Ciao House

What a disappointment that.this show follows the Food channel's formula--ridiculous time constraints, cruel food critics, crushed competitors. Alex's biting comments are vicious. Gabriele's arrogance is irritating. They even insult the Tuscan guests--nona's, wine makers, and butcher so far--by allowing them only few minutes and missing a chance for the contestants and the audience to learn about Tuscan food. Isn't learning about Tuscan food supposed to be the point of this show? Apparently not. What a wasted opportunity. Not the best choice of chefs, but if culinary education were truly the goal of the show, there were many missed opportunities.

We watched the first season of this show only because we were going to be visiting Italy soon. It seemed disjointed and very low budget. We are very pleasantly surprised with the second season. Much more compelling and the production values are far better. We like the concept of team members deciding who will be going home. We also feel like we are learning a lot about Italian cuisine. Alex is not as obnoxious in the second season as she was in the first. If you were not happy with the first season, I definitely think you should give the second season a try. The setting is beyond beautiful and the food looks fantastic. I hope it comes back for a third season.

Did the casting call for this show read "Looking for awful human beings who happen to be chefs"? There's nobody to root for on this show. If you want a display of pure narcissism to end your Sunday night, this is for you. It's just such a shame. I'm sure there were more qualified chefs, who also had a shred of humility and basic decency that would have loved the opportunity. The two judges are good! Big fan of Alex and always have been. It's just a waste of her abilities, but I'm sure she is not complaining about being in Tuscany. I hope that if this show gets renewed for another season, they can find contestants that people want to root for and see succeed.

My fiancée and I were intrigued by this show when we saw the commercials. Set in Tuscany, lots of opportunity to showcase the locale with all the foods etc. Unfortunately, while they've shown some of those things, the format of the show is ridiculous and super unfair. Constantly lopsided teams, people being captains multiple times while others not at all, has allowed floaters to get further than they should have, while better chefs have gone home. The judges are different and their choices for choosing the winners are wishy washy and we just watched an episode where a judge pointed out something to the chefs about their choice for the menu, questioning it, thusly allowing them to make a change which really gave them an advantage. Ridiculous.

Love cooking competitions shows. But the basis of a competition is the better chefs ultimately win. The foundation of contestants leaving this show is other contestants voting them out. Judges as a result are completely unnecessary. They played 0 role in the progression of the competition.

Unfortunately, at the end of each competition, it wasn't the weakest chefs going home, but the opposite. Strong chefs got voted out by weaker chefs binding together to get rid of skilled chef.

Judges should have had the responsibility to vote out chefs based on their performance. Very disappointing to see deserving talents leave the show because less skilled chefs took advantage of the poor structuring of the competition.