There are so many cooking competition shows in the world, and a stunning percentage of them are so rote and mechanized you have to be home with a fever to submit to them. (Cupcake maven Candace Nelson sparkles a bit less but is competent.) And the format is actually rather gripping-much more so than Zumbo’s Just Desserts, which is also available to stream if you just can’t get enough of the guy. The contestants are a healthy and sometimes hilarious mix of human ingredients with a vast range of personalities and perspectives, and judge Adriano Zumbo (known in some circles as “Lord Voldecake”) is bright and has a lot of personality. The tweak to the formula is that contestants are also racing against a clock, and if they can complete challenges ahead of schedule they can bank the time for the final round… assuming they get that far. Sugar Rush is a baking competition, and it follows the general formula, pitting bakers against each other in a bid to impress a couple of expert judges and a special guest for the chance to win a big cash prize. So imagine my surprise that a Netflix original knockoff has enough flair and fun in it to actually qualify as one of the better food program options the streaming service is offering right now.
Repetitive, limited, middling, devoid of character. I prayed long and hard and to no avail for my children to outgrow their obsession with Cupcake Wars, a show I found totally stultifying proof that competition food programming had reached its nadir.
Confusingly, there’s also an odd focus on keeping track of how much time each cook used to make their dish, but it’s not really relevant to any element of the competition.Īll in all, this is one of Netflix’s stranger forays into cooking competitions, not least for the mental backflips it takes to envision a dish such as “chicken with lemon poppy seed sauce and broccoli” as a sensible entry to the episode theme of “midnight snacks.” Because sure, who among us hasn’t stuck a bunch of chicken breasts into the oven in the wee hours of the A.M.? - Jim Vorel It’s up to the cooks to prepare dishes that will bake or roast properly during the time period that the oven becomes available. The connection to the original Easy Bake Oven, meanwhile, is pretty tenuous-once in each competition, the competitors are instructed to use a “full size” oven, but the heat can only be operated during a set time frame.
Rather, the focus of Easy Bake Battle becomes the idea of “easy”-contestants are average home cooks, and are meant to show off their various “kitchen hacks,” etc., to make easy but delicious meals. When you hear that Netflix whipped up a cooking competition show in tribute to the iconic Easy Bake Oven, one must surely assume that the point of the show will involve cooking in actual Easy Bake Ovens, but sadly we’re nowhere near as lucky with this oddity. Fair warning, though, as almost all of these shows are dangerous to watch while hungry.Īnd as an added bonus, Netflix’s Iron Chef reboot has finally arrived as well! 20. They truly run the gamut, from chintzy, broadcast-style reality cooking competitions like Easy Bake Battle, to gorgeously shot documentaries like Chef’s Table or sobering docu-series like High on the Hog.
Best travel docs on netflix series#
In recent years, Netflix has assembled quite a few of these types of colorful food programming, ditching reruns of old Food Network series and increasingly turning to original competition series and documentaries instead. If anything, this type of show feels like the reason why streaming services exist in the first place. The streaming world proved to be an almost infinite avenue for this kind of programming, especially as it became more niche-could you really get multiple seasons of a show that is nothing more than profiles of different types of tacos onto broadcast TV? On Netflix, though, that type of show-it’s literally called Taco Chronicles-feels right at home. As food culture and foodie-ism blossomed in the U.S., an influx of every possible type of food programming came with it.
Best travel docs on netflix tv#
Good food is a universal human comfort, and TV about good food is nearly as popular.
0 kommentar(er)
