Chef Troy Gardner, with his 2021 Tastemaker Award.
Photo by Ashley Gongora
Chef Troy Gardner, founder of TLC Vegan Cafe in Richardson, will appear on Food Network in an episode of Beat Bobby Flay, where he'll compete in a contest to achieve vegan victory.
According to a release, the episode airs on Thursday, May 25, at 8 pm.
Gardner has earned awards and local acclaim for his vegan trailblazing, from doing vegan hot dogs to opening V-Eats at Trinity Groves to running a vegan ghost concept at Revolving Ghost Kitchen.
TLC Vegan Kitchen was voted D Magazine’s Best Vegan restaurant and won CultureMap's Tastemaker Award in 2021 for Best Ghost Kitchen.
This will be his debut on Beat Bobby Flay, but he's no stranger to Food Network. His first appearance was in 2018, when he was featured on Guy’s Grocery Games, in the episode called “Clash of the Vegetarians” where he competed against three other veggie chefs; he was runner-up.
In the Bobby Flay episode, comedian Nikki Glaser and Chef Michael Voltaggio will attempt to bring contenders Troy Gardner and Rachel Klein to a vegan victory over Bobby. Judges will be Nikki Dinki, Rich Landau, and Chris Cheung.
Gardner is hosting a watch party at TLC Vegan Cafe, at 1930 N Coit Rd. #140, Richardson. It'll start with a dinner at 7 pm (reservations required), in which fans and diners can enjoy special dishes before the show airs at 8 pm.
While the horror genre is still capable of producing some innovative filmmaking, most of the output tends to fall back on jump scares and other tropes to deliver their terror. So when a film like the new Undertone tries something different, it should be applauded for the effort, even if it’s not as successful in its execution.
Evy (Nina Kiri) is a podcaster who co-hosts a show called Undertone, which focuses on paranormal videos and sounds they find on the internet. Her co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco), lives in London, so - for kind of contrived reasons - in order to make the time difference between them work, Evy records at around 3 am her time. Evy - who lives at home with her bedridden, dying mother - is the skeptic of the two, consistently debunking clips that Justin presents to her.
Her doubts are tested when Justin brings in a series of 10 audio clips that purport to be about a boyfriend recording his girlfriend as she talks in her sleep. The audio begins in a lighthearted manner and quickly turns creepy and then sinister as unexplained things start happening. Evy senses that what she’s hearing is bleeding into her own world, especially when inexplicable actions take place in her mother’s bedroom.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Ian Tuason, the film is effective early on when it introduces the story concept. Making great use of sound design, Tuason essentially puts the audience inside Evy’s head, where every little sound is heightened. Setting the podcast sessions in the middle of the night ups the anxiety level for both her and the audience.
However, as the film goes along it gets a little tedious watching Evy listen to the audio, even as Tuason attempts to keep the film dynamic by moving the camera around her. The premise of the story - progressively going through 10 clips - and Tuason’s framing of shots that focus as much on the background as they do on Evy seem to promise more interesting results than actually transpire.
What ultimately holds the film down more than anything is its lack of different viewpoints. The only other person who’s actually seen is Evy’s mother, who is unable to speak. Evy speaks to Justin, another friend, and a doctor over the course of the story, and while each broadens our understanding of Evy somewhat, none of them make her a truly three-dimensional person. Getting a little more information about her history might have helped the story work better.
Kiri does her level best to vary her acting in the various podcast scenes, and even when they start to get repetitive, she remains compelling and watchable. It’s difficult to judge the other actors based on audio alone, but knowing that DiMarco also starred in season 2 of The White Lotus helps to visualize him and his acting style.
Undertone does well in creating a spine-chilling mood, but it needed something beyond that to become a truly great horror movie. Tuason shows some promise as a filmmaker, especially in the way he uses the camera to create tension, but a more complete story will serve him better the next time around.
