8 Canceled Food Network Shows That Deserve A Comeback

The recent, shocking (to fans) cancellation of longtime Food Network favorite "The Kitchen" put a spotlight on some of the reasons shows are canceled. In this case, it was apparently a corporate/administrative thing, with Warner Brothers Discovery separating its TV and streaming platforms.

Regardless of the specific reasons behind any given cancellation, the simple fact is that nothing lasts forever in television. Think about the shows and personalities that have dominated Food Network's lineup over the years — Giada De Laurentiis, Emeril Lagasse, Paula Deen, Rachael Ray, Ina Garten, Sara Moulton — and they've all had shows come and go, including some that were flagship shows for the network.

Some of the shows that were discarded along the way were also rebooted, including "Good Eats" and "Iron Chef," but they're only the tip of the iceberg. Food Network has a lot of shows in its dustbin, and there's a case to be made for reviving many of them. Here are eight canceled — or discontinued — Food Network shows that were once popular, and for various reasons might be worth rebooting.

Alex Guarnaschelli was already an established chef when she first hit the Food Network's airwaves in 2006, on "Food Network Challenge." She followed that up by competing on "Iron Chef America" in 2007. While she didn't win her showdown with Cat Cora, these early forays into TV showed that Guarnaschelli had cooking chops to burn and lots of on-camera presence.

She was rewarded with a show of her own that launched in 2009, called "Alex's Day Off." The premise was pretty simple: When you're a talented chef helming a world-class restaurant, what do you cook at home? Guarnaschelli answered that question with flair, applying her combination of Italian roots and fine-dining chops to dishes that any ambitious home cook could replicate. The show was a modest success, lasting for three seasons before quietly disappearing from the air.

Guarnaschelli, of course, went on to become one of the network's most visible stars, with her personality and her down-to-earth relatability as a working mom (she even wrote a cookbook with her daughter) setting her apart from many of her peers. Though she's appeared on many of the network's other shows, it would be fun to reboot the early series that helped establish her Food Network career.

It's hard to imagine now, when competition shows dominate Food Network's lineup, but there was a time when that concept was new and innovative. That's the story of "Ready... Set... Cook!," which Food Network called "America's only cooking game show."

It ran from 1995 to 2001, long enough to last three hosts and eight seasons' worth of episodes, and it was definitely ahead of its time (in fact, in its way, it's one of the most important forgotten Food Network classics). In those turn-of-the-century days, when the biggest shows were classic "stand and stir" instructional shows with hosts like Emeril Lagasse or Sarah Moulton, it was a real outlier. The format was simple, and familiar to any current-day Food Network viewer: Contestants would be given a minimal budget and the help of a chef, and would compete to create the best meal they could in 20 minutes.

You could make a case that the show's DNA is present in most of what's on the Food Network these days, but — even with the abundance of similar programming — a reboot might make sense. The nostalgia factor would work in its favor, and the focus on good food on a low budget might be just the thing for these inflationary times.

One theme we've seen a lot on Food Network over the years is quick, simple weeknight meals. Rachael Ray's "30-Minute Meals" was the benchmark, with over 450 episodes, but others have mined the same territory in different ways.

One of those shows was "5 Ingredient Fix." Claire Robinson hosted the popular daytime cooking show through six seasons, preparing simple but tasty meals with, yes, very limited ingredients. It's pretty simple math: Fewer ingredients translate to less prep, (usually) modest budgets, and less cleanup. The show had lots of fans, but went off the air in 2011. Robinson has appeared sporadically on the network over the ensuing years, guesting on shows like "Cutthroat Kitchen" and "Beat Bobby Flay," so if there were any hard feelings over the show ending, they seem to have passed.

Why revive the show now? Many of us still need all the help we can get when it comes to quick, easy meals that also taste good, so there's that. And Robinson herself is still out there hustling to keep her brand visible, and her personal website shows that she's up for new gigs, so maybe the time is ripe for Food Network to reestablish a connection.

You might not remember it if you're a younger viewer, but much-loved "Today Show" personality Al Roker had his own show on the Food Network for four seasons, beginning in 2003. Even if you never saw the show and didn't know about his love of food and cooking, his personality and on-screen presence are obvious enough that you can probably picture how it worked in practice.

The likes of Guy Fieri hadn't made their way into the network's lineup yet, so a show that traveled around and sampled the food in various locations — in Roker's case, all around the USA — was something of a novelty. The show focused a lot on the people and personalities behind the food, and the host himself would frequently put on an apron and get his hands dirty.

Al's not getting any younger and has had some health issues in recent years, but says he doesn't plan to retire from the "Today Show" any time soon. Still, if he were to reconsider the idea of slowing down a little, maybe a reboot of his Food Network show would be a good way to ease back to a lower-stress lifestyle?

In the early days of the Food Network, there was a big emphasis on helping people learn how to cook. A lot of high-profile shows followed the format pioneered by Julia Child back in the '60s, with a knowledgeable host preparing food on camera while explaining the process and offering tips.

That style of show, sometimes derided as "stand and stir" or "dump and stir," depended on the host's skill and personality to hold the viewer's attention. Ming Tsai was one of the best. Although he was a Yale-educated engineer, he followed his lifelong love of cooking into a career as a respected chef. That early success at his restaurant, Blue Ginger, brought Food Network to his door, and his show "East Meets West" was part of the network's lineup from 1998 to 2003.

By then, the network was beginning to shift away from this traditional cooking-show model, so chef Tsai took his brand and his audience to PBS, where his new show, "Simply Ming," continued the same theme of blending Asian and Western ingredients. Today, Tsai is also focused on promoting his plant-based "MingsBings" prepared foods. But hey, maybe the pendulum is swinging, and it's time for a really good "stand and stir" cooking show to make a comeback on Food Network? Ming's a busy guy, but we can hope.

When you picture a chef at work, what image comes to mind? Maybe Gordon Ramsay in his white coat, bellowing amusingly creative insults at an unfortunate sous-chef?

Well, in an industry that's notorious for overbearing, alpha-male screamers, Damaris Phillips is an outlier. She comes across as a genuinely sweet-natured person; someone who'd stub her toe in a room without witnesses and still say nothing stronger than "Oh, sugar!" That warmth of personality took her from "Food Network Star" (where she was the Season 9 winner) to her own show, "Southern at Heart," where she showed off her love of Southern food.

Sadly, "Southern at Heart" ran for just five seasons over four years. She's done other short-lived shows since then ("The Bobby and Damaris Show," "Southern and Hungry"), but she's mostly been relegated to guest-judging roles on other people's shows. C'mon, Food Network ... we could all use a little more of someone like Damaris in our lives, these days. Besides, her husband, Darrick Wood, is a vegetarian, and a creatively veg-centric spin on meat-heavy Southern cuisine would be genuinely interesting.

It's not at all unusual today for someone to become a viral sensation online through a platform like TikTok or Instagram and end up with a TV deal. That really wasn't the case back at the turn of the century, when Dave Lieberman began to attract notice.

He was a student at Yale in those days, and parlayed his love of food (and the chops he'd earned by cooking at local restaurants) into a local community cable cooking show and a catering company. Then, The New York Times' Amanda Hesser wrote about him. That break led to him writing a cookbook and landing a deal for a Food Network show. Called "Good Deal With Dave Lieberman," it ran for four seasons from 2005 to 2007. Lieberman's specialty was telling viewers how to get the best value for their dollar at the supermarket, and then how to cook good meals from what they'd bought.

Lieberman walked away from his TV gig to enroll in medical school, graduating in 2016. He's currently practicing in Nantucket, where he lives with his wife and son, so Lieberman himself is probably not coming back any time soon. But given the price of groceries these days, the concept of the show is — if anything — even more topical, so it might be worth rebooting with a new host. 

If you're a hardcore Food Network fan — and especially if you dream of one day being in the food business yourself — you might remember watching "Recipe for Success." It premiered in 2004 and ran for four seasons, hosted by Eric McLendon.

Each episode centered around an entrepreneur or entrepreneurs, following their dreams into the food service business, and often leaving behind a comfortable life and income to roll the dice on success. As you would expect, for many of them, it was a rapid process of discovering exactly "what you didn't know you didn't know." Entrepreneurship is just plain hard (unless maybe you're a celebrity with name recognition, and sometimes even then), and doubly so in the food business. Knowing how high the stakes are made for riveting television, and it was hard not to root for the embattled subjects of each episode. The success stories were especially sweet, precisely because we got to see the difficulties and failures as well.

In today's gig economy, taking the plunge with a food truck or some other culinary enterprise, from cooking at festivals and farmers' markets to opening an actual restaurant, is one way out of the employment rat race. So perhaps this concept is due to be dusted off and rebooted to inspire and inform a new generation of food entrepreneurs.