Adam Richman’s new TV series, Man Finds Food, has been indefinitely postponed by the Travel Channel. The series was originally scheduled to debut this evening with the showing of two half-hour episodes. This preview/review – prepared before the postponement was announced, should give everyone a taste of what they’re missing.
TV Review: ‘Man Finds Food’ on the Travel Channel
If you’re looking for a zany, weird and entertaining program that makes a half-hour go by pretty quickly, you may want to check out the new program Man Finds Food on the Travel Channel. The show premieres on Wednesday, July 2, 2014, with two episodes, the first based in Los Angeles and the second in Chicago. The premise of the show: Adam Richman goes to quirky – and sometimes slightly dangerous, neighborhoods in major cities to discover some surprisingly good restaurants. There’s a specific focus on “secret food finds,” both off-the-menu items and outrageous dishes.
Richman is funny but has the unfortunate tendency of channeling Guy Fieri. For many, including this viewer, a little bit of Fieri goes a long, long, long way; the same is sometimes true of Richman. Richman projects the personality of an immature, never-grown-up man who behaves as if he’s still in middle school. He often pretends that he and his crew are lost but I think this is just showmanship. There’s one humorous moment in which Richman and his cameramen and assistants are driving through L.A. and he asks a crew member why he’s never lived there. The crew member responds, “Because I hate the sun.”
I won’t cover every restaurant and sandwich featured in these episodes, as I dislike spoilers. But in L.A., Richman finds a New York steak with fixings that include eggs, bacon, cheese, toast, and potatoes. This ungodly sandwich is known as “Godzilla Destroys Skid Rokio.” He goes on to locate an inside-out grilled cheese sandwich on Melrose Avenue, a massive Mexican-Peruvian-Korean burrito in Alhambra, and The Jazzburger. The latter is a burger served with ten very spicy-hot Thai chilis, and the sandwich is found at a strip mall restaurant in East Hollywood.
The show is entertaining but not quite informative, for prospective chefs, as those preparing the food generally refuse to share their recipes and secret ingredients with Richman and his viewers. As you might gather from the limited descriptions found here, this is food that’s a million miles away from being heart healthy. In fact, if everyone were to dine on what Richman eats, cardiac surgeons would be billionaires and registered dieticians would go bankrupt. Another issue is that Richman loves sandwiches that include the rarest of rare cooked beef; if you like your meat cooked medium well or well done (and I plead guilty to that), it’s sometimes nauseating to watch Richman salivate over these pinkish-red concoctions.
In Chicago, Richman makes stops at Logan Square, Urkranian Village, West Town, and the Fulton Market District, which is located in the South Side. Among the “hidden gems” he discovers are a super-sized Mexican torta, a Shrimp Po-Boy, and a 3-pound Italian ribeye (rare) meat roast and potatoes combo. He also finds a hodgepodge bigger-than-enormous sandwich that includes short rib, skirt steak, sweetbreads, linguica sausage and chicken hearts. This is the episode where we are expected to believe that Richman and crew cannot find the A Tavola restaurant in West Town which is located in a home rather than in a commercial structure. OK, play along.
In future episodes of Man Finds Food, the show will visit Atlanta, Boston, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Portland (Oregon), and San Francisco. This is a show that may literally represent an acquired taste. It’s entertaining but relatively harmless – unless, that is, you seek out the food that’s featured on the show. If so, you might want to find out when your local well-qualified cardiac surgeon can perform your heart bypass operation.
Joseph Arellano
This article was originally published by the Blogcritics website:
http://blogcritics.org/tv-review-man-finds-food-on-the-travel-channel/
Preview DVDs were provided by the Travel Channel.
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