From Facebook

Jimmy and Ashley with their finished Minecraft Cake in Episode 3

​Jimmy Wong continues to perfect the art of being more awesome than the rest of us. The 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist, actor, goofball and YouTube sensation launched a new YouTube channel in December where he and his hyper-adorable co-host, Ashley Adams, show you how to re-create the food and drinks from your favorite nerd-centric video games, TV shows and movies. In the photo above, they show off the finish product inspired by cake found in the video game Minecraft.

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Being the queen of YouTube cooking shows means presiding over a fuzzy and often unfunny wasteland. But Hannah Hart's My Drunk Kitchen is the real deal, meaning of course that, if we ran the Food Network, Hart would be hosting every program: cocking eyebrows over a smudged champagne flute and stumbling around her kitchen in an attempt to ring some sort of shortcut-heavy meal out of a drunken stupor. "It's summertime, guys," she says, preparing to make ice cream. "The time of moisture and defeat."

In addition to hosting the show that launched a half-million YouTube views and thousands of embarrassing comments (marry me, have babies with me, and so forth), Hart, a Berkeley grad who currently calls New York City home, has unveiled "Advice from the Hart." On this new "show," Hart presents a flurry of viewer questions. Not infrequently they relate to food and drink. Sort of. She also answers them. Sort of.

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Plenty of cooking show hosts talk about their mothers, but Ron Locke does so with a preacher's conviction, earnestly evoking her presence in his journey to the kitchen (and YouTube) almost constantly as he cooks. Known to his YouTube fans as The Chuckwagon Cowboy, Locke hails from rootin', tootin' Racine, Wisconsin, a little-known capitol of cowboy country. In his first official episode, sporting a knock-off Stetson, he hypes his forthcoming cookbook Cooking With Momma and shares one of momma's classic recipes: No-Peek Chicken, a gooey, beige casserole of breasts bolstered with three kinds of packaged soup -- cream of mushroom, cream of celery, and powdered onion.

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Sometimes, we like to test the Internet. We so thoroughly enjoyed the video of a metal-themed cooking show a friend posted on Facebook yesterday that we wondered if it didn't epitomize a larger trend. We took a two-minute jaunt through YouTube and humanity's e-presence came through loudly, hungrily, and darkly. We should have known. Metal is, after all, typically intricate and difficult to play; it requires precision, much like baking, frying, or sushi-slicing. If you'd like to stomp, grunt, hiss, and screech your way through the black fruits of our search--five of our favorite metal-themed cooking show videos--read on:

5. Cooking For Metalheads: Davie Malson, the jolly German hesher behind Cooking For Metalheads, probably drew valkyries on his folders in high school. "There's only one thing that you can cook for a metalhead, and that's meat--raw goddamned meat," he bellows unconvincely. "Put some of this shit into this shit so we can fucking eat it alright?" Malson stops massaging his ground beef to drink a beer, which he does very deliberately, like a 9th grader.

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Bravo

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Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that the rumors of a Top Chef All-Stars season are true! TV Guide Magazine released an official report from Bravo that the upcoming eighth run of the Emmy award-winning competitive cooking show will include an all-star cast of eighteen runners-up from previous Top Chef seasons, including Marcel Vigneron, Richard Blais, Fabio Viviani, Stephen Asprinio, Tiffany Derry, Spike Mendelsohn, Michael Isabella, Dale Talde, Tiffani Faison, Jamie Lauren, Antonia Lofaso, Elia Aboumrad, Dale Levitski, Casey Thompson, Tre Wilcox, Carla Hall, Jennifer Carroll and Angelo Sosa.

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Fox

Gordon Ramsay tastes a contestant's dish

​Tomorrow night FOX premieres a new cooking competition show in which home cooks will compete for the title of MasterChef.  The top 50 contestants will cook the signature dishes that got them on the show for judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot Bowles, who will weed out the talent and move the best cooks forward.  What makes this competition unique from such hits as Top Chef, Chopped, and Ramsay's own Hell's Kitchen is that none of the competitors are professional chefs.  In fact, most of them have completely different careers as lawyers, sales associates, and financial advisers, yet this show has invoked the power to name one of these amateur yet perhaps talented cooks a "Master Chef."

So, the question is: what really makes a chef, and how do we distinguish between a chef and a cook? Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW's Good Food and owner of Angeli Caffe, points out that "a chef is definitely not merely a cook.  In fact, many chefs haven't really cooked in years.  That's the whole conceit for Top Chef Masters." Kleiman elaborates: "chef means leader or chief. Someone who leads a brigade. There is a managerial component to being a chef."

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Food Network

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What do LA Chefs Michael Cimarusti (Providence), Ludo Lefebvre (Ludo Bites), Ben Ford (Ford's Filling Station) and David Myers (Comme Ça, Sona) have in common? They've all taken their turn as challengers on Food Network's Iron Chef America. While Cimarusti was the only Los Angeles chef whose cuisine ultimately reigned supreme, during season 6's Battle Blackfish, Makoto Okuwa -- executive chef of Manhattan Beach's Sashi Sushi + Sake Lounge and former sous chef to Iron Chef Morimoto -- is about to enter Kitchen Stadium for the first time as challenger to Iron Chef Michael Symon.

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It's been two months since Top Chef: Season 5 alum Alex Eusebio and his wife, Sara Mann, opened Sweetsalt Food Shop, Toluca Lake's neighborhood sandwich joint. Admittedly "turned off by the idea of big restaurant drama" after his Top Chef experience, Eusebio and his wife opted for a more simple, community-focused approach with Sweetsalt, an old-school sandwich joint where you "get a sandwich, see what we have in our deli case and go on your merry way."

Without budget for a soft launch, Sweetsalt opened on January 13. "We expected 10 people, but 100 people showed up," said Eusebio. He has had to double his staff, increase focus on training and upgrade his point-of-sale system, all while meeting the ever-growing demand of his customers.

Sweetsalt Food Shop

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BREADBAR

Lee's Housemade Kimchee

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A finalist from Food Network's The Next Food Network Star is popping up in LA. No, not Melissa D'Arabian. We're talking about Debbie Lee, who is cooking up her version of soot jeep - think Korean-inspired pub grub - at BREADBAR's Third Street location until Saturday, April 10.

Lee's limited-time SeoulTown tapas menu, reflecting a modern take on traditional Korean dishes, was inspired by her Korean heritage and Southern upbringing. Lee is serving up dishes like robata-style skewers, kimchee ramen and pork and potato stew, bacon shortbread and sesame doughnuts - starting at $8/plate - every Tuesday through Saturday night for the next three weeks.

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Greg Kadel

Padma Lakshmi

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Top Chef is on the move again, trading in the red chips of Vegas for the red tape of Washington, D.C. And in typical political fashion, the show's shooting schedule has been held up - this time due to Emmy-nominated host Padma Lakshmi's pregnancy. "We were supposed to shoot in January, but we pushed it to April 5 because of her baby," Tom Colicchio said at the Bravo upfront party via the Washington Post. Lakshmi gave birth to a baby girl, Krishna, on February 20, giving her six weeks to get her Top Chef top body back in shape.

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