I finally got a little quality time with the Cooking Channel so I am attempting to review several of the shows I have not seen.  Time to experience Food Jammers.

Thanks, Cooking Channel, that’s 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.  At first I thought Food Jammers was a show about molecular gastronomy not unlike Planet Green’s Future Food which chronicles the creative process at Chicago’s Moto but it isn’t.  It should be, but it isn’t.

Food Jammers is more like Mythbusters, no Robot Wars than a cooking show.  In fact, actual flavor is not a goal.  In one episode they decide to make a cake in the image of an old car.  Host Nobu Adilman comments, “I could care less what this cake is going to taste like.”  If you enjoy food and TV shows about food there is really no reason to watch the show.  Like Justin Bieber, this Canadian import is best left north of the border.

Here’s the gist – three slackers with a backyard full of junk try to McGyver creations that can only loosely be considered food. Or as the network’s web site puts it:

Far from the ordinary stand-and-stir cooking show, Food Jammers features a high-impact, low-fi culinary contraption conceived, designed and constructed in the Jammers’ warehouse studio. Food Jammers are artists, inventors and dudes who can really cook. Each week these three offbeat adventurers come up with a crazy scheme to rock the food world. With bold ideas, heavy machinery and a taste for the extreme, they turn up the heat and bring on the inventions. Follow along on this tasty, madcap food odyssey that’s sure to satisfy your craving for an unusual viewing adventure.

I really cannot understand why the Cooking Channel chose to air this show.  Sure hosts Adilman, Micah Donovan and Chris Martin display some amazing ingenuity for creating things but they neither create nor try to create good food.  Even if they did, I’m not sure you would want to eat it as all three apparently believe bathing should only be done in moderation.

The production value of the show is poor as lighting, cinematography and editing, like taste, are only afterthoughts.  Frankly I have seen much better work on youtube.  The animations between scenes are humorous.

Now after all this Food Jammers-bashing one might think I dislike the show but I don’t.  It is entertaining, or at least could be with a jug of cheap wine and a bag of Amsterdam’s finest.  It just isn’t a food show.  In fact it is an affront to foodism (is that a word?) and perhaps that is the point.  But since the purpose of the Cooking Channel is to appeal to the foodies who have felt alienated by Food Network’s recent direction it comes across as a slap in the face to their target audience.  After watching it I’m left wondering what Bob Tuschman was smoking when he selected Food Jammers as part of his inaugural line-up at the new network.

Tags: Ben Roche, Bob Tuschman, Chris Martin, cooking channel reviews, Food Jammers, food network, Future Food, Homaro Cantu, Justin Bieber, Micah Donovan, Nobu Adilman, robot wars, the cooking channel