Truth in labeling?

The Food Network will do anything for a show - even dupe one of Philly's major universities.

Producers had asked Drexel University to demonstrate pretzel baking for a new show called Snack Attack. They also rang up the Pretzel Boy's - not to point out the errant apostrophe but to showcase the nine-unit suburban Philly franchise.

Cameras rolled last Sunday in the Drexel Hill store. Pretzel Boy's John Howe and Tim Dever were dispatched the next day to Drexel's culinary school for an hour of shooting in front of about 50 hospitality and culinary students and faculty.

Then Bobby Flay walked in.

Snack Attack?

No, sneak attack.

Flay challenged the Boy's boys to a pretzel-making contest for his Food Network series Throwdown! - just as he did a year ago at Reading Terminal Market with Philly mac-and-cheese whiz Delilah Winder. (Flay won that one.)

Philadelphia Weekly writer Kirsten Henri, who had been asked to appear as a "pretzel expert" on the fake Snack Attack, and Drexel's Adrienne Hall were drafted as judges.

Flay's pretzels were of the sweet, buttery, Pennsylvania Dutch variety, while the Pretzel Boy'ses' twists were regulation.

Sampling and assessing took some time, Hall says: "We ad-libbed it till we got it right." Outcome will await the show, scheduled for 10 p.m. March 30.

On a more aboveboard food-TV note: WHYY TV12 has drafted Fox29's Sue Serio to host The Philly Food Show, a documentary executive-produced by Ed Cunningham. She'll shoot this month; the show is to debut in March. Serio, by the way, worked at WHYY years ago with husband and current Fox29 sports guy Bill Vargus.

McKie on the move

Aaron McKie, an assistant coach for the 76ers, has put his spread in Penn Valley on the market for $2,349,999 as he's building anew. The house, built in 2001, has a wet bar with a fish tank in the wall, a pool table, an arcade, a card table and a theater section. The house also has an au pair suite above the garage, the listing says. Eight-foot doorways throughout. He's 6-foot-5. Philly-bred McKie, 35, spends much spare time with his AM8 Foundation, a nonprofit that runs educational and recreational programming out of the Belfield Recreation Center.

At the movies

Philly will get a red-carpet screening, if not the premiere, of Cover - a drama directed by Bill Duke that features Mya, Patti LaBelle, Vivica A. Fox and Louis Gossett Jr. and was filmed here last winter. Producers Warren Kohler and Corey Redmond say the film will open in L.A., New York, D.C., Atlanta and Philly on Feb. 22. The Philly screening, expected to draw Duke, Kohler, Redmond, LaBelle and star Aunjanue Ellis, will be Feb. 16. Kohler and Redmond hope to be back in the city in late spring or early summer with Fox to film Fulfillment, a drama about a research scientist forced into a shady deal; it had been penciled in for last summer.