Ramsay $$$, MasterChef Scouts, Spirited Awards, 50 Best Guess, and more...

Family Meal - Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019

Hello Tuesday,

Lotta TV talk today.

Let’s get to it…

The Saturation – Headline in The Hollywood Reporter: “Welcome to Peak Food TV: Inside Hollywood's Growing Hunger for Culinary Shows.” Sample stats from Michael O’Connell: “Domestically, more than 30 food-related series are expected to premiere over the coming year, joining the roughly 75 in production across platforms and the dozens of older library titles still in play… Plenty of the personalities (Ina Garten, Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis) who drove the [Food Channel] to its mid-aughts cultural ubiquity remain in place, but the brand has followed viewer tastes to new arenas… plucking talent from blogs and Instagram. The latest breakout, Girl Meets Farm star Molly Yeh, is a social media discovery whose debut season averaged a promising 1 million first-run views an episode….

[Gordon Ramsay] remains a powerhouse… Fox is said to earn north of $140 million in advertising revenue annually from Ramsay's four vehicles, three of them competitions. And the network pays him a handsome portion of that. Multiple sources paint his episodic fees at more than $400,000 on some of his longer-running series — with annual output topping 60 episodes.”

I am available for video, FYI.

P.S. – Breaking news headline from Michael Lallo in Sydney: “All three MasterChef Australia judges walk over pay dispute … Australia's Network 10 has pulled the plug on MasterChef Australia judges Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris. The trio - each on salaries in excess of $1 million - walked after 10 refused to up their pay by more than 40 per cent, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald understand.” The network CEO says they’re now scouting for judges at home and abroad.

Meanwhile on mobile, Eater’s Greg Morabito says “Quibi, a new short-form video platform from Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is gearing up to launch next year with a slate of original series including a pasta-themed show starring acclaimed LA chef Evan Funke.”

(Future) Awards Season – After spending 2019 in Singapore (as documented by yours truly) the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards has decided where they’re going to hold next year’s big ceremony. The idea for 2020 is that it will be a host region, though of course the event will take place in one city. Let’s do this, I’ll give you a quote from the organizers, and you try to guess where it’s going to go:

“The area boasts high quality produce, excellent restaurants and discerning palates. We look forward to bringing the global food community together again next year and helping many to discover this European culinary hotspot.”

Name that hotspot! (Answer at bottom.)

(Bar) Awards Season – The Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards were announced on Saturday in NOLA. A sampling of winners – American Bartender of the Year: Julio Cabrera (Cafe La Trova, Miami); International Bartender of the Year: Monica Berg (Tayer and Elementary, London); Best American Cocktail Bar: Attaboy (NYC); Best New American Cocktail Bar: Katana Kitten (NYC); Best International Cocktail Bar: Atlas Bar (Singapore); Best New International Cocktail Bar: MAYBE SAMMY (Sydney); Best Cocktail & Spirits Publication: SevenFifty Daily; Best Cocktail & Spirits Writer: Robert Simonson; Best New Cocktail / Bartending Book: Cocktail Codex (Alex Day, David Kaplan, Nick Fauchald); and the Helen David Lifetime Achievement award went to “Javier De Las Muelas who is championed as one of Spain’s, and the world’s, most prominent cocktail masters.”

Full list on the official TOTC site here. Congrats, all!

The Exploitation – Yet another (necessary) “Day in the Life of a Food Delivery Person” piece came out this week, this time from Andy Newman in the NYT. It’s a worthwhile article, but while a lot of readers focused in on DoorDash’s shady tip policy, this is probably the paragraph that deserves some of the most scrutiny in the halls of government:

“Postmates says its couriers in New York City average $18.50 an hour. But it counts only the time when a courier is out on an order as part of that hour. The long stretches I spent staring at my silent phone like a jilted boyfriend, waiting for it to ping? Not part of my workday, according to Postmates.”

Regulators… mount up. (Clickbait warning: Link leads straight to the 213)

The Policy – In SF, “The president’s large adult son [Don Jr.] dined with about 15 others at Pacific Heights restaurant Sorrel this week, following a meet-and-greet fundraiser event on Nob Hill... According to a representative for the restaurant, the business was unaware of the nature of the recent dinner, which was booked by another attendee, until the day before it took place…” So, Caleb Pershan reports in Eater SF, the restaurant tried to avoid confrontation best it could: “Instead of refusing service, Sorrel employees were given the option not to participate in the dinner, and proceeds from the evening are being donated to charity.” Great?

And last but not least – The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards 2020 will be hosted in... Antwerp, highlighting the regional gastronomy of Flanders. OBVIOUSLY. Announcement here. See you there?

And that’s it for today.

Add oil, and I’ll see you here Friday for next Family Meal.

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