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Any cooking show where the grand prize is a giant golden Spork and $1,000 has a sense of humor. Clearly these contestants are not vying for the James Beard Foundation Award. MTV's latest, "Snack-Off ' premiering Thursday, July 10, features untrained cooks using ingredients that include jellybeans and waffles. Essentially, these are dishes that would satisfy most college students with the munchies. It's not serious food, yet one of the chefs, Jason Quinn, is quite serious about food. "The one issue about doing the show for me is I am in this tradition, my ideal scenario is to be a chef, who makes great food and uses ultra premium ingredients," Quinn says. "What I am worried about with the show is, will I be labeled as a junk food chef?" He's a self-trained chef and chats while buying lobsters at an Asian market for his Santa Ana restaurant, Playground. "It is one of those things I can buy through my distributor for $12 a pound, or go to an Asian market for $6.99," he says. "Snack-Off is the worst cooking show ever made, but the most hilarious cooking show ever made," Quinn says. "As far as being about food, it is terrible. But it is a parody. (Host) Eddie Huang pulled me aside to say, 'This isn't 'Iron Chef,' it is a parody.' " Some of the contestants worked in his kitchen, and Quinn was open to letting them because he got his start by working in kitchen. Quinn worked as a server and in restaurants where he hated the food. Then a friend asked Quinn to start a food truck, and a restaurateur was born. "I definitely cooked some bad food," he says. "I remember very early on in the truck watching a guy smelling it and throwing it in trash and not even tasting it," Quinn says. "It was inspiration to get better." While he's mastered intricate dishes, he describes some of the weirder combos on "Snack-Off." "It was blasphemy," Quinn says. "It might as well been Jason's internal turmoil because none of these foods I wanted to eat at all." The grossest dish he tasted? "There was a cupcake full of ground beef and topped with inner goodness of a Twinkie, that gross stuff in the center, and cotton candy on it," he says. 'Snack-Off's' Quinn endured a meat cupcake with Twinkie filling BY JACQUELINE CUTLER What's always in your refrigerator at home? "My wife and I live at the restaurant. We just sleep at the house. When we get off work, and have been cooking for 12 hours, we go out." What's the first dish you cooked? "Brie and blue cheese quesadilla with a pear and brown sugar compote." What do you hate to cook? "If you come in say can I just have an egg white omelet, I am going to say, 'No f***ing way.' " What do you love to cook? "Bellota pork from Spain." BEST HALLE BERRY MOVIES "Jungle Fever" (1991) Berry started her film work in a challenging way, appearing in writer-director Spike Lee's drama of an interracial affair. "Boomerang" (1992) A charming Berry plays a schoolteacher who eventually makes a too-smooth advertising man (Eddie Murphy) reconsider his womanizing ways. "Losing Isaiah" (1995) The acting demands on a superb Berry are many in this drama about a crack addict legally opposing the adoptive mother (Jessica Lange) of her baby. "Executive Decision" (1996) In a preview of her later action-heroine status, Berry acquits herself well as a stewardess who helps a government analyst (Kurt Russell) aboard a flight hijacked by terrorists. "Bulworth" (1998) Berry enjoyably goes with the flow in director, co-writer and title star Warren Beatty's satire about a no-holds-barred politician. "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge" (TV, 1999) Also an executive producer of the film, Berry earned virtually every award possible – and deservedly so – for this portrait of actress Dandridge's challenge-filled life and career. "X-Men" (2000) Berry certainly gets in her physical time in Storm, one of the heroic Marvel mutants in the original movie that launched a franchise in which she still continues in the current "X-Men: Days of Future Past." "Monster's Ball" (2001) A memorably emotional acceptance speech resulted from Berry's Oscar-winning performance as a widow with a surprising link to her new love interest (Billy Bob Thornton). "Die Another Day" (2002) As the resourceful and fiercely independent Jinx, who explained that she didn't "want to get tied down," Berry furnished James Bond (Pierce Brosnan, in his last stint as Agent 007) with his match. Just watching her coolly take a back flip off a high wall into the ocean far below is worth the price of admission ... even if you're watching it on TV. "Cloud Atlas" (2012) Simply for tackling multiple roles in one movie – as did most of her co-stars, inxcluding Tom Hanks – Berry deserves credit for her work in this ambitious sci-fi venture. BY JAY BOBBIN "Cloud Atlas" "Die Another Day" "X-Men" 8 The Goshen News • TV Spotlight • July 7 - 13, 2014

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