Secret Chef

I love the premise of this show. It could be, or could have been, absolutely top quality. Stop trying to "reality tv" everything?? Just the premise that they are reviewing themselves and each other and working blind is SO FUN. It is absolutely destroyed by the brutally grating animated glove and sound effects. Grab a chef host, a real one, and replace those two things and you have a winner. As it stands right now I don't know that I even *can* finish these episodes. The buzzer noise that they play over and over are awful. I think I would like the 80's electro sound effects if that's all there was to contend with. I think the animated "Cheffy" and the included voice over are just straight bad television.

So much of what makes competition cooking shows watchable is the host(s). When you're relying on civilians for your charisma you're already betting on long-shots. The central gimmick to this was good enough to grow from, but it just gets hindered over and over again by its own ostensibly clever machinations. And the biggest wart for me was how the challenges were so often unachievable by the competitors in the time allotted. Which leads me to the other reason to watch cooking competitions-to be educated/inspired. Since the completed dishes on this show were very often less than presentable, they definitely weren't inspiring and since a lot of the methods involved in preparing the dishes were rushed and constrained by bizarre parameters they also were rarely educational or edifying.

A somewhat entertaining spectacle but it needs retooling to become worth making another season.

They added so many twists and turns that don't make any sense. Some of the contestants are not that competent and I'm referring here to the ones calling themselves "social media chefs". They put them to judge other contestant dishes while they're not even competent enough to do so? They don't even know popular foods from other countries that the real chefs made so when they were judging it they're like "I don't understand blabla feels like need more seasoning yada yada". One of the social media chefs even pronounced "karaage" as "karaaajeee" like lol seriously. And they're in this show looking for a talented cook? The whole show is ridiculous. Just skip it. I watched it first cause I read that it's made by the same people who made nailed it. I thought it's gonna be good but now I can see that they're just putting this show not to really make a competition between real talented cooks but just for fun or something. How disappointing. I feel sorry for the real chefs in this show cause they just wasted their time and talent there. At least if u gonna make the contestants judge the other contestants foods make them competent enough to do so!

I started out quite enjoying it, a bit of a different concept. Quickly some of the contestants became quite unlikeable. I like food shows and there are shows out there that show that whilst it is a competition you don't have to tear down other contestants or strategise against them, pity nobody told some of these jerks. I kept watching to hope those ones would be eliminated.

I do wonder how much is scripted or they are given a role to play on screen, Just when they got rid of some of the jerks they sadly reappeared in various episodes, a couple were insufferable. Social media success does not always translate well to tv. The wrong person wins in my opinion.

I really enjoyed this show, and I've watched a lot of cooking shows over the years. I thought the addition of "Cheffy" was brilliant - comes across as almost psychopathic at times, and I loved it. There was a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it somehow, and I thought there were a lot of unique qualities that kept me guessing throughout.

I really hope there's another series because it was refreshing to watch and I binged the whole thing in two days.

Only thing I'd like to add is I'd love to see more plant-based cooking in these shows, because there could be so much creativity potential there and I think it would help keep that edge.