Tuesday, March 8, 2011
TV Dinner Nashvillian Competing on America's Next Great Restaurant
Posted by Dana Kopp Franklin on Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 2:37 PM
- NBC.COM
- Eric Powell
Nashville's Eric Powell, who works in financial services and cooks for fun, has a concept called Meltworks, focusing on "grown-up grilled cheese sandwiches” — a familiar food elevated with fresh-baked bread, artisan cheeses and fresh vegetables and meats.
The judge/investors include mogul Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle, the restaurant that the show calls the model to inspire the budding entrepreneurs. The other two, Lorena Garcia and Curtis Stone, are both chefs and TV personalities.
The series debuted Sunday, winnowing 21 contestants to 10.
Powell got points for a well-prepared presentation. He also revealed an extra motivation to win — he and his wife were expecting a baby.
But it was a nail-biter for Powell — judges worried that great grilled cheeses might be too time-consuming for a fast-food business. He was the last of the 10 chosen and had to pass an additional challenge — making nearly 30 grilled sandwiches in 15 minutes.
A fascinating moment was when a stern-faced Flay said he was looking for contestants so passionate that they would "throw themselves under a bus" in their efforts to impress him. Let us hope it doesn't come to that.
Comments (7)
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Call me picky, but Next Great American Restaurant...when the goal is to establish a successful chain restaurant, doesn't speak 'great' to me. Appealing to the masses? Safe? Generic? But great?
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I'm guessing the execs at NBC didn't exactly stampede at "America's Next Safe Generic Lowest-Common-Denominator Restaurant."
I really enjoyed watching this show on Sunday! Glad a guy from Nashville made it in! Can't wait to see how Eric does through the rest of the show.
The existence of this show -- reality TV competition with people vying to create a restaurant chain -- tells you everything you need to know about modern American culture. Sad doesn't begin to describe it.
Granted, this show does sound like a lowbrow perfect storm — but still, that's tarring "modern American culture" with a pretty wide brush. Interest in local producers, food preparation and cultivation is higher than it has been in decades, and even a show as silly as IRON CHEF AMERICA can raise the visibility of someone as erudite as Jeffrey Steingarten (whose book THE MAN WHO ATE EVERYTHING I recently started re-reading, with great pleasure).
I understand your frustration, and share it to some degree — though if anything, AMERICA'S NEXT GREAT RESTAURANT is too high-falutin' for my taste in reality shows. (One of the happiest nights of my life involved my brother's crawfish etouffee and a marathon of WORLD'S DEADLIEST POLICE CHASES. You only wish I were kidding.) But if I lived in the 1950s, I'd hate to think my generation was being judged by CONFIDENTIAL magazine alone.
