Danny DeVito, riding high after launching his eponymous line of limoncello (complete with a Scratch- N-Sniff label), is planning to stock the shelves of your neighborhood grocery store with jarred pasta sauce based on his mother’s recipe. The sauce is a hit at DeVito’s popular Miami restaurant, DeVito South Beach. No word on whether he’ll donate profits à la Paul Newman.
Is he in? Or is he out? A story in the New York Post last week reported that Mario Batali’s long-running cooking show, “Molto Mario.” was being axed from the schedule and that his spot on “Iron Chef” was also in jeopardy. The Food Network denied the report with a concilatory, but vague, press announcement: “Mario Batali is still very much a part of the Food Network.” And Mario’s own media liaison, Pamela Lewy, also tried to quell rumors, saying, “Mario is taping with the Food Network during September to shoot the next season of ‘Iron Chef America’ and does not have any idea why the New York Post created the story.”
In other Food Network news, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Alton Brown, popular host of “Good Eats,” gets more airtime than any other personality on the network, logging 23.5 hours during the week of Aug. 20 to reach 19.3 million viewers. In contrast, Rachael Ray got 10.5 hours, Paula Deen 10 hours, and Emeril Lagasse, whose show, “Emeril Live,” recently lost its prime-time slot to “Good Eats,” just 8 hours.
Potty-mouthed British celeb- chef Gordon Ramsay recently suffered fairly serious burns to his unmentionables, prompting an emergency room visit to London’s Cromwell Hospital, according to the Daily Mirror. Ramsay explained, “The other day I was standing too close to the hob when I was cooking. I was wearing cotton trousers and underneath I was going commando. Then suddenly I felt this searing heat – my b—s were burning.”
