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Dream of TV fame Egg’s him on
The Baltimore Sun
July 3, 2003
Sec: Howard
By: Sandy Alexander
Cook: A Columbia man, 22, hopes his cable access show for young people is a simmering success.

Five young men in baggy shorts and flip-flops crowded around Erik “Egg” Berlin in a small College Park kitchen learning the secretes to preparing really tender chicken wings.
“You need a spatula in your hand, dawg,” said Chris Constantino, as he shot a scene with a video camera.
The men in the kitchen Monday night - all members of the hip-hop band Written Prisms- are friends of Berlin’s from there college years in Salisbury. They were helping him tape an episode of his cable access show, Cooking with Egg, a title that uses a nickname Berlin has had since childhood.
Berlin hopes the show, a how to for the college crowd that he plans to air this fall on Howard County’s Cable Access Channel 73, will entertain and inform viewers. He would also like the program to help make him a nationwide star.
“Within five years, this should be on national TV,” said Berlin, 22, who started producing Cooking with Egg on cable access in Salisbury last year.
Berlin who grew up in Columbia and returned home after graduating from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, thinks that he has found a niche for his cooking expertise. His theme: “The only cooking show dedicated to teaching young people how to make great food for very little time money and space.”
“His focus is more on helping college students and younger kids develop healthier eating habits and simplicity in cooking, too,” said Suzanna Mallow, a music and film producer in Salisbury who is working on Berlin’s show.
Previous episodes include directions for chicken wings and quesadillas, and for more substantial fare such as Italian Caesar salad and roasted chicken. Berlin explained the steps in informal language while bantering with friends.
“It was fun,” said Chris Brown, who helped Berlin record some of his early episodes. “We just messed around with it and had a good time.”
Brown, who plans to attend film school in London this fall, appreciates the content as well.
“They are the best wings I’ve ever had,” he said. “They definitely fall off the bone.”
Berlin is trying to expand his format. A drummer, he decided to take a “field trip” to the Written Prisms home to record on location.
The band wrote Berlin a theme song with an upbeat tempo and lyrics such as “Kitchen full of smoke/ you are almost broke/ you should be cooking with Egg.”
“Egg is Egg. ... He’s got a sparkle in his eye you don’t see among people nowadays,” Mallow said. “You’ve got to respect a person that has a vision and is carrying it out.”
Berlin said he always enjoyed cooking and got his first job preparing food at the Columbia Inn, Which used to be in Columbia Town Center.
“At 16, they dropped me in that professional kitchen and it was trial by fire,” he said.
After a few months, he moved to another restaurant. Over the years he has done “every job in the industry,” including cooking, cleaning, serving and branding.
He graduated from Mt. Hebron High School and went to Anne Arundle Community College before completing his degree in hotel and restaurant management at UMES last year.
He said a formal culinary education was rather like joining the army.
“It’s boring and you get yelled at a lot,” he said, but it teaches how to stand up straight and take pride in oneself.
Outside class, he discovered that he enjoyed teaching others some of the simple techniques of the trade.
“College kids eat horribly,” said Berlin who talks to his roommates and pals out of ordering pizza and use the money for meat, vegetables, rice and other simple ingredients. He also taught several friends to impress their girlfriends with chocolate-covered strawberries and other sweets.
In 2001, he produced a cooking show on the Access 26 station in Salisbury. He did the first episode for $60, he had the skill, he’s very talented and very motivated,” said Creig Twilley, production coordinator for the station which serves Wicomico County. With that kind of leadership, “your show is almost guaranteed to get noticed.”
Judging by the people who recognize him in Wal-Mart, Berlin would say that his foray into television was a success.
Now he is looking for ways to expand his operation.
He has done cooking demonstrations and lectures for college students and children. An agency in Pennsylvania is helping him get booked at more colleges. Appearances on local television and radio stations also went well.
In the long run, Berlin is angling for a cooking show on MTV or the Food Network.
“I am confident it is going to happen,” he said.

 

‘Egg’ hatches ways to get young adults into kitchens
The Howard County Times
November 6, 2003
Sec: Go! Food & Wine.
By: Donna Ellis

His web address is cookingwithegg.com. Funny how often your eyes see what you tell them to see. It took an in-person interview to for me to understand that Erik Berlin does not really specialize in cooking eggs.
Rather, “Egg” is his nickname, as he was dubbed by his boyhood friends. He doesn’t actually tell you how he came by that name only that his friends are a bit crazy.
The Columbia-born-and-raised Berlin isn’t all that far from boyhood himself. Just 23, a graduate of Anne Arundle Community College and University of Maryland. When you major in hotel and restaurant management, you also get a lot of cooking classes.
While Berlin says his first love is music (he plays the drums), his focus- since he was14, - really is cooking, which we foodies all know is as much an art as is music. Thus
, in pursuit of culinary art, he’s worked both front and back of the house at such varied venues as Merriweather Post Pavilion, Kings Contrivance restaurant and the former Ricciutti’ in Hickory Ridge.
These days, to pay for his culinary “habit”- more on that later- Berlin works as a substitute teacher in Howard County, often doing cooking demos. And weekends often find him helping out in jobs for Puttin’ on the Ritz, a long established local catering firm.

Mmmm TV
A “free thinker”, by his own description. Berlin enjoys being self-employed. And since he loves interacting with people, teaching and working catering jobs help energize him.
One of Berlin’s primary goals is to make it big in the food biz. Of course, a major secrete to success is to find a niche and fill it. His niche, he believes, is the youth market, specifically those age 14 to 25, the same market MTV is always after.
“The shows on the Food Network are aimed at people age 25 and up,” Egg points out. But he aims to reach people in high school and college, and young professionals as well. In other words, the inexperienced “knuckleheads” with little money and little space, those who do occasional cooking while still at home, those who live in college dorms and teeny tiny apartments.
To fill his niche, even while still in college, Berlin originated a half hour cooking show designed to produce an entire, balanced, generally healthful meal in just a little time with inexpensive ingredients and simple cooking tools and techniques. The show earned him three credits for independent study.
And since graduation, he has continued to produce his cooking shows for public-access television, here in Howard County (Channel 73) as well as in Wicomico County where UMES is located.
One aim in doing these shows is to reach a wider audience than he can as a substitute teacher and catering maven. And he puts his money where his mouth is, using some remuneration from teaching and cooking to entirely pay for producing the television show you can see on Channel 73 every Friday at noon, 4and 8 p.m.
And, true to one of his other loves, besides featuring all those recipes, he also highlights local musical groups as well.
Egg’s aims aren’t entirely altruistic, though. He has high hopes of selling the show to the network whose primary audience exactly meets his demographic niche: MTV. And with his show, he points out, you can park you children in front of the TV for a half hour and know they’ll be seeing something safe and wholesome.

Simple tastes
Although “classically trained” in more complex cookery, Berlin prefers simple fare. “I like to preparing good food that people are going to eat,” he notes. “Chinese, Italian. Home cooking: meatloaf, macaroni and cheese. I love to barbecue with my friends.”
And he passes his preferences on to his viewers in a format that frequently sees him produce a complete meal, including three to four different vegetables and a total of five to six recipes during a half hour, commercial free program.
“If somebody watches my show and uses only one of my recipes I demonstrate, I’m satisfied,” Egg says.
Scratch cooking is emphasized. His first show taught viewers how to make homemade tomato sauce. Another teaches you how to roast a chicken, and prepare all of the fixings to produce a dinner for four.
Berlin is not a purist, though, so he he’s also willing to use prepared mixes. The youth market isn’t necessarily long on cooking implements, he notes.
But he’ll round out mixes with more healthful things. Macaroni and cheese gets some fresh broccoli, for instance. The idea is to “take things from the store and add your own ingredients,” to make it your own recipe.
He’s also a pragmatist when it comes to cooking appliances. A microwave is fine for pre-baking a potato, which you can then finish off in the oven. A George Foreman Grill is a legitimate way to cook, he opines. As is an electric skillet or a toaster oven, if that’s all you have room for.
His message for his youthful audience, as well as any of us who are trying to simplify our everyday cooking chores, is to keep it simple. And be willing to “try everything, at least once.”
For more inventive ideas from Egg, visit www.cookingwithegg.com and visit his TV show every Friday. A new series will air beginning in early December, Egg says.

 

‘Cooking with Egg’ Is Eggcelent TV
The Business Monthly
December 2003
Sec: Focus
By Hanna Eileen Choi

“Educate, Entertain, Inspire. It’s on my business card. See? To educate comes first.”
Egg, formerly known as Erik Berlin, has been attempting to fill a void in the television market ever since he was a college student at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Egg, now 23, studied hotel and restaurant management, but carries pride in the fact that he is a “life long learner.”
From humble beginnings, “Cooking with Egg” has become a household name in Salisbury, Md. Since his debut on Salisbury Cable Access Channel 26, Egg has found his niche in Entertaining and educating young people from ages 16-25.
“I’m always trying to be a better person everyday than I was before,” said Egg with no hesitation. “This show gives me a creative outlet: It allows me to be myself and have fun while at the same time allowing me to educate young people, whether they know it or not.”
“’Cooking with Egg’ is a TV show based on helping young adults cook food in a lesser amount of time and with less money,” said Egg. “From personal experience, I know what the college student’s diet consists of: Pizza. After having pizza for a week straight, you just need something healthy to balance all that junk food out. That is why I always like to balance meat with veggies. It’s the perfect combination.”
With a music video format, Egg demonstrates his own recipes and cooking techniques by working with actual; volunteers from a live audience. Although “Cooking with Egg” is not aired live, it still presents itself with the same excitement because it is taped in front of a live audience and nothing is ever scripted or staged. “What ever happens, happens,” stated Egg.
Egg also returns friends’ favors when they help him tape his cooking show by giving them a five-minute spot to showcase their band. “It’s a great way to help my friends out and thank them for helping me out in the first place.”
Egg, on the other hand, knows that comedy attracts people. “It’s so cool how a person will be laughing hysterically at some random joke I make during my cooking demonstration, but then at the same time he’ll actually be learning something,” said Egg with a twinge of excitement in his voice. “I’ll show my friends how to make something one day, then he’ll come back to me saying, ‘Hey, that was really easy.”
Some of Egg’s aired recipes include college style chicken wings, Italian Caesar salad and even chocolate fondue. with easy-to-follow cooking directions, comedic effects geared towards young people and an appetizing yet healthy homemade meal, Egg is confident that his TV show will hit big- if not soon, then sometime in the definite future.
Now airing on Howard County’s Cable Access Channel 73, audience can view “Cooking with Egg” on Fridays at 12 noon, 4 and 8 p.m. With the slogan: “The only shoe dedicated to teaching young people how to make great food for very little time money and space,” it seems that Erik “Egg” Berlin can’t go wrong.
“My main goal is to have my show be aired on a major cable network, like MTV or the food network,” said Egg confidently. “This show is going to hit it big; I can feel it. I say five years tops.”

 

Cooking With Egg
By: Mary Bargion
Salisbury Daily Times
Move over, Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, Erik "Egg" Berlin of Salisbury is waiting in the pantry wings with his cooking show. A very funny creation "Cooking with Egg" is a low-budget production geared towards college students on Salisbury's Channel 26 Access TV.
What the show lacks in production values, it makes up in Berlin's nonchalant but right on comments about cooking. "College students have very little money, time and space to cook," said Berlin, who is wrapping up his college career at University of Maryland Eastern Shore as a hotel and restaurant major.
Berlin used the cooking suit in Severn Dorm on the Salisbury University Campus to make the show, which runs on random hours on the cable channel. "It was never used," said Berlin. "While we were taping, students would poke their heads in and ask, "What are you cooking?"

He recruited some assistance, "just to show college students could really do this," said Berlin. They are very funny too, taking the innards out of a Perdue chicken or tossing garlic potatoes.
"Could you show me that tossing thing again?" deadpanned one of his assistance. Berlin explains the basics as he goes, often with a twist. He said concepts such as green vegetable and cookware are novel terms to the college crowd.
"Student will give you a blank look if you say 'broccoli florettes' or 'steamer,'" said Berlin. "With college student you have to stress credibility. You must have humor, no boring 'half-cup of this' or 'a pinch of that.'"
Berlin feels that he has found his calling. He hopes to market his first effort and grab a toe hold in TV-land with a slot on the "Food Network." He sees a whole marketing line growing up around " Cooking with Egg," such as labeled chef coats and cookware a la Martha Stewart. "I want to become a household name," he said.
The second and third shows are being readied now, thanks to some editing help from SU student Chris Brown.
"Food is love to me, " said Berlin, brandishing a frying pan. "I've found my niche."