Food Network / YMMV

Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Jim Belushi's appearance on Guy's Grocery Games made absolutely no sense even in that wacky show. He came to pick a letter for that game and then jumped into one contestant's cart and was not mentioned again. Even in the Confession Cam, the contestant was very dumbfounded. By comparison, when Guy had his mom on the show, she did some announcing during the game and helped the final chef in his Bonus Round.
Broken Base: The channel doesn't air cooking shows as much as it used to. They still show them but more in the early morning or late evening. Most of the schedule has documentary-type shows and Reality TV. Fans of the channel are torn between liking this and wanting more cooking shows.
Crack Fic: Someone has written Alton Brown/Rachel Ray fanfic. Giada is also in the story... as a evil robot. The author's note expressly states that it's not meant to be taken seriously.
Crack Pairing: Paula Deen and Robert Irvine flirting during the Iron Chef Holiday Battle.
- Deen is a serial flirt, so any male chef (with the exception of her sons) can be substituted for Irvine and still be a viable Crack Pairing.
  - This series of pictures just adds more fuel to the Deen/Irvine fire (but is sorely lacking in Brain Bleach).
Creator's Pet:
- On Food Network Challenge, judge Kerry Vincent makes no secret of the fact that she adores Bronwen Webber, and when judging often downplays Bronwen's errors or makes light of them. Bronwen in turn has the most wins on the program.
Fetish Retardant:
- Sandra Lee tries to go for the "hot cougar" look, but just comes off as tasteless and frumpy. (You could say the exact same thing about Penny from The Next Food Network Star as well!)
- Meanwhile, the Neelys' uncanny ability to turn anything into a sexual innuendo has a tendency to gross some viewers out.
Funny Moments: On an episode of Cooks vs. Cons, the premise is that two professional cooks and two amateur cooks ("cons") go head to head in a cooking competition, with none of the hosts knowing which is which. One of the "cons" (a radiologist) beat the other amateur cook and the pro chefs, and completely fooled the celebrity chefs into thinking he was a professional based on his mastery of technique. When they asked where he learned all those advanced cooking techniques? He shrugged and said "Food Network."
Heartwarming Moments:
- On Kids' Baking Championship, one of the contestants burns himself on a pot and has to work single-handed. Instead of the usual "oh, well, he'll just have to work with it" on any other show on the network, the hosts and the contestants express worry, one even wishing that he'll be able to work with it. Heck, one of the hosts even helps him mix ingredients. And then another contestant helps him finish his dish!
- Happens fairly regularly on Kids' Baking Championship where the kids routinely pitch in to help their competitors in crisis, even when the reason they are struggling is their own fault. The "sucks for you" mentality omnipresent on the adult shows is refreshingly completely absent.
- Wedding Impossible, a special episode of Restaurant: Impossible which centers around host Robert Irvine's wedding to wrestler Gail Kim, has a lot of this.
- One episode of Chopped Junior, in which teen chefs were competing for a cooking scholarship, ended with the winner receiving a $40,000 scholarship to a culinary arts school. The other three contestants were then brought back out - and informed that the school was so impressed with all of them, they would each get scholarships as well. The first two students to be eliminated were given $5,000 scholarships, and the runner-up received a $20,000 scholarship. There wasn't a dry eye on the judges' panel.
Memetic Badass:
- Alton Brown.
- On the spinoff Cooking Channel, Nadia G and Chuck Hughes are starting to gain this reputation.
Moment of Awesome:
- The Great Food Truck Race - The story of Pho-nominal Dumplings, a triad of young women from North Carolina (two were immigrants from Taiwan). On the first week, their truck's engine caught on fire and suffered catastrophic failure. Undaunted, the gals found a sympathetic tow truck company, and sold product while their truck was hooked up, paying $100 every time they had to move spots. The host thought they were goners, but even after forking over a large chunk of their earnings to the tow truck, they were still in the race. Going slow but steady, they always seemed to just barely squeak by, avoiding elimination. In the final two weeks, they really picked up steam; when challenged to make a roadside attraction with $500, they burned through the phone lines and set up an impromptu roadside carnival, which succeeded wildly over the other two trucks. However, the Waffle Love truck (three brothers from Utah) were blasting everyone out of the water sales-wise with their niche product. It came down to dumplings versus waffles in Chicago, with the challenge to sell Chinese-themed dishes in Chinatown, Italian-themed dishes in Little Italy, and Greek dishes in Greektown. The dumpling truck blasted past Waffle Love in sales and were on the way to the finish line when the host called and said their sales in Greektown didn't count because they were just barely over the boundary line. They had to turn the truck around, sell another fifty Greek dishes, and then haul ass to the finish line - and they still won!
- The 2016 Holiday Baking Championship's Dark Horse Victory. Eight bakers - bakery owners, pastry chefs from high end resorts... and a home baker. The home baker, Jason Smith, was a short, scrawny Good Ol' Boy from the middle of nowhere Kentucky (accent to match), managed a cafeteria, a bit Book Dumb, had no formal training (he learned from his mom, grandmother, and aunts), and still managed to beat out the pros. And when they had him going up against the winners of the last two Holiday Baking Championships (teamed up with the children who won the Kids' equivalent), he beat them too. Jason's since gone on to win The Next Food Network Star and be a judge on Best Baker in America.
Network Decay:
- Zigzagged. The channel is still certainly about food at least. The shows on FN as of the last few years have taken a decidedly "home cook friendly" approach, axing many of the more technical shows (or relegating them to awkward hours of day/night) and series that focused on international cuisines and even former staples slowly parting ways (Emeril, Mario Batali, and others). A number of long-time viewers are split on whether or not this was a good thing. The ones who dislike the change tend to be more vocal; e.g. Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmerman ^note and practically anyone contributing to this article. Regardless, a return to what it used to be doesn't seem to be likely.
- Perhaps starting to be averted with the premiere of Heartland Table in September 2013, which is very popular with Food Network viewers who wanted a return to from-scratch cooking with instruction on cooking techniques.
The Scrappy:
- Noah from Ask Aida
- Sandra Lee.
- Rachael Ray to many.
- Bobby Flay, also to many.
  - Many contestants on the The Next Food Network Star - especially Season 7's Penny. She comes across as unapologetically bullying to the other contestants, brags about how hot she thinks she is, and openly sneers when she is on the winning team in a challenge.
- Guy Fieri also attracts much hate. It could be his over-the-top personality, it could be how he names his food, it could be simple food snobbery (given how often he extols simpler dishes on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives), or a couple other reasons. His scrappydom hit the mainstream with this scathing review in The New York Times in 2012. That being said, on his cooking show, Guy's Big Bite, he is much more reserved and less over-the-top and actually very knowledgeable.
  - "Actually very knowledgeable" is actually a hilarious way to describe him if you saw his debut on The Next Food Network Star, since the consistent criticism of him on that was that he was too technical and used too much professional chef terminology that was inaccessible to the average viewer.
  - Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Guy's reputation did improve significantly in 2020. During the pandemic, Guy earned much goodwill for raising over $21 million to help 21,000 workers hurt by the restaurant. At the same time, Guy won support from the LGBT community when news broke how he officiated several gay weddings as a tribute to his late lesbian sister, who died of melanoma cancer. During the racial protests of 2020, many activists wanted to replace Christopher Columbus with Guy Fieri as a symbol of Italian American pride, with a few even wanting to rename Columbus, Ohio to Flavortown.
- Molly Yeh. Her over-the-top bubbly personality was a turn-off for many, as were many of her recipes. Her popcorn salad even reached memetic mutation status well outside Food Network fans. And then came season 8 of Spring Baking Championship, where even those that hadn't minded her on her cooking show started turning against her for her hosting abilities and the baking challenges that were tailored to her tastes and recipes.
X-Pac Heat: Penny Davidi definitely has it. There is a sizable chunk of Food Network's audience who just doesn't want to see her face on ANY show.

YMMV / Food Network

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