The most ridiculous thing I've ever seen...

[labradors]

No, I'm not doing my Groucho Marx impersonation. I am really going to tell you about the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

What is it? The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia.

First of all, let me state that it appears that the "Cooking Channel" is, essentially, a secondary Food Network channel that is home to shows that wouldn't make it on Food Network.

One such program is The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia.

The show may pretty much be summed up as "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with the added buffoonery of a grossly overacted character who is supposedly on some sort of quest which just so happens to lead him to the various restaurants being featured on the episode.

For example, the first episode has "Baron Ambrosia" searching for a treasure with a map and clues from P. T. Barnum by going to restaurants that wouldn't even have existed in the time of Barnum. Thus, the "adventure" is purely a contrivance for getting the "Baron" from one featured site to another. In fact, there was no useful culinary information presented that actually pertained to P. T. Barnum.

Now, I know that some people have even criticised Guy Fieri and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, but not even that has the (pardon the food references) "ham" or "cheese" of The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia.

I'll admit that the RESTAURANTS and the FOOD were interesting, but at least Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives keeps the show moving without all the useless "adventure" filler.

Are ALL Cooking Channel shows this bad?

[Old Bay]

Good Eats is there now, with new shows. Still good.

[Mare749]

Labs, I get my channels confused, but I watch both the Cooking channel and another one called Create, which also has cooking shows. I like to watch BBQ University with Steve Raichlen, Cooking with Lydia, Ming Tsai, and Easy Chinese, I think it's called.

[Gourmet_Mom]

I cut that channel when downsizing a while back. But I have seen ads on Food Network channel for that show and immediately thought how stupid it looked just from that little bit. There are a few others I thought were stupid like B...chin' Kitchen?

[DFen911]

Cooking Channel is owned by Foodnetwork so it's no surprise. They made a big production about Good Eats moving like they were so happy to be leaving the food network, only to find out they were just moving to another channel owned by them. Very disappointing. Now I never watch it, and rarely watch Foodnetwork anymore because I am so sick of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and Cupcake wars I could scream.

[labradors]

I watch Food Network for Chopped, Sweet Genius, Food Network Star and the occasional Iron Chef.

[esgunn]

I saw previews for that show, and thought to myself, no way I am watching THAT! Labs, obviously you have not watched "Call of the Wildman" on Animal Planet. Oy!

I very rarely watch mutch. The kids enjoy watching. They really liked Good Eats and we were happy to see it on the Cooking Chanel. We like Chopped, and Food Network Star. I don't think we regularly watch anything else. Stephanie likes Cupcake wars, but the rest of us can't stand it. Two episodes and it was done, and over done. I also like Iron Chef, but we don't catch it much.

[Lorraine]

I can't even tolerate looking at the commercials for the show.

[Trixxee]

The only shows I watch on either channel anymore Bobby Flay's Grillin' (which are all repeats I think but I didn't see them the first time around) and his new BBQ Addiction show. I also still watch Giada and Ina (though Ina irritates me for some reason).

The show you are talking about Labs does sound truly awful.

[Harborwitch]

We watched about 10 minutes of this . . . it was horrible and we found something else that we had recorded to watch. It might be the dumbest show on TV.