Lights, camera, eggplant!

Christie Salvatoriello says she had one idea in the back of her mind when she enrolled in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy with a major in hotel, restaurant and institutional management (HRIM). She was certain she wanted to open her own restaurant someday.

Now, she says, a single HRIM course has caused her career path to fork.

Salvatoriello, CHEP ’07, says she never imagined she’d want to work in food television, adding that she couldn’t even understand how her father could watch cooking shows. The new “Introduction to Food on Television” course changed all that. The dream in the back of her mind nowadays, she says, is to become executive producer of a food show.

“Our teacher just told us so much about the food shows,” Salvatoriello says. “Now I see all the work that goes into them.”

Her teacher is Susannah Eaton-Ryan, AS ’69, formerly senior vice president of operations for the Food Network and, with her friend Emeril Lagasse, a pioneer in the food television industry.

Eaton-Ryan grew up in Claymont, Del., and returned to the state last year to care for her ailing father. She says she understands how courses can stretch students and turn their lives in unexpected directions, because her own basket of drama and business courses at UD led her to Wall Street, New York’s music business and, finally, the then-nascent field of food television.

Food Network viewership now ranks at 31 among the 71 premium cable channels—higher than Lifetime TV.  But, when Eaton-Ryan signed on with the new venture in 1993, no one knew whether the marriage of food and television would be successful.

Julia Child and other celebrity chefs had done television, she says, but with much bigger budgets. The early Food Network was a mélange of live-to-tape new programming that left no room for flubs and vintage cooking shows with new wrap-around intros. Before Emeril Lagasse had a sitcom or eight best-selling cookbooks, when he owned just two New Orleans restaurants, he became an early star at the network.

The “Introduction to Food on Television” course, which was offered for the first time in the spring, meets in the HRIM television studio, with its fully equipped kitchen set. The studio is adjacent to the student-run Vita Nova restaurant in the Trabant University Center. Each Monday evening last semester, the studio was filled with a combination of HRIM students and communication majors from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Eaton-Ryan divided the students into teams that utilized their expertise. She says she considers teamwork itself a skill that will pay off in the workplace.

At the final class meeting, students put on an original food-themed show, which they had spent the semester creating, writing and rehearsing. Although the final run-through was not taped for actual broadcast, it was designed to mirror all the aspects of a real TV show.

The class members chose to create a game show, which they called “Blend In,” for their final project. On the show, teams competed to answer questions about food—everything from the key ingredients of a Reuben sandwich (corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese) to how many varieties of rice exist in the world (more than 15,000).

The questioning was broken up by periodic physical challenges, including a contest to see how quickly each competitor could whip egg whites to a froth, and cooking tips from chef Lauren Kroesser, AS ’06. Wearing an apron and tall white chef’s hat, Kroesser spent the show preparing eggplant parmigiana in the television kitchen set behind the competing teams. 

“A game show format is much more difficult than a straight, ‘dump and stir’ cooking show,” Eaton-Ryan says. “So, in that sense, the students made it harder on themselves than they had to, but I was impressed by all the effort they put into this project and by how well they did.”

Few if any of the students are likely to go on to full-time careers in food television, she says, but her goal is to give them “a good, hands-on experience” of what’s involved in getting a cooking show on the air. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to develop and produce a show each semester that can be taped and broadcast on the campus television station.

“We’re fortunate to have a leader from the Food Network join us to increase awareness of our TV studio,” Fred DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair of HRIM, says. “As a veteran of the Food Network, Susannah certainly has hit the ground running here at UD. She can teach our students about the importance of the electronic media today in promoting and marketing a restaurant or hotel after they graduate.”

In addition to teaching the new course, Eaton-Ryan has been involved in other HRIM projects. She helped produce the “Wine Online” training program for restaurateurs and individuals in the restaurant and food service industry, also filmed at the Vita Nova studio. That distance-learning program is offered in a videostreaming format and carries continuing education credit.

Taught by Marnie Old, Philadelphia’s leading wine educator and highest-profile sommelier, “Wine Online” is designed to enhance understanding of wine tasting, worldwide wine production and the selection of wines to fit various menus and foods.

More information about “Wine Online” is available on the web at [www.continuingstudies.udel.edu/udonline/wine/description.html].

—Kathy Canavan