10 Food Network Chefs You Don't See Much Anymore

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To succeed in the long term, any business needs to refresh itself continually with new talent and new ideas. The Food Network is no exception. Unfortunately, bringing in new talent means that some familiar favorites end up getting squeezed out or simply move on to other ventures. Of course, the shoe is often on the other foot as well. Some chefs and hosts might move on for reasons of their own. High-profile recent examples included Giada De Laurentiis and Rachel Ray, who each called time on a two-decade-long association with Food Network within the past couple of years. Others were shown the door after being accused of unsavory conduct.

Over the network's 30-plus years on our screens, a lot of chefs have come and gone for various combinations of these reasons. So we've picked a representative sampling of some of the most prominent Food Network chefs and hosts who aren't much seen anymore, and taken a quick look at what they're doing now.

When the Food Network launched in 1993, cooking shows still mostly followed the model Julia Child had set out in the 1960s: A knowledgeable host cooked one or more dishes, while explaining and demonstrating kitchen skills and techniques.

Sara Moulton's calming, authoritative presence made her perfect for the format (she was actually a protégé of Child's), and she quickly became one of the Food Network's most popular hosts with her shows "Cooking Live" and "Sara's Secrets."But by 2007, when Moulton left the network, its focus had shifted to a different direction, dropping its original focus on kitchen education in favor of hosts with outsized personalities (hello, Guy Fieri!) and cooking competitions, with their Survivor-like interpersonal drama.

Moulton's never gone away, though, and fans didn't have to wait long (or look very hard) to find her on TV. She's hosted "Sara's Weeknight Meals" on PBS after leaving Food Network, and also has a recurring guest spot on "Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio," where she fields questions from callers. She's also continued to write cookbooks after leaving the network, including "Sara Moulton's Home Cooking 101," which was published in 2016.

Alton Brown was a mainstay of the Food Network for decades, bringing his characteristic humor (and geeky obsessiveness about cooking and food science) to several shows, most notably "Good Eats." Brown confessed in later years that he took up cooking to get dates, but it turned out to be a pretty good career move as well.

Brown's two-decade run with Food Network ended without drama in 2020, when his last contract with the network expired. He would go on to reboot "Good Eats: The Return" for Discovery+, and then landed on Netflix to reprise his co-hosting gig on the streaming giant's reboot of "Iron Chef," the OG cooking competition.

Aside from the 8-episode Iron Chef America reboot on Netflix, he also hosted low-budget, self-produced shows "Pantry Raid" and "Quarantine Quitchen" on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both shows focused on helping viewers cook and eat with what they had on hand, rather than going out to brave the lockdowns and shortages of the time. He may not be as highly visible as he once was, but it's fair to assume that we'll still see him periodically as and when new projects catch his interest. 

Paula Deen was one of the Food Network's big stars in the early '00s. Her warm persona and indulgent approach to Southern cookery earned her a large and devoted following.

Despite that popularity, her career on Food Network came to a crashing halt when a former employee of a restaurant Deen co-owned with her brother sued the siblings, claiming a toxic work environment, sexual harassment, and that Deen had used racial slurs. Deen admitted to having done so in a deposition related to the case, and the network quickly moved to cut ties with her. Deen would go on to release public apologies in the matter, and resolved the case after coming to a settlement with the complainant.

The end of her time with Food Network didn't slow her down much, though. Her restaurants continued to operate, and she produced a new syndicated show called "Positively Paula" for two years. She also appeared on "Dancing With the Stars," has done live tours and appearances, launched a line of pet food, and has both a podcast and a YouTube channel. She also continues to write cookbooks (18 and counting!) with cumulative sales of over 11 million copies.

Emeril Lagasse was one of the biggest stars of the Food Network's early years. Although he's a Portuguese-American from Massachusetts, his time at the iconic Commander's Palace restaurant in New Orleans made him a Louisiana legend and earned him a foot in the door at Food Network.

His personality quickly made him a fan favorite. In fact, his popularity was so substantial that by the turn of the century, he even starred in a short-lived sitcom based on his own life. But the tides of viewership were changing, and — like Sara Moulton — Emeril fell victim to the network's pursuit of newer, fresher, and more-engaging programs. It didn't help that he was the biggest earner on the network, and budget constraints may have been the real reason his show was cancelled.

It's not like Lagasse has become invisible, mind you. He's been a frequent judge on Bravo's "Top Chef" and a regular guest on "Good Morning America," and he remains busy with his restaurants. His son EJ Lagasse (aka Emeril IV), also a trained chef, is following him in the family business, and he'll have lots of time to learn from dear ol' Dad. As the elder Lagasse told Tasting Table in 2023, he has no plans to retire anytime soon.

Ming Tsai's parents operated a popular Chinese restaurant in Dayton, Ohio when he was a kid, so it's fair to say that he grew up in the business. Although he'd earn a degree in mechanical engineering (at Yale, no less), the cooking bug had bitten him, and he spent his summers learning to cook at Le Cordon Bleu and apprenticing in Parisian restaurants. By the time he graduated from Yale, it was already clear that his engineering degree wasn't going to get much of a workout!

Tsai first landed on the Food Network when he spent a week guest-hosting Sara Moulton's "Cooking Live" in her absence, and the network (seeing his potential) quickly gave him his own show, "East Meets West," and then "Ming's Quest." 

Although "East Meets West" would win a daytime Emmy in 1999, and made him one of the then-few Asian-American chefs with a national platform, he would leave the network in 2003. He later told PBS that it was because he really enjoyed the format of simply teaching people to cook, which by then Food Network was already beginning to move away from.

Tsai took his talents to PBS, where his show "Simply Ming" would become a long-running success story. He continues to be a successful restaurateur and cookbook author, and launched a line of healthy snacks under the MingsBings name. Since his wife's 2017 cancer diagnosis, he's also become an enthusiastic supporter of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (where she was treated), and Family Reach, which supports the families of cancer patients. 

Sandra Lee is another chef who enjoyed a solid run on Food Network, though she's not necessarily the first name that comes to mind when you speak about former hosts. Her show "Semi-Homemade Cooking" came to an end in 2011, but her career has absolutely kept going.

Lee isn't a formally trained chef by any stretch, though she did take courses from Le Cordon Bleu in Canada at one point. What she did have in spades was entrepreneurship, parlaying her taste for crafts into a company selling craft-related products at trade shows and on QVC. Despite her lack of culinary background, she successfully pitched her show — aimed at working women who wanted unfussy, quick meals — to Food Network, offering up recipes that drew mostly on canned and packaged ingredients, lightly tweaked with fresh additions.

At the time she left her show in 2011, she'd become the romantic partner of then-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, which may have played a role in her decision. In 2015 she was diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently poured energy into advocating for early screening and detection. She continues to turn out cookbooks, take speaking engagements, and make guest appearances on television, for both cooking and cancer advocacy.

There are a lot of paths to a career in food-related broadcasting (as Sandra Lee's story already told us), but Lorraine Pascale's is unusual by any measure. She overcame a rough childhood to become a top-tier fashion model in the 1990s, but walked away from the industry while she was still in her 20s.

Eventually, Pascale signed up to earn a diploma from Prue Leith's cooking school, and that was when she discovered her passion for baking. She'd go on to further culinary and management training, and become a successful baker in her own right, as well as a cookbook author and cooking show host in the U.K. She began appearing on Food Network in 2014, as a judge on "Holiday Baking Championship" and "Spring Baking Championship," and a mentor on "Worst Bakers in America."

But the COVID-19 pandemic made it hard to manage a trans-Atlantic career, and in 2020 Pascale dropped her commitments to Food Network and stayed at home in the U.K. She had personal reasons to do so, marrying current husband Dennis O'Brien a year later. More importantly, her restless quest to try new things has taken her into a very different career: She's currently a licensed psychotherapist, and is studying for a doctorate in psychology and psychotherapy.

From 2008 to 2014, fans of Food Network's "Down Home With the Neelys" enjoyed the unpretentious charm of their food, and the hosts themselves. The couple's backstory — high school sweethearts who'd gotten back together after a failed marriage each — and on-screen shows of affection, made their show a charming watch.

That's why it was such a shock to fans when the couple divorced in 2014, ending the show along with their marriage. Over time, fans would learn that they had quietly separated during the last two years of the show's run, and that Gina had cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split. In an interview two years later Gina revealed that the marriage had already been in trouble when the show started, and that couples therapy hadn't helped. Like many another couple before them, they apparently just wanted different things out of life.

The split seems to have been as amicable as a 20-year breakup can be. Gina was clear that Pat's "not a bad guy," and Pat, for his part, would later tell People Magazine that the entire legal part of the divorce took just six hours. Pat has since remarried, and remains involved in the restaurant industry. Gina has transformed her life in several ways, from losing weight and doing reality TV ("To Rome for Love" on Bravo), and even produced her own cooking show, "Chop it Up with Gina Neely," on Aspire TV.

It's always a great story when an underdog finds success, whether that's a sporting team making a Cinderella playoff run, or someone finding stardom through a talent-search show. Kelly Clarkson's singing career famously took off when she won the first season of American Idol, and Melissa D'Arabian came to Food Network stardom in similar fashion.

The Next Food Network Star was the network's answer to high-profile talent-search shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent. It did its job well, launching network mainstay Guy Fieri's career, as well as currently-popular personalities including Aarti Sequiera and Damaris Phillips. Melissa D'Arabian was the winner of season five, in 2009, and landed the show "Ten Dollar Dinners" as a result. She also hosted a web series, "The Picky Eaters Project," for the network, and has written best-selling cookbooks.

She's not a full-timer on Food Network anymore, but still turns up as a guest or judge on shows like "Guy's Grocery Games," and hosts the long running "Drop 5 Pounds with Good Housekeeping" on Cooking Channel, a Food Network sub-brand. Aside from that on-camera work, she also writes a syndicated column and is a popular speaker on TV and at live engagements. She's also famously an activist for suicide prevention, a passion spurred when her own mother died by suicide.

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There was a time when Mario Batali was one of the biggest personalities on the Food Network. He'd begun in the 1990s, when the network was still in its infancy, when "Molto Mario" was a big early hit. His obvious love of food, and his buoyant, genial personality, made him a firm fan favorite. He took his talents to other networks by 2005, aside from his role as one of the titular Iron Chefs, but remained highly visible in the food world for his restaurants and media presence. 

In 2017, Food Network was in negotiations with Batali to reboot his first show, "Molto Mario," when a number of women made public complaints of sexual assault and sexual misconduct against the high-profile chef. The shock may have been all the greater because of Batali's affable public persona. Food Network quickly withdrew from negotiations, other corporate partners dropped Batali, and over the ensuing couple of years he was even jettisoned by his restaurant-group partners, cooking legend Lidia Bastianich and her son Joe.

Batali's vague non-apology in the immediate wake of the allegations did him no favors (he was roundly mocked for including a cinnamon-roll recipe on the same post), but he avoided the worst potential outcomes. Some suits against him were dropped, other complainants accepted settlements, and he was found not guilty of sexual misconduct in the one case that went to a verdict. In 2023 he was talking about a potential comeback, but in practice it's been limited to some low-key investments in the foodservice industry.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).