Anyone else catch this? A new show hosted by Alton Brown on Food Network.
It isn’t like the normal kitchen competitions, this is a game. Four established chefs square off for challenges where they have 60 seconds to grab the ingredients, and 20-30 minutes to prepare the courses. They also all get $25,000 to start. They then get to bid in auctions where they get things to sabotage their opponents… things like taking away all their kitchen tools and replacing it with a Swiss army knife… swapping their eggs and milk for powdered versions, etc. At the end of each round a judge comes in and doesn’t know how the chefs were handicapped and rate their dishes.
Bottom line is the winner takes home what they have left after all the auctions.
I loved it… makes me feel like those times we have all had where you realize at the last moment when getting ready to serve your new in-laws some special dinner that you forgot the most important ingredient and have to improvise.
I wish the episode would end with the judge clued into what happened in making the dishes. I don’t know if that would change her mind. There’s supposedly a webcast of the behind the scenes, but I haven’t watched it yet.
Were they real chefs? They looked more like cartoon characters, so I had some problems with their personalities; it was hard to take them seriously.
I’m a die-hard fan of Chopped, so I was hoping this might be an interesting spin on it.
I was disappointed. Too fussy in terms of procedures and rules to be fun. No real relation to cooking or food, but I can’t say I’m surprised about that part. At the rate Food Network is going, in 5 more years, they’ll change their name to FN or FudNet or something and show MTV reality show re-runs. (And then we’ll have to rely on the Travel Channel for food shows. :smack:)
Also, the judge didn’t care whether the contestants met the requirements of the challenge or not and that made half of the fussy procedures irrelevant anyway. If a salad on bread crusts soaked in egg counts as a winning “French Toast dish” and pieces of turkey in noodles counts as “turkey dinner” then clearly the theme is irrelevant.
Fussy procedures… the procedures were fix something that resembles this with the handicaps we give you.
They also don’t really have winners as much as they have losers.
Spoilers
The first challenge was “Turkey Dinner”… it wasn’t “Traditional American Thanksgiving Dinner.” The chef that lost had a bone in the bite the judge took. The chef who had the deli turkey instead of real made a wise decision to hide it in an Asian noodle dish.
Next was “French Toast”… the loser was cut because his dish was dry and flavorless. Probably due to the fact he had to use burnt bread. It is harder to cover that than to have to use crusts only.
Finally was the “Lobster Roll” which was lost because the chef wouldn’t pick up the “icky” lobster she dropped, and ended up having a roll with a bit of lobster (still not sure why one whole lobster produced such little meat for her). You have to give the other chef some credit for making bread from scratch and having no hand utensils in under 30 minutes.
I just watched the after show reveal to the judge and it is great… she was cracking up and kept saying “that explains a lot.”
Maybe you want the Recipe Network, but I enjoy the aspect of seeing what they can do to overcome a disaster in real time that would shut most of us down completely.
Well, I do enjoy Chopped immensely so I’m not just about recipes. In Chopped, we get at least some appreciation of the skill of the chefs and the techniques and ingredients they use. Even with Chopped, though… why not cut out twenty segments of “I didn’t come here to lose” and “I need to win for my mom” and replace those with a little more real information about what’s being cooked?
If my cable provider got the Cooking Channel, I’d probably watch that more than the Food Network, though. I do prefer to learn about new ingredients, and how to cook rather than just watching people do stupid things with food as a prop.
I watched it and liked it overall, but I think the prize structure needs to be fleshed out a bit more. So the winner gets to keep the money that they didn’t use in the auction segments? I guess that’s going to naturally keep the contestants from burning up their cash, but I can’t forsee anyone ever winning more than $15K tops.
I thought it was OK, not great. I kind of felt like Mohawk Guy got shafted a little by the judge. Would it be better to have three judges like on Chopped?
He’s Frankie “The Bull” from Top Chef season 2. I recognised him from an episode of Chef Wanted with Ann Burrell.
Incidently, the judge was Antonia, who came in fourth place in two different seasons of Top Chef.
My wife and I enjoyed it. We see so much incidental sabotage and back stabbing in the ither cooking competitions we watch, and the contestants try to wave it off like they didn’t want to screw anybody over, or they try to hide their complicity. It’s nice to see that aspect just put out in front.
We both thought the low prize winnings seemed unfortunate, but helps keep production costs down.
Since $10k is the winnings for similar FN shows like Chopped and Sweet Genius, I’m sure that’s what the Network accountants are budgeting for.
Personally, though, I think I’d bid only to the extent necessary to make other people run out of money, not with the intention of ever paying for anything. None of the dis/advantages seem like such a big deal when the judging is done with such a loose interpretation of the theme.
As I see it, the way to win the show is to spend as little as possible, grab everything you possibly can from the pantry (there’s not even any point to planning a menu when the bidding will screw that up). When you get to the cooking point, make something tasty and come up with a BS explanation for why it still fits the theme.
I can see my dish now: “Alton, this is my interpretation of a grilled cheese sandwich for someone who is gluten-free and dairy-free. Please enjoy your hummus on rice cakes.”
I don’t like shows like that either. I hate it on Chopped when someone is looking for an ingredient or a piece of equipment and someone is hoarding it on purpose.
It’s “cutthroat” but it seems pretty light hearted about it. The judge was boring. It’s the first ep, I’ll give it a little time to tighten everything up. I don’t currently watch any cooking shows regularly, so by “I’ll give it time” I mean I’ll check in on it when I can, but it’s probably not going into the queue.
The confessionals were good, and I liked the contestants honest self-appraisals. What could I have done differently? Oh yeah, pick up the lobster.
