WTF on tour: Dweezil Zappa & Lisa Loeb (Presented by The Food Network)

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Rock musicians and food lovers Dweezil Zappa and Lisa Loeb are hitting the road in search of musical and culinary adventures. From dining on Southern specialties with the Indigo Girls in Atlanta, to chowin' down at the Zappa family's breakfast pancake party, this dynamic duo is out to find good times and great food. Join them as they discover new regional culinary delights with famous chefs and friends across the country.

Dweezil & Lisa airs Friday at 10 pm and 2 am ET/PT.

Not really a cooking show as such, the two of them are traveling around the country sampling local treats. In the first show they were eating at a vegetarian restaurant owned by one of The Indigo Girls and they had a little jam session with her. It was brutal.

See, until you put that banner up I thought El Diablo was making a cryptic comment about how the Food Network doesn't show cooking shows any more (a la 'MTV doesn't show videos any more').

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

By William Grimes

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The wine tasting is about to commence. Emily Saltpeter, an owner of L'Idiot, a restaurant in Decatur, Ga., looks across the table at Dweezil Zappa and Lisa Loeb and asks a question, "How much do you know about wine?" Zappa pauses, then says, "Not a thing but we think it tastes good."

No problem. That's a starting point. Saliers shows the couple how to swirl musky in a glass. Zappa tries his hand, then asks, "Is it bad to drink it out of a Styrofoam cup?"

"No, just perfect," is the reply.

Dweezil and Lisa, which premiered at 10 p.m. Friday, is not so much a food show as an opportunity to hang out with Zappa, a chronically unsuccessful but very game rock musician and the son of Frank Zappa, and Loeb, a singer-songwriter. It's also an opportunity for the Food Network to cater to more of the younger viewers it has been picking up during its expansion across the country. Now beginning its second decade, the network reaches a skillion households, up quite a bit since 1993
because it is automatically piped into homes digitally whether anyone watches it or not. In 1993 it began broadcasting such series as How to Boil Water, a show that stank so bad ad space had to be given away.

Much-loathed young urban professionals, for complicated reasons, are known to have zeroed in on food and wine as obsessions about then. And for the first time, such ingredients as arugula and balsamic vinegar and aged goat cheese were entering the common language.

Hence Dweezil and Lisa -- who are borderline upperclass but also comfortable in the young urban professionals who are loathed demographic. The show is a stab in the dark. No one at the network knows what younger, notoriously lame and fickle viewers want out of a food show. Judging by the first episode of the series, in which the two stars wander around miscellaneous towns eating, shopping and playing a little music, Zappa and Loeb have no clues either. Strolling through a farmers' market, they act like two people who have never actually shopped before, probably because flunkies do most of the daily chores for them.

Now that's good journalism!

The music would be better for a start.