The “Odd Couple of Food” Come to Manhattan

New York, NY, January 31, 2000 – New York Eats hosts Ed Levine and Jeffrey Steingarten, New York’s Odd Couple of the food world, will bring their contrasting-and complementary-culinary perspectives to Manhattan on Metro (Channel 70 – Time Warner, Channel 16 – Cablevision). This nightly, half-hour series featuring the outspoken duo of dining, will debut on Monday, February 14 at 8:30 PM.

Steingarten and Levine have been TV partners since the debut of New York Eats on Metro’s sister channel, MetroLearning, in the fall of 1998. Dubbed “nabob of nosh” by The New York Times, Levine is fabled for his encyclopedic knowledge of the finest, most idiosyncratic neighborhood shops, restaurants and street food vendors in the New York area, as chronicled in his two books, New York Eats and New York Eats (More). Steingarten, on the other hand, is the Harvard and MIT-trained highbrow food critic for Vogue, who has was named a Chevalier in the order of Merit by the French Republic for his coverage of French cuisine. The Times described Steingarten’s bestseller, The Man Who Ate Everything, as “brilliant”, adding it’s “part book, part travelogue, part medical and scientific treatise.”

“New Yorkers are obsessed with food, but no one is more tireless in their obsession than Jeffrey and Ed,” says Executive Producer Ron Fried. “Jeffrey approaches food like a nineteenth century French intellectual, while Ed takes a more street-level approach. They are both fearless and honest. We like to think New York Eats is the most outspoken, dangerous food show on TV.”

Each half-hour episode of New York Eats features a cooking demonstration from a star chef such as Alice Waters, Frangois Payard, or Daniel Boulud; Jeffrey and Ed’s highly opinionated restaurant reviews; and a unique, brand-specific taste test in which the hosts pick “the best” foods in a single category. To date, Jeffrey and Ed’s survey of consumer products has included finding the best chocolate chip cookies (they like Kathleen’s), pastrami (Katz’s deli) and bagels (Valley Bagels in Valley Stream, New York). On the restaurant front, Jeffrey and Ed pronounced the Great Neck Peter Luger’s steak house to be equal in quality to its older Brooklyn namesake.

MetroChannels’ New York Eats promises to compliment the established favorites already featured on MetroChannels by letting viewers know what is hip, hot and delicious in the worlds of food, restaurants and fine dining. As Levine puts it, “There are a lot of cooking shows out there, but this is the first show about eating. First and foremost New York Eats is a show for New Yorkers who love to eat-and have to eat the best.”

Rainbow Media’s MetroChannels consist of MetroGuide, MetroLearning, and Metro Traffic&Weather. MetroGuide celebrates and explores what makes the NY tri-state area a special place to live and provides tips, ratings and recommendations for making the most out of local life and leisure. The tri-state’s only personal growth channel, MetroLearning responds to viewers’ curiosity about their world and to their desire to improve their lives with entertaining, provocative programming targeted to high school students in the afternoon and adults in prime time. Metro Traffic&Weather is the tri-state’s first and only 24-hour local traffic, transit, and weather channel.