Food, Dude! Stoner Caterers

With Shook and Dotolo's derelict-sheik looks and Jackass ways, a Food Dudes television show would seem like prime fodder for enough Bourdain trash talk to shoot a decade's worth of his books to the top of the best-seller list — allowing him to further reveal the cynical plot to dumb down America in the name of capturing the coveted 18-to-35 male demographic. Here's the thing, though: While they may not be Mario, Shook and Dotolo can actually cook; they have the pedigrees to prove it.

They met while studying culinary arts at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and less than two months after graduating in 2002, they were both scooped up by South Florida culinary hotshot Michelle Bernstein and put to work in the kitchen of her South Beach institution the Strand.

Courtesy Food Network

Food Dudes Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook

Matthew Fleischer

Caged but not cowed: Dotolo (left), chef de cuisine Frank Anderson and Shook at their soon-to-open restaurant, Animal

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• Jon Shook
• Vinny Dotolo
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"She fucking hates us," Shook says of Bernstein with a laugh. "She was kind of bringing us up, and I guess she thinks we bailed on her, but we just kind of wanted to do our own thing."

Though the gig lasted less than a year, the duo honed enough skills to land a brief stint in the kitchen of one of Food & Wine magazine's "America's Best New Chefs," Mark Militello, at his seminal South Florida restaurant, Mark's Place. Again, though their time at the restaurant was short, Shook and Dotolo left an impression. When Mark's chef de cuisine, Ray Roach, left the restaurant later that year to run the Wildflower Restaurant at the Lodge at Vail, he brought the Dudes along with him. With their assistance, Wildflower won a Golden Spoon Award and was listed among the top resort restaurants in the nation.

By 2004, the Dudes' wanderlust returned, and the pair headed to Los Angeles, where they landed yet another coveted kitchen job, in Govind Armstrong and Ben Ford's Chadwick Restaurant. Soon after, with only 300 bucks in their pockets, but with the support of Ford (and Ford patriarch Harrison's then-girlfriend Calista Flockhart), Shook and Dotolo started Carmelized Productions. The company was an immediate success, and, within months of opening, Christine Lennon wrote a glowing piece about it for The New York Times.

Then there's the nature of catering itself, which, while it may lack the prestige of running a restaurant, poses its own unique challenges — ones that your average hack with a set of Ginsus wouldn't be able to handle.

"Catering isn't like having your own restaurant," says Dotolo. "If you hire us for a barbecue, I'll try to turn you on to rabbit or pork instead of something a little more pedestrian like beef and chicken. But it's your event, so in the end, if you ask for it, we've got to give it to you."

In other words, to make a catering company work, Shook and Dotolo have to be able to prepare any dish, from any style of cuisine, often on short notice. Traditional New England clambake? Sure. Roasted suckling pig later that afternoon? Fine. California-Asian fusion for brunch? Whatever.

"We take food very seriously," says Dotolo.

"Our number-one priority at the Food Network is food," vice president of programming Allison Page told me shortly before the Dudes' show aired. "Despite their appearance, and the fact that they're a lot of fun, Jon and Vinny are extremely skilled chefs, and the show will highlight that."

Makes perfect sense. Take two young chefs outrageous enough to get the MTV set to flip over from The Real World but talented enough to get the kids hooked on foodie culture. That's the idea, right? ... Right?

Not exactly.

"Ace of Cakes brought in a new audience but was also extremely popular with our regular viewers," Page told me. "We expect 2 Dudes Catering to do the same."

Whoa, now. Ace's star, Goldman, may have a couple of tattoos, listen to punk rock and have a staff with a gift for hip, ironic snark, but the guy is like Mother Teresa with a pastry bag. Every episode, he's donating cakes to an orphanage, or to New York City firefighters, or healing lepers. Not too much of a stretch for him to lure in the stay-at-home moms in the flyover states.

The Dudes can cook, but was the Food Network really suggesting that they hired a pair of stoners and their toothpick-shoving, urine-drinking staff to win over the same milquetoast, baby-boomer audience that watches Rachael Ray stick things in the microwave? How in the hell was that going to work?

Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo

Meet the Dudes
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It's 8 p.m. at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions gallery in Hollywood, and the natives are getting restless — and by restless, I mean hungry and bitchy. LACE's fund-raising auction, its biggest event of the year, is well under way, and hundreds of L.A.'s most eccentric have spent the past few hours boozing, blowing cash and showing off their Flock of Seagulls haircuts. Now they want some food, and it's the Dudes' job to give it to them.

One small problem, though: "Pretty much everyone bailed on us," Shook says, face full of stubble — clearly exhausted but with his goofy smile intact. "Our cooks, our interns — they never showed. We're pretty much fucked."