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.