Here’s a keeper: a genial host on an out-of-the-way show on a niche network who brings a light touch to his passion.
The subject is food. And comedy. Make that comedy involving food and people’s reactions to it.
The warm and unpretentious style belongs to “Ham on the Street,” a series deserving a wider, hungrier audience.
The ham in question is George Duran.
An entertainer and chef, Duran is developing a following for his inspired, uplifting gig.
Part comedy, part lowbrow foodie exploration, the “Ham” half-hours trace the exploits of Duran, who, according to the show’s tag line, does for questions about food what the pineapple does for ham: “For reasons no one can explain, they both make a good thing even better.”
The only plausible explanation for Duran’s positive effect is his amiable approach, which succeeds in being hip without trying.
Here’s what’s upcoming on Food Network’s “Ham on the Street.” Sunday at 4 p.m. (repeated at 9 p.m.): an installment dealing with microwave food. Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.: an episode devoted to leftovers. At 4 p.m. May 28, the subject is hot dogs.
A second season of 13 episodes is set to premiere in July. According to producer Allison Page, topics include “Ham on Ham,” an all-pork episode; sandwiches (in which he makes panini on an ironing board); and, for Thanksgiving, “Ham on Turkey,” shot amid the Pilgrim-clad at Massachusetts’ Plymouth Plantation. He’ll also do a segment on “hot and spicy” in a Vegas wedding chapel.
“The response has been rather amazing in terms of the marriage proposals he’s received,” Page says.
Unlike too many food shows, this is a thoughtful production spiced with cool graphics, humor being the end goal. Duran speaks four languages and retains a guy-next-door quality.
“He’s a smartypants,” Page says. Get him outside of work and he’s still talking food.
Duran is the anti-Emeril, a non-celebrity chef who revels in eating. Roasted dandelion leaves aren’t bad with a bit of salt and pepper, he notes, and they’re free and readily available. Cue the stop-motion shots of him digging weeds with a willing botanist.
Born and raised in Venezuela, Duran combined a fledging career as a college radio comic with time at the Ecole Superieure de Cuisine Francaise Groupe Ferrandi, and TV production work on MTV’s “House of Style.” While studying in Paris, he hosted “Pop Cuisine,” an award-winning show on France’s Cuisine TV network. The evolution to a Food Network series was a natural.
From a baby-food taste-test to an investigation of jelly beans, Duran takes the pedestrian route to uncelebrated chefdom.
Why can nobody on the street identify the flavor of a jalapeño jelly bean? Why aren’t passersby more impressed with Duran’s hors d’oeuvres fashioned from the lowly sugar treat? And what wine goes with blue cheese topped with green apple jelly babies? These imponderables arise in the course of one of Duran’s food-based ramblings, based on a shared love of sustanance and nonsense.
His affable tour of free foods – in which he concocted recipes with ingredients ranging from grocery store giveaway samples to bar peanuts – was a cheery delight. A regular feature, “Let’s play guess the gadget,” recently held a competition among volunteers using various types of cheese graters. It offered little in the way of consumer information but served up a jolly bit of entertainment. And some bloody knuckles.
Besides knowing his way around a kitchen, he’s sweeter than most stand-ups working a microphone. He also writes well.
Duran invites viewers into his world with typical goofy humor: “The goal? To un-can your inner ham by looking at the foods we seriously love – in the least serious way the law allows. … Because in the end, we here at ‘Ham on the Street’ are just here to have some food, have more fun … and always avoid incarceration.”
Duran talks so lovingly of France that his producer fears he’ll return there – but, she hopes, not before delivering many years’ worth of “Ham on the Street.”
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
