Since I know I'm going to be busy pretty much all day tomorrow, I'm going to do my writing for Saturday now. Technically it's pretty much the same day as my first post, but we're past midnight and I think technicalities count.
So, having just caught episodes two and three of the current season of Chopped Champions, it occurred to me why I like the show so much better than the other competitive cooking shows.
It is pure cooking.
You see, most cooking competitions muddle things up with other elements. The Next Food Network Star is more about your camera presence than your food. The Great Food Truck Race is mostly about about location and selling your food. Iron Chef America lets you pre-plan your menu and gives you three sous chefs!
Only Chopped, in all its variations, is really about one chef and his or her skill at making food to the exclusion of all else. In Chopped, you and three opponents get 20 minutes and a basket of unusual ingredients to cook an appetizer. The least successful of the four of you is "chopped" and leaves the show. The remaining three competitors get another basket and 30 minutes to do an entree. Again you're judged, and the surviving two chefs get a third and final basket and another 20 minutes to do a dessert. The winner is judged on his or her overall meal and takes home $10,000.
That's it. The chef able to think on his or her feet and cook the best under difficult conditions wins.
And that simplicity is what I like. It doesn't matter if you're telegenic or if you have business sense, or how good you are at directing subordinates. How good is your food?
What could be fairer than that?
The show is so simple, in fact, that they resort to gimmick seasons, like the current Chopped Champions where winners of the regular show compete against each other in a two round tournament for $50,000. There was even a season where the contestants were all members of the Food Network "family," including some judges from Chopped itself!
So, if you find yourself with an itch to watch chefs duke it out, I recommend Chopped.
I'm a bit back and forth about the judging on Chopped, as there's a bit of nonsense about being creative. The judges pay a lot of lip service to trying new ideas but don't award risk-taking a whole lot. The other thing is that the judges, particularly Alex G., seem to base more than a bit of judging on entirely non-food related criteria. Which, as I see it, violates a lot of the point of the format - which is supposed to be about the food.
ReplyDeletegranted, which is why Zacharian is the best judge on the show, because he'll go to the wall for a chef who IS creative, even if what he or she created isn't technically perfect. I think Zacharian's the best judge on the show, and I was disappointed to see him lose out to in the Judges v Judges show to Aron Sanchez who always struck me as kind of bland in his commentary.
ReplyDeleteStill, it beats putting your fate in the hands of one qualified food critic and two random New York celebrities ala Iron Chef. Or who the fuck knows what criteria Ramsey uses on Hell's Kitchen. It's not perfect, but I still think Chopped gets it closer to right than wrong, especially compared to most every other cooking competition show.
That is one big take away - if there's anyone whose restaurant I really, really want to eat at, it's Zacharian's. Aron's not bad, but I think, basically, that Alex G. threw to Aron in the end, and that Zacharian was robbed. Still, at the end of the day, the Judges v. Judges in Chopped was some of the best competition TV of its kind.
ReplyDeleteI just noticed that it's supposed to be "Zakarian" not "Zacharian".
ReplyDeleteAnyway, here's his newest place: http://www.thelambsclub.com/index.php
It looks like his original restaurants, "Town" and "Country" have closed, alas.