- In an inversion, Scott Conant of Chopped and Chopped Sweets hates red onion. Viewers commonly pan him for it, saying that his position means he cannot and should not let preference influence his judgments.
- In a variant, on Holiday Baking Championship, any baker who uses booze in his or her dessert scores brownie points with Nancy Fuller. If your dessert is supposed to be boozy and she doesn't taste it, she will be quite disappointed.
- Paula Deen and butter. A couple other chefs are noted for their favorites in terms of both using it and eating it, but Deen's love of butter has reached
- Transparent Closet: Brian Boitano during his series, so very very much. He was practically just carrying a sign around saying "Would you believe they want me to be in the closet? No, I can't either." note
- Travelogue Show: Several food-related ones have aired; among them are Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
- Two Decades Behind: Many people have remarked that Guy Fieri's colloquialisms and hairstyle can be explained only by assuming he fell into a coma sometime around 1995 and only recently woke up.
- The Wonka:
- Ted Allen on Food Detectives practically channels Wonka himself, casual sadism and all... maybe a little too well.
- Alton Brown also shows shades of this, though mostly on Good Eats. On ICA, he's a Bunny Ears Host, and on NFNS, he's the Stern Teacher meets Cool Uncle.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: In Sandra Lee's 2011 Halloween special, one segment features Sandra Lee dressed as a ghost, claiming to be the spirit of a Viennese ex-pirate who died in 1430 and was 560 years old. Assuming the episode was set in 2011, she's been dead for 581 years.
