Yesterday when Grub Street turned us on to Food Club, the new JASH show from Aziz Ansari, Eric Wareheim, and Jason Woliner, we figured it was something along the lines of Tim’s Kitchen Tips — the absurd mustard-sponsored cooking show Wareheim did with his Tim and Eric co-creator, Tim Heidecker. But while there is no such thing as Pissman’s Mustard, there actually is a Food Club, and there has been for some time.
We learned this yesterday when he stopped into the forthcoming Williamsburg outpost of The Gorbals for the premiere of the new season of Ilan Hall’s Knife Fight. The first episode of Food Club visits the LA location of The Gorbals, where we see one of the club’s honorary plaques on the wall. It’s “the most prestigious honor you can get,” says Hall.
As it turns out, the plaque wasn’t just placed there as a gag for the show — Hall told us Food Club first came into his restaurant two months after it opened in 2009, and they plaqued him about a year and a half ago. All three members of Food Club, he said, are legit foodies.
Indeed, back in 2010, Ansari told A.V. Club, “We’ve only been to two different places that have been deemed plaque-worthy: Sona and this place The Gorbals, from Chef Ilan Hall. As we speak, there is a plaque-smith hard at work on a Food Club plaque to give to both of them.”
As for the season opener of Hall’s Esquire Network show, Knife Fight, no plaques (or any prizes) were bestowed upon the winner of the raucous, booze-fueled cooking competition between Top Chef alum Mike Isabella and Texas toque Tim Love. But the loser did have to drink out of the winner’s shoe. To find out who that was, watch the episode below.