I Watched The SBS Food Network For 12 Hours Straight And Went Slightly Mad

When SBS launched Australia’s first ever 24/7 free-to-air food channel last November, the internet’s excitement was palpable. It was very exciting! TV is great! Food is great! How could this possibly go wrong!

But then when we actually got the Food Network, the conversation seemed to peter out. Were we disappointed? Did we expect something different? It’s still rating well apparently, reportedly attracting 2.4 percent of total TV viewers and 5 percent of the target audience of women (the fact that the vast majority of shows on the Food Network are hosted by middle-aged, white men hasn’t been a massive deterrent, apparently).

SBS Food Network is the absolute worst and I can't stop watching it.

— Craig Daveson (@CraigDaveson) November 30, 2015

I’ve dabbled in a little Food Network watching in my down time between projects (re: being hungover/procrastinating/unemployed) but I didn’t really know what it had to offer outside of the occasional episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Is it still the endless cornucopia of content of which we dreamed? Or had our expectations wilted like that bunch of Swiss chard we kept in the fringe, hoping it would coax us into a cleaner lifestyle?

There was only one way to find out: watch 12 uninterrupted hours of the SBS Food Network in one day. Is there a better way to do this, no there isn’t, let’s do this.

Hour 1

It’s 8 am and I’m watching Restaurant Impossible, which is an American show about an English chef called Robert Irvine who fixes up places that should probably be shut down by the health department (no, it’s nothing like Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares how dare you, GUARDS!). Robert Irvine wears very tight t-shirts and looks like a giant’s bicep with what appears to be a giant’s thumb on top, which is in fact his head.

He meets Keith and Stephanie who own a restaurant named Mama E. Both Keith and Stephanie are bad at business, and maybe also cooking. They are about to get a divorce because they’re so bad at cooking. “I’ve never seen such a crap place in my whole life,” says Robert Irvine, as the veins in his neck swells. Robert Irvine cannot get over how disgusting this place is, something that Keith finds very distressing, but Robert Irvine reminds him that it’s not about pride it’s about FOOD, and also the fact that he’s got a hair dryer sitting in the middle of his dining room.

Robert Irvine takes them to a recording studio so they can sing together. “YOU NEED THAT HARMONY IN LIFE,” Robert Irvine says and then suddenly, everyone is good at business.

Hour 2

I am very excited because now Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is on! I knew the name Guy Fieri long before I actually knew who he was, and I also knew that I was meant to hate him because he’s tacky and likes to put liquid cheese on everything.

… but I think I love Guy Fieri.

In Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy drives around America looking for small eateries who all inevitably make variations on the same sloppy things, i.e bowls of chili and pulled pork sandwiches. Guy goes to a place where the “vegetarian girlfriend can go eat with her boyfriend who wants braised beef” which reminds me of the inherent sexism of food and how whenever my boyfriend and I go out for breakfast and he orders muesli (I don’t know) and I order some sort of hearty carb with smashed stuff on top, waiters always assume the muesli is for me. The chef serves Guy some gross-looking spaghetti with chili on top. Guy loves it.

My breakfast of hot cross buns seems very flavourless all of a sudden. Why didn’t I spring for the bakery ones and just go the cheap supermarket brand? Guy would never have done that. Guy would have made his own, except the sultanas would be bacon bits and the butter would be a thick maple syrup sauce that was made out of milkshakes.

Hour 3

I have finished my breakfast. Five Ingredient Fix comes on, which is a show specifically designed for lazy people like me who have zero culinary creativity. The host Claire Robinson tells me that she’s making snacks for ‘game day’, a tradition that I really wish existed in Australia. This is going to be great!

SO HOW COME I HATE THIS SHOW AND THIS WOMAN SO MUCH?

Clare Robinson is my enemy. She cannot stop talking about how much junk food she supposedly eats. “I can tear through some hot wings, when I’m at a bar I’ll order two or three plates just for MYSELF,” she says, I guess expecting us to laugh and say: “No way, Clare! NO FREAKING WAY”. She is the Gone Girl Cool Girl. I wonder how many murders she has committed. I wonder if these hot wings are poisoned.

She spends most of the episode explaining hot sauce and making a dip that has shredded chicken in it. The drink that goes with the hot wings is, of course, shots. Shots that have hot sauce in them. “I LOVE the flavour of wings,” Clare says. Yeah, we fucking know.

Hour 4:

Bizarre Foods is a show that I can only assumed is designed to stave off your appetite while you are dieting, because I cannot understand why anyone would want to watch a show where a man literally saws off a wildebeest’s testicle with a pen knife and then eats it. I don’t care how picturesque Namibia is. I don’t care. Fuck you, SBS.

Hour 5

Yay, SBS! The Food Network, as if cosmically aware that it was losing me one wildebeest ball at a time, has put on another episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives to placate me.

Guy has inspired my appetite once more and I decide to whip up a pasta with random stuff in the fridge. I’ve got tomato sauce, olives and leftover sausages from a fancy butcher—this could be great! Isn’t the Food Network all about using whatever limited ingredients and talent you have at your disposal and creating a masterpiece?

So why does it look like secondhand pasta that a dog vomited up, oh well.

It didn’t really matter that my pasta was somewhat lacklustre, because there was an ad that put me off my food every time it came on. This ad was for the Scholl Velvet Smooth Express Pedi.

WHY IS THERE AN AD ON THE FOOD NETWORK ABOUT A TOOL THAT MANUALLY SHAVES LAYERS OF SKIN OFF YOUR FOOT. WHY WOULD I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THIS PRODUCT WHILE I’M WATCHING GUY FIERI INGEST A PLATE FULL OF BBQ BRISKET.

Hour 6

Now Giada at Home is on and she is making desserts for her similarly thin and tan girlfriends. ‘Espresso cake with buttercream and caramel glass’ sounds like something my ideal self would make, just after I slough off the flesh on my feet so as to appear as smooth and unblemished as a vulnerable newborn baby.

Once I heard on a podcast that Giada went on a date with Drake. I also heard that John Mayer maybe broke up her marriage? Giaaaaaddaaa!

Giada has a very calming manner, pronounces Italian words correctly and is very together. Being ‘together’ is part of her brand I suspect, which is why she has giant white platters of lemons strategically placed in different corners of her kitchen. I would like to imagine that I could cook like this, but this show also makes me realise how much physical stuff is involved in cooking, for example, a food processor. Do you have a food processor? Who the fuck has a food processor! Am I a philistine because I don’t have a food processor?

Giada is making me feel like a real asshole.

Hour 7

Cutthroat Kitchen is a cooking competition that allows contestants to buy ‘sabotages’ that make cooking an almost impossible task, which makes culinary skills secondary to actual survival skills. Sometimes they must do all their cooking while in a canoe, other times they have to hold a bowling ball and do all their cooking one-handed. This show is great.   

Hour 8

I’m finally watching Chuck’s Eat the Street, which the Food Network ads have been threatening since 8am this morning. Chuck is a man who is covered in tattoos, speaks loudly over constant guitar music and tells me that Houston has “buzz”. I start to realise that loud white American men pretending to discover local buzz is the backbone of 99 percent of food shows on the planet.

Now Chuck is chasing pigs, learning how to make BBQ ribs and says: “My taste buds are ready to rock!” Now he is eating a grasshopper taco. He likes it.

Hour 9

I’m someone who likes to keep busy, which often means I work through the weekend (look at what you hath wrought, Miranda from Sex and the City!) and when I do this I often fantasise about a day of just watching TV. Spoiler: it’s super boring!

Despite being enveloped in restlessness that causes me to check the fridge every 10 minutes, I am very much enjoying Barefoot Contessa! Taylor Swift is obsessed with the Barefoot Contessa, and I can see why. I would love nothing more than to explore her crabapple tree plantation on the vast grounds of her country home, wrap myself in one of her enormous cashmere shawls and enjoy freshly baked cookies while sitting at pristine counters and inhaling vanilla-scented air.

Today the Barefoot Contessa is making chocolate cake with thick frosting, before taking her special guest to go pick kale from a local garden. “We’re having such a good time,” the Barefoot Contessa explains. Her house is so cosy and every meal she makes looks like the inside of my dreams. “Let’s have wine!” Barefoot Contessa says, and she and her bud sit in front of a barn in shawls, munching on kale salad and guzzling red.

I don’t have any red wine but I have some cans left over from Meredith. Maybe they’re still good?

Hour 10

Update: the Meredith beer was not good. I drank it anyway.

Okay, so Mystery Diners is the most bizarre show I’ve seen on the Food Network. The premise is that managers of restaurants and bars hire private investigators to catch their staff doing dodgy things. In this episode a man named Daniel suspects that his bar staff has been stealing alcohol. One of his drink specials is called the ‘Gas Mask’, which is a shot full of alcohol that burns your throat, which you drink with a straw? It sounds so terrible. The hosts congratulate Daniel on being original.

Daniel also suspects that his employees are serving off-menu items, which disturbs him because what if someone else was serving the Gas Mask! Everyone agrees that that would be very bad. It turns out that yes, his staff are serving off-menu cocktails.

Daniel ends up firing both of his staff members. He is so thankful for God, hidden cameras and the whole Mystery Diners team.

Hour 11

Hey, and you know what? Fuck all these Heston Blumenthal ads. Every 10 minutes his giant smug face and his space glasses that are probably made out squid ink mist, lamb tears and liquefied Werther’s Originals pops up on my TV and it’s driving me CRAZY.  This morning I had no feelings towards Heston, now I legitimately despise him. “I’m reinventing food,” says Heston to his friends, probably. I am getting so mad at the things that I imagine Heston is saying to his friends.

Hour 12

Adrian Richardson’s Secret Meat Business is a show that I had been looking forward to seeing because I am a dirty meat-eater who hasn’t read Eating Animals yet.

I guess the name probably should have indicated that this show was coming from a very specific viewpoint — meat business, get it? Because men naturally gravitate towards meat, women naturally gravitate towards kale and Heston naturally gravitates towards foam made from the shoes of 18^th century orphans and crystallised Weet-Bix.

“When it comes to roasting baby animals over hot coals, no one does it better than the Greeks,” Adrian Richardson says. He just keeps referring to the meat as a “nice, young baby goat”. I know we’re supposed think about our food sources and the ethical implications of eating meat, but good god, I would give anything in the world for him to stop talking about roasting babies. When he’s done eating the baby, Richo (he refers to himself as “Richo”) says: “Everybody knows I love a bit of skirt…BEEF SKIRT.” Oh Jesus.

I wish I wasn’t eating sausages for dinner. I’m also eating kale, because I’m a mindless robot, yum yum bitter leaves.

What I have Learnt From The Last 12 Hours

What a day! It sure has been a day all right, no doubt about that.

This is strange because I genuinely thought that watching the Food Network would be a fantastic way to spend 12 hours, and that maybe I would glean some recipes and tips from it? I don’t think I picked up any tips, but I was truly taken by most of the shows.

I do think that SBS could beef up their local content and I hope that’s the eventual plan. We have so many dreamy cooks in Australia (and cooks of colour! More non-white chefs, please!) and it would be amazing to see more of them on the Food Network. I’ve made some new friends today, and hey, I’ve even made some enemies. Just like life, isn’t it? The Food Network is just like life.