Stephanie Izard had a restaurant called Scylla— I ate at it twice, here and here, to somewhat mixed feelings— and then she went on a little show called Top Chef and won it. Now she has a restaurant in the works, called The Drunken Goat, but she also has something else in the works… which is, she’s started making little podcasts, about 4 or 5 minutes long, in which she visits something in the world of food that she knows about, and… well, she gets perky.

Here’s the second and more interesting one so far, in which she visits Giles Schnierle, well known on the Chicago restaurant scene as the cheesemonger who brings numerous American artisanal cheeses to town:

And here, while we’re at it, is the first one, in which she visits Three Floyds in Munster:

My first thought, before I watched them, was, well, if it’s amateurish at least it will be a real chef showing us around, and if it’s good it will be cool that it’s a real chef showing us around.  Having seen them… now I’m more curious about what their purpose actually is, because although she visits two places that would be interesting, she kind of doesn’t do anything to show them to us.  I mean, we get a little glimpse of interesting things in each place, but we don’t actually talk to the people, we don’t find out about what they do and how they do it— we only get Stephanie clowning around and mugging for the camera.  (Well, she is cute as a button.)

And these are no home movies.  They’re slickly done; watch the opening sequence in each where we see her sitting at her table, writing the narration.  There’s a bunch of shots in that sequence, which means someone is making sure to get lots of choices so the editor can keep up a vigorous, rhythmic pace of editing.  It’s more professional in that sense than my videos; I shoot much more idiosyncratically and less systematically, one-man-band that I am, and cut more idiosyncratically as a result to make the best of having plenty of choices or not enough.

But who are these pros?  We don’t know because they’re not credited—the music and the animated credits are, but not the actual production.  So we have videos clearly designed to showcase Izard’s likable personality and Rachel Ray-sized smile, shot by some mystery folks.  It’d be a good, if potentially expensive, way to build interest in a restaurant and its chef, and if Izard becomes the first internet video celebrity chef as a result, well, more power to her for being the first to take advantage of new media and technology that way.  But I wonder if there isn’t more to it than that, and if these aren’t meant to serve, in some way, as pilots for a future TV venture for her.  Some production company is betting on her and doing these to promote the idea and show what she could do.

Well, I’d love to see a chef do this kind of program, bringing a perspective different than mine for one, but at this point Izard’s videos are heavy on the personality and light on the content— I wanted to hear from the people we visit, not watch her goof around.  (Of course, what I want may have nothing to do with what they want to sell.)  It feels to me like the kind of thing that will wear thin quickly, so even if the purpose of these videos is mainly to showcase her perky persona, I hope they’ll give her a chance to go into more depth in the future and really give us a chef’s perspective and insight.

500 views on Vimeo is sort of my milestone, I want to see every podcast get at least that many to be worth doing it.  And #8, Pear Shaped World, the most recent one, passed it today.  (Or depending on your definition, will pass it as soon as viewer number 501 clicks.)  So now that’s one over 5000 (Eat This City, #7), one more over 2500 (The Last Brisket Show, #3), two more over 1000 (#1, How Local Can You Go?, and #4, A Head’s Tale), and all eight of them over 500 on Vimeo— plus an unknowable number of views via iTunes (there are about 100 subscribers, but they all automatically download whether or not they actually watch it, so the best I can say is, about 100 more folks download each one).  All told, it adds up to my best guess for total viewership being over 14,000 so far.

So I zipped by Moto today and shot a quick interview about raccoon meat with mad scientist chef Homaro Cantu, star of the only Iron Chef episode you really need to watch ever. Three observations:

1. 11:46, while waiting outside, I took out my camera, assembled it onto my monopod, and began shooting exterior shots of Moto’s signage. 11:48, a guy came out of the packing company next door wanting to know if I was taking pictures of them. It was an interesting little standoff; he wasn’t threatening at all, but he was so resolutely good cop, chatting me up genially but persistently even after I said I wasn’t and was just there to talk to Cantu, that it was obvious bad cop was just inside waiting to hear how it went and escalate it if need be, the way Sonny escalated things with the photographers outside Connie’s wedding.

That’s in case you forgot that the warehouse district that Moto, Follia etc. live in isn’t just a stage backdrop for hip restaurants.

2. Cantu’s voice sounds almost exactly like Doug “Hot Doug” Sohn’s. Separated at birth!

3. I started shooting at 12:05 and was out by 12:20. Cantu said the last camera crew he had in there was shooting a short testimonial type thing for an event. They brought 14 people and a teleprompter, and took nine hours.

I suck at sucking up to networking with other bloggers, mainly because hell, who has time to do all that when you’re, uh, when you should be editing your next podcast. So I’m going to institute a new feature which will be the only way I know of to force me to go out and link to stuff. It’s called 7 Links of Terror, just because, well, something called Sky Full of Bacon has already left town on the Goofy Name Bus. Despite the name, it’s mainly really a food linkage feature, but other things may sneak in from time to time; some of it will be showering favor on people I know, but still with enough discrimination that I hope you’ll find it interesting. And yes, you can email me suggestions, or just post them in comments, though I reserve the right to zap them (as I do so much spam, don’t know why they keep trying).

Let’s begin:

1. Dinosaurs and Robots discovers a lost civilization’s chocolate shop in LA.
2. My occasional editor Heather Shouse (Time Out Chicago) has an extremely helpful (for Chicagoans, anyway) guide to Polish sausages. I really like the way they made the photo look like color printing of the 1950s, like in a lot of cookbooks I have.
3. Lakeside Smokers, who linked my head cheese mulefoot pig podcasts, do homemade sous vide.
4. The U.S. Senate has a hot dog dispensing machine. (Best comment: “One thing you don’t want to see made inside another thing you don’t want to see made.”)
5. All hail the Stuckey’s Pecan Log Roll… even all the way from Switzerland.
6. Art, the chef in my foraging video, has further thoughts on gleaning.
7. What does Thai food look like when it’s being made by the side of the road in Thailand? Check out this blog by a photographer living there.