Man v Food's Adam Richman talks to MSN

In the words of Gregg Wallace, it doesn’t get much tougher than this. MSN Food has landed a rare interview with New Yorker and star of Food Network UK’s Man v Food, Adam Richman.

Richman and his show are both famed and notorious for exploring some of the most interesting foods the US can offer, then sitting down to eat these in epic and, often, highly uncomfortable proportions.

It’s a format that’s equally interesting to foodies as it is to pretty much everyone else, and has seen Richman propelled to world fame. Widely respected for his challenges, what’s less known is Richman is a self-taught chef, a football-loving Brooklyn New Yorker, with a deep interest – and knowledge – of British food.

It's been a while since you last shot Man v Food, but it's very current here.

I still love it and I still love talking about it. The fact that on any level I’ve been able to reach anyone abroad is really – and it probably sounds like TV-speak, but it really is – such an honour, because you create a TV show kind of in a vacuum, and to know that you’re not only reaching people where these things are filmed, but you’re reaching people who have no immediate context, I think is a very big honour and something I take very seriously.

• On Bing: more about Man v Food

What’s been your favourite challenge?

In terms of my favourite challenges, taste-wise, without question my favourite has always been Alaska. Simply because I don’t think that more than one element of that challenge came from more than three miles away. That is to say, the boat that brought in the crab was docked from across the street of the restaurant. The boat that brought in the salmon was docked a few feet from that restaurant. The berries in the cobbler were from a farm a mile-and-a-half away. I think it speaks to the fact that quality will always supercede quantity. And that quantity with quality will always be the better challenge.

I would say that San Antonio [Texas], which was the first episode of Series 2. Again, you create this show, you hear it’s a hit, people start to recognise you, but to start a new show and a new season in a town you’ve never been to and just feel like the people’s champ, that’s legend, that’s a great feeling.

• On Bing: More about Alaska

Why do you think it’s gone down so well everywhere?

It seems that it’s a couple of things. The first two-thirds of the show are not a challenge – it’s profiling great food and, quite frankly, these are the foods that you want to be eating. Now, I do not besmirch the chefs who ply their stock-in-trade as emulsions, gastriques, foams – that’s a wonderful, wonderful type of gastronomy, but I don’t know that it speaks to everybody the same way as a great pulled pork sandwich or a delicious cheeseburger might. So I think it’s the food you want to eat.

Also, the challenges – let’s be honest – we can’t all run like Usain Bolt or play basketball like Michael Jordan, or play football like Robin van Persie, but the bottom line is that at the end of the day, we all eat. And at points we all eat a lot, whether it’s holidays, or after we’ve had a few and I think it speaks to a skill set we all have. It’s also not really done with the sort of gravitas we imbue sports with. It’s a fully formed competition but it’s completely fun and a celebration of unbridled joy.

Do you still enjoy eating out?

I do. I certainly don’t do any challenges anymore, but I love eating out. I grew up in a city, in a culture and in a family where food and food exploration were celebrated. I think that’s going to be an inexorable part of who I am for the rest of my life. I hope so.

Do you cook at home?

When I’m shooting, I’m at home so seldom that I don’t always get a chance to cook because I don’t want to waste groceries. If I buy something it’ll spoil. When I do get a chance to cook – I always cook for Thanksgiving back here in New York, something I greatly look forward to.

But I like making sushi quite a bit; I find it very relaxing, very aesthetically pleasing. It’s almost like edible sculpture. That’s the only formal training I’ve had.

I love making soups and stews. I think I’m very good at that. I like the fact that you can layer flavour and build a very interesting textural thing that changes from one day to the next as flavours co-mingle.

I’m a pretty good badass on the grill. I love experimenting with actual fire cooking - cooking on an open stove, a fire-pit, cooking on hot steel – that’s something I’ve recently become enamoured with.

• On Bing: More about Adam Richman

You like to travel, what do you think of the UK?

I love it. I’m actually one-quarter English. I studied and lived in Ireland after I graduated from Emery in the US. But I love it. I was lucky to come over to London to do some press last July and I remembered instantly everything I love about it. I mean, please understand that as an audiophile, or someone with a very aural consciousness, quite simply the myriad of accents, the regional accents, it’s pure music to me.

Aside from that, architecturally, historically it always takes my breath away. I’m a trained actor from Yale so staying in Soho and being so close to the West End. David Tennant was doing Much Ado [About Nothing] when I was there. Being a white guy from Brooklyn I guess I have to like The Wire on HBO and Dominic West was doing Butley there. There’s something about being that close to that much culture. Even culinarily speaking.I think that British food gets unfairly maligned and I think there’s this perception that everything is boiled or grey, or that’s it all pastry or involves sausage to some capacity.

One of the things that I admire personally so much about the quotidian, workaday British diet is that it integrates so much from the ethnic communities that settled within the UK and it’s become British. So whether it’s curry, or Ruby Murray or whatever you want to call it, it’s something that’s so distinctly south-east Asian and yet it’s ubiquitous in the UK. I had baltis and curries.

I live in one of the biggest Middle Eastern neighbourhoods in all of the five boroughs of New York City, and I had more kebabs in London than I did living two blocks away from it in Brooklyn.

I’ve made a list of [British regional foods] that I want to try. I’ve had pasties but not in Cornwall. I want to try jellied eels. I know that part of me is terrified, but I’ve heard of jellied eels and pie and licquor, so they’re two things I have to try. I don’t know what the consistency is like – I’ve deliberately avoided looking on the internet – I’d like to just be surprised.

My mum makes a pretty great shepherd’s pie, which was my great grand-dad’s recipe.

What are you up to at the moment?

Man v Food Nation season two starts in the UK tonight, which is something super-big for me. I hope to be over in London soon to promote it and try some new stuff. Next in the States I’m going into production on some new shows nationally and internationally with the Travel Channel. [And] I’m writing my second book as we speak. So there’s some pretty big stuff coming up.

And with that, Richman is off to the New York Food and Drink festival to get stuck into some cookery demos and hosting a bacchanalian feast. Good on him, we say.

The new series of Man v Food Nation launches on Food Network UK (Freeview 48 and Sky 262/263) on 15 October at 17:30 and 21:00. www.FoodNetwork.co.uk

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