WTFWTD stands for WTF would Thu Tran do. Not familiar with Thu? Imagine if Björk had been raised in Cleveland instead of Iceland, and made bologna-art instead of music. (Actually, she’s probably working on that right now.) Welcome to the crazy world of Thu Tran — proof that even if you go to art school and study glass, you can still get a job in media.
Since 2006, Thu’s been making sweet, sweet puppet-love (and Jell-O) with her online cooking-show-set-in-a-cardboard-kitchen, Food Party. Now IFC’s bringing the party to the small screen, Tuesdays at 11:15 p.m. on the Independent Film Channel.
We’re enchanted with Thu for a few reasons: she likes to play with food, with puppets, and with our minds. (We love French baguettes, but Thu takes her love to a whole, new level.) It also doesn’t hurt that she’s been called one of “New York’s Most Beautiful People” by Paper Magazine.
Also, she’s made a doughnut tree. The girl knows the way to our hearts, and hips.
IFC calls Food Party “a mind-bending, non-reality cooking show with Thu Tran as your hostess, a cast of unruly puppets as culinary aides, and a cavalcade of fictitious celebrities as surprise dinner guests. Shot on location in a Technicolor cardboard kitchen as well as other foreign and exotic cardboard locations, each episode will or will not instruct you on how to prepare wild gourmet multi-course meals with ingredients you probably have on hand in your kitchen already, such as pretzel rods, eggs, narwhal lungs, bizarre plot twists, secret ingredients, and pizza.”
Or, in the words of director Zachariah Durr, “Food Party is like if you got hit on the back of the head with a sock full of truffles, and you woke up and somebody spits glitter all over you.”
We thought we knew how to play with our food. But we bet we don’t know the half of WTFWTD.