Pel Mel Critics’ Corner

TV Review: The Chef Show

Sam Plunkett, Sports Editor, Senior

In the past few years Netflix has produced many original works, such as Big Mouth and Stranger Things. One of these shows is The Chef Show, which takes a new spin on your traditional Food Network cooking show. The show takes recipes from the popular movie, Chef, which hit theaters in 2014, and recreates them. The movie Chef depicts famous chef Carl Casper, who opens up a food truck after a falling out at his former restaurant. Jon Favreau, who plays Chef Casper in the movie, had limited cooking experience prior to filming. In order to remedy this, Favreau brought in Chef Roy Choi to teach him some cooking skills. Over their time together filming Chef, Choi and Favreau became great friends, which led to them starring in The Chef Show together.

In The Chef Show, Favreau and Choi travel across the country and cook with famous chefs to learn more recipes and diversify their cooking. The show provides an interesting twist to a traditional cooking show, keeping the audience engaged. The variety of recipes allows for interest from multiple audiences. For instance, if you did not think one recipe was interesting a few minutes later a new recipe will be showcased as 2 to 3 recipes are made per episode. They achieve this by keeping the show light with limited censoring and quickly changing scenes. Also, this acts as an opportunity for viewers to learn more about different cultures, especially regarding their food. The show travels to places like Hog Island Oyster Company in California and makes cauliflower pizza with famous director Robert Rodriguez. One helpful aspect of the show is the website that has all of the recipes so that fans can follow along or make the recipes at home after watching the show.

I would highly recommend this show to people who enjoy cooking shows. Whether it be the wide range of offbeat, unique recipes or the enthralling locations across the nation, The Chef Show provides a different watching experience that most cooking show fans would probably welcome. When all is said and done, The Chef Show is the best cooking show available to watch and is extremely addicting. The ever-changing locations and personalities allow for the audience to get a glimpse into many different areas and cuisines. With season two just being released, there are still plenty of episodes for fans to binge. Overall, The Chef Show is one of Netflix’s best new original television shows, and deserves–in fact, needs– to be on everyone’s watch list.