my favourite meal of the year @chefbuca this Canadian is a humble genius such integrit @ Buca Restaurant Toronto http://instagr.am/p/Ug-v5/

The humble genius in question is, of course, Buca chef Rob Gentile, who took to Twitter himself last night to declare he’d “had a great time doin it up!” cooking for Oliver and Derek Dammann, the chef of Montreal’s DNA. We can’t help but imagine it’ll be even harder than usual to find a table at Buca tonight.

Bob Blumer gets comfy (Photo by Karon Liu)

Bob Blumer has come a long way from the cheesy printed shirts, the tornado hairdo and the Mrs. Dash commercials. Reclining in a plush chair at the Spoke Club six hours before he leaves for his next adventure in Buenos Aires, the Montreal-born Blumer—wearing a muted sweater, his hair neatly coiffed (“Even Michael Bolton cut his hair”)—is doing interviews about the final season of his gastronomical schadenfreude show Glutton for Punishment.

“We decided to quit while we’re ahead,” he says of the show’s imminent end. “It was getting harder to come up with strong ideas, so we decided to end it instead of water the show down. Sometimes we would come up with an idea, and I’d think, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’ and then we’d get to the end of the season and we’d have no ideas so we’d have to do it.”

Cases in point: in the second season, he travelled to Osaka, where he had five days to learn how to prepare and eat his own fugu—it takes chefs three years to learn the technique that removes the fish’s poison—and in season three he almost drowned diving for sea urchins in Vancouver. Among the other culinary misadventures captured on camera: surviving on nothing but Guinness for five days in Dublin, barrelling down a giant hill in Gloucester for the sake of cheese and setting a world record for flipping 559 pancakes in an hour at the Calgary Stampede last year.

“The job of hosting this show requires a combination of vanity and the ability to be humiliated and not be bothered by it. I always wanted to do well, but I know I’ll be humiliated.”

It’s obvious Blumer is more of a showman than a classically trained chef (as evidenced by his famous Toastermobile, which is parked in Sonoma), but his “if I can do it, so can you” approach is part of the reason why he’s a Food Network staple. “I epitomize the expression ‘fake it till you make it,’” he tells us. “Seventeen years ago, I had this wacky idea to write a cookbook, which was really like a pet project. I didn’t have any illusions of grandeur. It was just a combination of things I did, like cooking tips and some of my artwork. I took it to a publisher, and then it became my accidental career. Then I learned how to cook.”

With so many chefs coming out with their own shows every year, from reality show winners to celebrated chefs, are there too many personalities already on TV?

“It’s up to the audience to determine if there are too many TV chefs out there,” says Blumer. “For me, I want to be engaged and connect with the host. I don’t connect to Ina Garten from Barefoot Contessa. I had an executive from the Food Network in the States chastising me for not being a good host, and he told me to watch Ina Garten. I fell asleep within two minutes. She just puts me into a trance. She is obviously good at what she does and has a following, but I just don’t connect with her. I love Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. They’re passionate, and they use common ingredients but put them together in a clever way.”

And as with all TV chefs, Blumer says it’s important to come up with a new show every few years. “It’s the Madonna approach. You don’t want to see Emeril going ‘Bam!’ forever. It keeps me exciting about what I’m doing.”

The final season of Glutton for Punishment premieres January 4.

Military beefcake Lord Kitchener shills for Colman's

• A Colman’s Mustard’s advertisement featuring Lord Kitchener’s face recreated with meat is making veggie boosters like Paul McCartney lose their kale-burger lunches. The ad is a recreation of an iconic British WWI poster and is composed of sausage fingers, beef, chicken and sliced ham. The creepiest part might be that the yellow-tinged eyes are real, likely plucked from a pig. [Guardian]

• Meet Canada’s culinary David, Mathieu Cloutier, who upset Goliaths like Iron Chef America winner Rob Feenie and Nota Bene’s David Lee to win this year’s national Gold Medal Plates championships. Hitherto unknown, the chef started Montreal’s 30-seat Kitchen Galerie two years ago with partners Jean-Philippe St-Denis and Axel Mevel, hoping at least to break even by serving six clients a night. The dining room has been packed ever since. This past July, Cloutier and St-Denis opened a second spot, larger and more stylish, called Chez Edgar. The chef’s winning dish was an inventive and quirky foie gras steamed in a dishwasher, then served cold with muscat wine jelly and long peppers. [Globe and Mail]

• A U.K. man formerly known as Chris Hunt deeply enjoys Monster Munch potato chips, eating a bag with every meal—pickled onion at breakfast, roast beef for lunch and “flamin’ hot” with supper. So obsessed is he with the crisps that when his friends dared him to change his name to reflect his love, he jumped at the chance. Now called Mr. Munch, or just “Monster” to his mates, the Evington plumber is finding clever new ways to mix the crisps with his meals, like stuffing them in sandwiches or stirring them with rice and pasta. [Telegraph]

• Eggnog consumption soars in December, with Canadians guzzling more than eight million litres of the creamy tipple, which packs upwards of 19 grams of fat per cup and has the caloric intake of a bacon cheeseburger. According to food anthropologist Krystyna Sieciechowicz, revellers don’t imbibe the nog because it tastes good, but rather because it’s a tradition that hearkens back to Victorian roots, when celebrating the holidays with rich foods like farm eggs, sugar, cream and rum became symbolic of wealth and prosperity. These days, rich foods like that are merely symbolic of why we all need to hit the gym come January.   [National Post]

• Recent whispers that Love Happens star Jennifer Aniston is writing a cookbook with Jamie Oliver are apparently false. The Internet reports were traced back to the ever-unreliable National Enquirer after the story was relayed by Yahoo News India. Fans of the former Friends star are in luck, though. This fall, she said she wanted to start a Mexican restaurant, “’cause [she] love[s] Mexican food, and usually a great night is had in a Mexican restaurant, no?” [Slashfood]

Caper crusader: Jamie Oliver speaks at Roy Thomson Hall on Sunday

Jamie Oliver will send foodophiles into full swoon this Sunday, when he appears Roy Thomson Hall to speak about his new cookbook, Jamie’s Food Revolution, and his first U.S. TV show, Jamie’s American Road Trip. In the latter, the spritely chef attempts to charm Fast Food Nation into eating fresh, seasonal foods. These projects have been keeping him busy lately; so busy, in fact, that when we caught up with him during his first visit to Canada, we had time for only three questions. But it’s hard to be annoyed when the answers, however brief, are delivered with that musical cockney twinge (see glossary below).

DAILY DISH: If you could offer only one piece of advice to people who want to eat healthier, what would it be?
JAMIE OLIVER: Cook from fresh. Take-away [1] food is for treats, not every day. Ready meals [2]—don’t bother. Think about what you want to cook for the week—try to combine a few things so that you can save money by not throwing stuff away because you’ve bought too much. I’ve started having a couple of vegetarian days every week, and I’ve found that helps us get through our weekly shop with less waste.

DD: You don’t exactly scrimp on butter, bacon and pasta in your recipes. What’s your take on dieting? One of your goals in the U.S. is to bring the obesity rate down. How can you do that without putting everyone on a strict diet?
JO: You’re right, I don’t have a problem with butter, bacon or pasta. They are brilliant ingredients separately, or together. The key is to eat them in moderation. Personally, if I eat heavier food for lunch, I try to have a salad or something light for supper. My goal in the new show is to give as many people as I can enough good knowledge about food and cooking that they are able to turn fresh food into something delicious. Once you know the basics, the rest is common sense.

DD: A lot of research has linked poverty to obesity, but one of the points you make in your new cookbook is that healthy eating doesn’t have to be expensive. The price of a Big Mac Meal in Canada is $6.99. If you only had that much to make a healthy homemade dinner for yourself, what would you  make?
JO: I could certainly make a tomato spaghetti for a family of four for less than that, and it would be quick and much more delicious. I’m a big believer in the store cupboard [3], which is why I’ve included a list of ingredients I see as essentials at the beginning of the book. If you can stock up on those things, you’ll be 75 per cent of the way toward a tasty meal. Spices, dried goods and tins of things [4] will be right there, and you’ll only need to spend a few bucks on vegetables that are in season and maybe some meat. It’s all about knowing how to get the most out of the things you buy.

Jamie’s Food Revolution, Nov. 22. $49.50–$99.50. Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe St., 416-872-4255, roythomson.com.

[2] Prepared food from the grocery store or boutique grab-and-go shops

[3] The pantry

[4] Canned goods

• A brewmaster from Brooklyn has devised a new concoction that’s prompting bartenders to burst out laughing when they smell it. He takes it as a compliment, though, that they are so incredulous of Reinschweinsgebot, his new bacon beer, which proves once again that fried pork pairs well with anything and everything. In order to infuse the beer with porcine pungency (without transferring any fat to the liquid), the brewmaster borrowed intricate techniques from the perfume industry. [New York]

• In another list of culinary best-ofs—in this case, the Guardian’s list of the world’s 50 best things to eat and where to eat them—Canada has once again been snubbed. No Canadian restaurants were included on the list, which includes venues in India, Hong Kong and the U.S. Canuck loyalists may also be surprised to find that nothing from the Canadian culinary oeuvre (meaning poutine and peameal bacon) made the cut. [Guardian]

• The Chicago Tribune identifies the four main “wine killers” (foods that take the punch out of wine, such as artichokes, asparagus, chilies and vinegar) and how to deal with them. Hot peppers, for example, can be toned down with the cleansing effect of bubbly champagne. Cheers to that. [Chicago Tribune]

• A new group study supports the theory that eating fish is good for the brain. Those who regularly consume fish have a 20 per cent lower risk of developing cognitive impairment as they age, as opposed to those who never eat fish. Previous studies touting the brain-boosting benefits of fish were too small to be authoritative; this study examined 15,000 people from a wide range of locations. [Toronto Sun]

Trans troubles: Health food advocates are trying to encourage anti-fat legislation (Photo by Mykl Roventine)

• The two-year grace period the Harper government gave the food industry to cut usage of trans fats ends Saturday—and there’s still a lot of trans fat out there. Critics want the government to get tough by creating enforceable fat maximums. [Canadian Press]

• The cost of locavorism is not just getting at Jamie Kennedy. Chefs across the country are having a tough time sticking to fresh and local (and pricey) ingredients. [Globe and Mail]

• A 39-year-old U.K. con man who scammed his way onto TV by claiming to have worked with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver has been revealed as a big fat phony. [Sun]

• Europeans are known for having better airplane food—but better spacecraft food? French chef Alain Ducasse, the head chef at the Eiffel Tower’s Jules Verne restaurant, envisions a menu for the European Space Agency that features roasted quail, grilled tuna and duck confit. [Bloomberg]

• Argentine chef Francis Mallman has opened what some are calling the best restaurant in Uruguay. The catch is that it’s over a hundred miles from the nearest city, in a nearly abandoned village off a dirt road. [Wall Street Journal]

And the winner is: Tim Hortons (Photo by Alistair Howard)

• While the recession takes its toll on the restaurant industry, Tim Hortons seems to be unaffected. Its first quarter numbers were high, and the company’s showing in the U.S. market remains strong. [National Post]

• Carb Kringles: the potato farmers of Prince Edward Island donate 18,000 kilograms of their spuds to a Boston food bank. [CBC]

• Ryan Seacrest Productions takes on Jamie Oliver in an upcoming reality show. The chef will travel to unhealthy American cities, giving residents tips on better eating. We believe it’s Oliver’s career that will emerge the healthiest. [Entertainment Weekly]

• A San Francisco restaurant called Millennium has taken the bold step of charging $1 for a glass of filtered water. We hope the practice doesn’t become a trend north of the border. [San Francisco Gate]

• Follow-up: The snake head discovered in a meal at TGI Friday’s last week turned out to be a fake. Because it was uncooked, the head is suspected to have been planted in the meal before it was served. This gets our vote for most creative way to get yourself fired. [Metro]

Lily Allen fights with dairy (Photo by Douglas Cason)

• British pop star Lily Allen is fined $2,000 for starting an ice cream fight in her dressing room after performing at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on Wednesday. Hey, at least it wasn’t mashed potatoes. [UK Sun]

• Dough makers: Jamie Oliver steals the title of U.K.’s richest chef from Gordon Ramsay. To make matters worse, Ramsay didn’t even make the list of country’s 2,000 richest people. [Evening Standard]

• Grocery giant Metro boasts higher than expected earnings, and is confident shoppers will be cooking at home for at least another two fiscal quarters. [Financial Post]

• Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre releases a guide to ordering sustainable sushi. The dolphin maki-roll is a no-go? [Metro]

• UK’s The Guardian unleashes the long-awaited backlash against the gastropub trend and asks readers to construct “the perfect English menu.” [Guardian]

The Naked Chef outsells Harry Potter (Photo by Really Short)

• Though he’s been in Britain’s bad books often over the past decade, Naked Chef Jamie Oliver is back. He became the country’s best-selling author when his latest cookbook, Ministry of Food, sold a record 11.7 million copies, surpassing the sales of even J.K. Rowling. [The Guardian]

• Some Toronto restaurants are now charging $1 for the city’s piped water. This is not the next trend in water snobbery: funds raised go to a UNICEF project that provides clean drinking water to children in developing countries. [Toronto Star]

• Things got heated in the kitchen when New York Times foodies staged a dinner duel. Critics Kim Severson and Julia Moskin each cooked up a lavish meal on the shoestring budget of $8.50 a head. Heavyweight critic Frank Bruni settled the score. [New York Times]

• After failed breakfast sandwiches, ATM-style coffee is the newest Starbucks scheme. Cashless, credit card–friendly coffee machines will be popping up in Canada and the U.S. But who will yell “extra-hot-no-foam-non-fat-decaf-venti-macchiato”? [Paypers]

• Baseball just got a little more exciting, at least for fans of the minor-league West Michigan Whitecaps. The mammoth five-patty burger that can be found at their games is the latest This Is Why You’re Fat competitor. The beef, chili and cheese concoction is so colossal that it requires a 20-centimetre bun (and costs $20). [Globe and Mail]

The Ritz that never was

• David Rocco and Jamie Oliver taught us the importance of nutritious meals for kids, but obsessing over their diets could in fact be detrimental to their health. [National Post]

• Plans have been nixed for the construction of Vancouver’s Ritz-Carlton skyscraper. Toronto’s Wellington Street location—complete with high-end restaurant—is progressing toward its 2010 opening. [Globe & Mail]

• Winter prix-fixes aren’t just available to downtowners this year. Two Vaughan foodie festivals—SavourVaughan and Beyond Restaurant Week—are underway. [YorkRegion.com]

• Unpaid overtime, late nights and unpredictable shifts—few customers know what happens on the other side of restaurants’ kitchen doors. [Toronto Star]

• Ottawa isn’t regarded as a major player on the country’s food scene, but its chefs are trying to change that. Next week they’ll be heading to Toronto en masse to show off their culinary talent. [Ottawa Citizen]