Monday, July 19, 2010

"chipolte," "taziki," "marscapone," "basalmic"

Open letter to Guy Fieri:

I love your various shows, man, but please learn to pronounce the names of your ingredients correctly.

Chipotle (chi-pot-le), not chipolte.

Tzatziki (tza-tzi-ki), not taziki.

Mascarpone (mas-car-po-ne), not Mars Capone (marscapone).

Balsamic (bal-sa-mic), not basalmic.

I know a lot of people who mispronounce words because of a sort of visual-verbal dyslexia. You might be one of them. It's just a matter of taking care to read the words correctly, and to hear them pronounced both slowly and correctly. You'll improve with practice.

Yours,


Kevin


_

2 comments:

Charles said...

Never seen this guy or his shows, but that was funny.

"Mars Capone." Heh.

Kevin Kim said...

Fieri is awesome. He was one of the earlier winners of "The Next Food Network Star," and is easily the most popular and successful of the Food Network newbies. Well... he's not really a newbie anymore; he's been hosting several shows for a few years, now. These include "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives," "Ultimate Recipe Showdown," and "Guy's Big Bite" (a title that would be funny to a Frenchman, given what "bite" is in French).

The man definitely has an outsize personality, and although he seems rather sloppy in the kitchen, one reason why I admire him is that his California fusion style showcases his easy familiarity with Asian ingredients, which he routinely incorporates into interesting East/West dishes. In contrast with Alton Brown, Fieri is an intuitive cook, not a logical/methodical/scientific one. Similar to Emeril, Fieri often eyeballs his ingredients and somehow arrives at amazing-looking dishes that seem to win over the crowds. He does call out proportions while he's putting a dish together, but he seems to do this only grudgingly, which may be a good thing: a perhaps-unintended effect is that the viewer has to observe more closely what Fieri is doing on his countertop.

Although I'm driven batty by Fieri's routine mispronunciations, no one can accuse him of not knowing his ingredients. He might not be able to name his reagents properly, but as one of the more proficient Food Network wizards, he understands their alchemical power.


Kevin