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.

I love cooking shows - Top Chef, Master Chef, etc., which is why I thought I'd like this. I liked most of it. Animated "Chefy" almost made me quit this show - so annoying & silly. I liked the cooking challenges but found the "Reviews" section confusing & too fast to fully comprehend. I also didn't see the point of everyone having an Alias - Chef Donut, Chef Arugula, etc.. The White Elephant challenge was probably the best.... who knew it was possible to cook with a clothing steamer or iron?

If there's a Season 2: get rid of animated "Chefy", and still give everyone a printout of the reviews - all without aliases or names.

I thought it was super entertaining and i binged watched it all in like a day and a half. I would deff watch season 2. Was it fantastic? No. Entertaining enough? Yes! I thought Cheffy was super cute and i loved the animation. It was fun to see. I also liked how they all secretly judged each others meal.

However, I was disappointed in the finale and the ending with David Chang was weird to me. Why was he looking throughaathe window as the last two cooks were cooking? His personality wasn't pleasant either. He was constantly cratiquiag at the last two contestants (Don't want to spoil the names.)

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.

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.