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Cooking duo takes frills out of the kitchen with 'Eat Me!'

ByMary Gottschalk

First there was Julia Child's groundbreaking The French Chef, Great Britain's Two Fat Ladies, and Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen. Now there's Gordy Carbone and Gary Sunbury with their Eat Me! cooking videos.

"Our push and our mission statement is we're a cooking show for the regular guy," says Carbone, 36, who lives in downtown San Jose.

"We're not going to tell you to clarify butter; we'll tell you to use olive oil if you want to raise the smoke point.

"We're not going to tell you to get scallions; we'll say, 'Grab green onions.'

"Our ingredients are things we think the common person has readily available in their kitchen, instead of stocking up on saffron you'll use once a year and is ridiculously expensive."

Sunbury, 38, who lives in San Jose's Shasta Hanchett Park neighborhood, agrees.

"We offer something different than what's out there," he says.

"We're just two regular guys trying to do something that's fun, just to show people you don't have to be fancy chefs to make really good food or to spend a gazillion dollars on fancy ingredients."

Thus far Carbone and Sunbury's claim to fame is that they were featured in an episode of Bobby Flay's Grill It! on the Food Network, they write the cooking column in Punk Rock Confidential magazine, and their first video won third place in a cooking contest sponsored by Taste TV.

Although the third-place finish didn't win them any prizes, Carbone says when he learned they had won honorable mention it was an affirmation.

"They chose our video as No. 3," he says. "Our first crack in front of the lens trying to cook like we think it should be done was a really huge thing.

"Maybe we're idiots, but maybe we're onto something here."

While the Food Network hasn't offered them their own show yet, Carbone and Sunbury are not discouraged. They keep filming and posting their videos on MySpace and YouTube.

The two met at the now-defunct Cactus Club in downtown San Jose about 10 years ago.

Carbone, who is a professional musician and plays with the bands The Forgotten and Lars and the Bastards, says he encouraged Sunbury to move into the other half of a duplex he was renting.

"I was doing a month on the road and one week off," Carbone recalls.

"My one week off was spent with the jobless guy, Gary. We would shoot BB guns in the back yard, drink beers and watch the Food Network."

Carbone is contemptuous of most television chefs, pointing out "a chef on the Food Network has eight pots going, and no normal human being has a kitchen like that.

"Gary said we should do this, so we got together and filmed our first show on making shredded beef and doing enchiladas."

That was the video that won them an honorable mention and encouraged them to keep cooking and filming.

There is no set schedule for filming, as Carbone still does a lot of traveling and Sunbury is now employed in circulation for Metro.

"We like to do things we've never done before. It's fun that way."

Sunbury says he started cooking "as soon as I could reach the stove."

Carbone says he started cooking for himself around the age of 10.

"Growing up in Campbell, both my parents worked, so I was a latch-key kid."

Carbone says he believes their show appeals to "an untapped audience­the bachelor, the college student, the busy workaholic who might be scared about cooking or doesn't have time or energy.

"We feature the best and newest in punk rock music as the sound- track, and we let you know straightforward what we're doing.

"We want to get you in and out of the grocery story spending as little money as possible."

Their appearance with Flay started with a Craigslist ad that caught Sunbury's eye.

It was a solicitation for people who like to barbecue to submit information on themselves to be on the show.

Carbone answered the ad, and the Food Network contacted them.

A crew came out to San Jose and spent about seven hours filming the duo shopping and cooking.

"They only used 30 seconds of what they filmed here," Sunbury says.

The two then flew to New York for a half-day filming. The episode started airing in July and has been running in the mix since.

Gordy Carbone and Gary Sunbury's website is www.eatmetv.net.