From Consumer Reporter to Resident Cable Foodie

Marc Silverstein causes the guy fixing the phones at his North Baltimore townhouse to do a double take.

Hey, the repairman says, you’re that guy on TV. Silverstein, a correspondent for the Food Network, nods yes. The man asks, “How come that woman gets to go to all these places, and you’re always in Baltimore?”

Silverstein’s response: “You really have to get out more.”

But the repairman isn’t the only one watching. The cable channel’s show “The Best Of”--which revels in all manner of food--has become a sleeper success. Silverstein, a former consumer reporter for WMAR-TV here, serves as one of its hosts. “That woman” is Jill Cordes, a former morning news anchor in Omaha who is the show’s other correspondent.

In no small part because of the birth of his son, Spencer, in October 1999, Silverstein’s segments have disproportionately featured Baltimore eateries. That has persisted as the program has expanded from once a week to every day.

The result, say area restaurateurs hungry for recognition, has been a welcome focus on the region. Employees at Nacho Mama’s and Sabatino’s in Baltimore and Purim Oak in Towson say they had out-of-state patrons who otherwise never would have stopped by.

“After the show started, we would have people from New York and New Jersey,” says Mun Choi, a waiter at Purim Oak, which serves a modestly priced Korean-style dinner buffet. “Then Florida, some people came from L.A., Arizona, Atlanta.”

In addition, former WMAR anchor Sandra Pinckney has her own program on the Food Network called “Food Finds,” which puts the spotlight on regional specialty cuisine. Both Pinckney and Silverstein routinely travel around the country for shoots. But both delight in focusing on locally based establishments. One of Pinckney’s favorites: a piece on Konstant Candies in Lexington Market.

“There really is life outside of local news,” says Pinckney, who left WMAR in April. “This is one show where it transcends race and sex and ethnicity and locality. I can’t believe I have a job where they pay me to eat and drink and then to sit down and ask people about their best stories.”

Like WMAR, the Food Network is owned by Scripps Howard’s broadcast division. “The Best Of” represented a departure from the chef-as-star approach of many of the network’s better-known programs taped in a studio, such as “Emeril Live” or “B. Smith With Style.” Instead, Silverstein says, he treats restaurants as the setting for stories, usually celebratory, that happen to involve food and cooking.

“The show is great,” says Cindy Wolf, co-owner and chef of Petit Louis and Charleston restaurants. Silverstein taped a segment at Charleston recently that is likely to be broadcast early next year. “It’s terrific that they take people to places they might otherwise not know about. It’s just a little frustrating to read an article about Baltimore, and it’s all about crabs.”

Of Silverstein, she says, “He was very nice and easy to get along with, and he didn’t ask any stupid questions.”

Silverstein would be the first to say that he’s not culinarily inclined. At the channel’s Web site (https://www.foodtv.com), he lists frozen pizza, takeout Chinese and all-you-can-eat sushi under his favorite recipes for cooking.

Irreverent and good-natured, Silverstein asks the question that you might want to ask. “What is with these mounted heads?” he demands of a Denver steakhouse owner whose predecessors accumulated a collection of stuffed heads of deer, bison, moose and other prey.

During an episode on red sauce that first aired late last spring, Silverstein headed down to Sabatino’s in Little Italy, seeking lessons on how to eat pasta properly. “Let me show you how I normally eat,” Silverstein told Sabatino’s co-owner Vince Culotta, the camera rolling as he wolfed down an overburdened forkful of spaghetti with the gusto of a 4-year-old. By the end of the segment, Silverstein’s napkin, tucked into his collar, looked like one of Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings. But Culotta had (more or less) successfully trained him in the art of eating noodles.

“As opposed to being the hard-hitting consumer reporter I once was, you don’t come in with cameras blazing,” says Silverstein. “This is [the chefs’] passion, and when they’re able to share it with you in understandable terms, it becomes fun.

“Am I bettering society? No. In news, I always thought I was doing that,” Silverstein says. “But if someone sits there and enjoys himself for a few minutes, and they even just get hungry from watching the show, then I’ve done something right.”

* “The Best Of” airs weekdays at 10:30 a.m., 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and weekends at 11 a.m.