This past weekend, the Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival was held in Atlantic City, NJ and Food Network personalities such as Tyler Florence, Paula Deen, Robert Irvine, and Anne Burrell were all in attendance. I took a look around to see what people were saying about the event and it was interesting to see.
With 2 episodes already airing for 3 Days to Open with Bobby Flay, and another scheduled to air tonight, I thought it would be interesting to look at the reviews for the restaurants on Yelp. Of course the restaurant is going to have a good amount of business after opening with Bobby Flay visiting and the free local publicity. Also, the restaurant gives their update to Food Network, so they will definitely not say anything bad about themselves or the business and say everything is going great. Onto the first 3 restaurants reviews of 3 Days to Open with Bobby Flay:
This week Lisa Odom, David Quintana, Josh Breen, and Won Kim competed to become MET Back Bay's executive chef. David Quintana was the first chef eliminated on this episode after his burger was too dry. Josh Breen was the 2nd chef eliminated when they didn't think he could handle a restaurant of that size. 
The order of eliminations this season were: Cristie Schoen, Kara Sigle, Josh Lyons, Eric Lee, Judson Allen, Linkie Marais, Emily Ellyn, Malcolm Mitchell, Martita Jara, Nikki Martin, Ippy, Martie Duncan, Yvan Lemoine, and Michele Ragussis. Nikki and Ippy were eliminated during the same week to get us down to the final 4, and Martie, Yvan, and Michele were eliminated during the finale. Martie was eliminated first during the finale, but I don't think it was because she had the least votes, but because they wanted 1 person for each mentor in the end.
Tonight, the season finale of Food Network Star will air, and the season 8 winner will be revealed. The episode will feature never before seen footage of the season as well as some of everyone's favorite moments. I do not have any insider info or anything, but this poll has Justin Warner receiving a whopping 70% of the about 300 votes. Also, by looking at Twitter, all other finalists went home after the filming of the finale (in case you didn't know, the finale was taped this week and is not live). So, I have no doubts that Justin Warner will be the winner of Food Network Star Season 8. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
After watching last night's episode of Chef Wanted with Anne Burrell, I was curious about some of the contestants and stumbled upon what looks like a webpage that was put together for the casting of the show.
As stated earlier, Robert Irvine and his wife Gail Kim will be featured in a special on Food Network that will air on Saturday, August 18th. Now we know more details about the special that will be called Wedding: Impossible.
This week the six remaining finalists had to shoot a 30 second promo video about their show that would then be reviewed by a panel of current Food Network personalities such as Robert Irvine, Sunny Anderson, Jeff Mauro, Melissa D'Arabian, and Aaron Sanchez. After the promo, there would be an elimination where all remaining contestants would film a pilot. All of the promos were filmed in a bright green trailer and each of the finalists had only 3 takes to film their promo. Everyone used all 3 takes and stumbled a bit in their first 2 takes to make their third take dramatic. Who knows if they actually limited them to 3 takes as all of the promos had no stuttering or errors.
There will be a special episode of Chopped with previous winners of Food Network Star that will air at 8pm on July 22nd, 2012. This will air right before the Food Network Star finale at 9pm where the newest winner will be announced. The competitors will include: Melissa d’Arabian, Amy Finley, Jeff Mauro, and Aarti Sequeira. Also, instead of the normal Chopped judges, Bobby Flay, Giada De Laurentiis and Alton Brown will be judging the contestants.
6-17-12, 1815 hours, Catherine Cora (age 45) was driving and involved in a minor traffic collision
where she rear-ended another vehicle. The driver of the other vehicle reported that he believed that
Cora might be under the influence. Officer Battaglia arrived and contacted Cora and noticed that she
displayed symptoms of alcohol intoxication. Cora stated she had consumed three bottles of beer prior
to driving. Officer Battaglia conducted a DUI investigation and determined that Cora was too intoxicated
to safely operate a motor vehicle. Cora provided two breath samples which registered her BAC at .20
and .19 and a blood sample which registered her BAC at .19. Cora was issued a citation and admitted
into the Sobering Center.
This week, the remaining finalists were tasked with doing a 3 minute live cooking demo to a hired audience at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival. I am guessing the hired audience had to sign a waiver to appear and swear they wouldn't reveal the finalists they saw at the festival. During their 3 minute cooking demo, they had to present their dish and give cooking tips, but the twist was that each of their presentations would be sabotaged to try to exploit their weaknesses. No matter what the results, we all knew that someone from Team Giada would be going home to keep the teams even for the next episode.
