From Grub Street San Francisco: Thomas Keller showed up on the Today show Nov. 6 to promote Ad Hoc at Home, All-Clad cookware, and, naturally, teach Al Roker and the team how to make his famous fried chicken. Ann Curry is visibly horrified by Keller's direct handling of the scorchingly hot fresh-from-the-oil chicken, and he reassures her by pointing out that after years in the kitchen, he's got "asbestos fingers." Watch the video for that, plus plenty more hijinx.

 

From the group Improv Everywhere, filmed at the Trump Tower atrium for a segment on The Today Show.

 

 

From Serious Eats' Ed Levine: "Last week (Aug 8, 2008) we began talking about farmers and farmers' markets and the crucial role they play in the food culture (as far as we're concerned, they're heroes). Yesterday we met one of our favorite farmers, Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farm in Roscoe, New York, who grows strawberries and vegetables and sells them at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City."

Today, thanks to the good folks who work on behalf of Serious Eats advertiser Pure Kraft Salad Dressings, we are proud to bring you a video portrait of Bishop. It's beautifully shot and edited by our friends at Optic Nerve, and it chronicles both Bishop's story and the story of farmers' markets in general. So thank you, Kraft, thank you, Optic Nerve, and thanks in advance, serious eaters, for taking the time to watch.

 

 

Our favorite TV chef/traveler releases the first webisode of his animated self, "Robo Chef". You may know that Bourdain has not been very shy about criticizing the Food Network's media machine and their stable of chef celebs. In this first installment, he takes dead aim at the hand that feeds him.

 

 

From Jacob Katel of Miami New Times: Food, Halloween, funny, these are three things we here at Short Order live for. In honor of that we've rounded up our Top 10 funny Halloween food and candy videos. Enjoy. Here's no. 9, Animated Vomit Pumpkins:

 

 

From Eat Me Daily: Humans used to stack the pancakes by hand, but in a bid to reduce labor costs, HoneyTop Pancakes switched to a robot solution from ABB Robotics. In their machine, pancakes on a conveyor belt are fed into an enclosure where the insect-like Flexpicker robots grab and stack the pancakes at a truly astonishing speed, at over 400 per minute! Using high-resolution cameras, the robots can recognize overlapping pancakes, and their crazy AI programming includes a "buffer system" in which the robots can save some pancakes for later on a shelf to keep up with all of them whizzing by. Has to be seen to be believed.

Apparently, the Flexpicker is the world's fastest industrial robot, and it's not limited to pancakes — it's used to sort all kinds of foodstuffs like sausages, muffins, and croissants.

From Slashfood By Ben Widdicombe: Some celebrities are perfect for the food they promote -- Florence Henderson and Wesson Oil seemed made for each other like Popeye and spinach. But not all stars are a natural match for the products they endorse. (Like that former Soviet premier who went on to do Pizza Hut ads?) Here are Slashfood's picks for the 10 Weirdest Celebrity Food Commercials of All Time. Here's one from 1989, Brad Pitt is shirtless, rocking a "Saved By The Bell" haircut and shilling ... Pringles?? Sing it with Brad: "I've got the fever! The fever reliever!" See all the weird commercials. See all the commercials...

La Tomatina en Reno brought America’s Biggest Food Fight to Reno on Saturday at the Reno City Plaza. Nearly 5,000 participants threw 50,000 pounds of tomatoes in the inaugaral event, raising thousands for cancer research. Check out these photos and be sure to catch next year’s event: ... See the photos