Honolulu Lite
It used to be said that everybody eventually gets 15 minutes of fame. Today, I think it is that everybody eventually will get their own cooking show, even if they can't cook. The evolution of cooking
as entertainmentThat probably explains why I have been lumped in with five honest-to-God chefs giving cooking demonstrations this weekend at the BIA Home Building & Remodeling Show.
Exactly when cooking became entertainment, I'm not sure. For thousands of years, eating was something we did to stay alive. Then for a couple of hundred years, eating became entertainment (first food fight, 1623). Then cooking became entertainment, probably the year everyone got fondue pots for Christmas.
Julia Childs was really the first cooking entertainer. With her husky longshoreman's voice and, well, husky, longshoreman's body, she whipped up French dishes under the guise of teaching cooking. The real reason people watched Julia was to see her do weird things to a duck.
That led to the celebrity chefs we have today who still pretend like they are teaching people how to cook, when they are really putting on the Ritz, literally and figuratively.
Now there is an entire television channel devoted to cooking entertainment and every local television market has its own Sam Choy or Alan Wong.
I don't know where all this is headed, but I'm hoping for a special full-contact "Iron Chef" episode featuring Martha Stewart armed with a samurai sword and rusty paring knife. ("En Garde! Iron Chef France! Back off Iron Chef Japan or I'll carve out your giblets and use them for gravy!")
Apparently we've reached the point where you can't put on a home improvement and building show without including cooking entertainment. Which is cool. I'm just not sure what I'm doing there.
The lineup for cooking demonstrations at the Home Building Show looks like a really bad cognitive evaluation examination. Students, which person does not belong in this sequence: A) Chef Sean Kinoshita, Mid-Pacific Country Club; B) Chef Troy Teruya, Catch of the Day Sushi; C) Chef William Bruhl, Ryan's Grill; D) Chef Hideaki "Santa" Miyoshi, Tokkuri-tei; E) A newspaper humor columnist?
Nevertheless, I'll be there. Actually, I do have some background in cooking. During college, I cooked at a number of restaurants, including Salishan Lodge on the Oregon coast. Talk about cooking entertainment. One night I was working the steak pit when someone (no charges filed) accidentally set the exhaust vents above the cooking line on fire and the dining room had to be evacuated. ("Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Next show at 10.")
The Home Building & Remodeling Show runs Thursday to Sunday at the Neal Blaisdell Exhibition Hall. I'll be making "Haole Pupus" at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. Hopefully, fire extinguishers will be at the ready.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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