There’s a problem of scale on the premiere of 100 Cooks, Food Network’s newest competition that seems like its attempt to get in on the OMG so many people! action from the Korean competition Culinary Class Wars or maybe Fox’s game show The Floor.
Sitting in their 1 vs. 100 bleachers, the chefs sit next to large screens with their numbers, and those are far bigger than they are, so they appear to
Perched in their own Statler and Waldorf balcony, judges Alex Guarnaschelli and Nick DiGiovanni look like children who snuck into a movie and are peering over the balcony.
Host Terry Crews is in full America’s Got Talent shouting mode, and that may work in a large soundstage, but on TV just sounds like shouting at me for no reason.
And then there’s DiGiovanni, a Masterchef season 10 third-place chef who’s returned to the show as a guest judge and mentor who is billed by Food Network as a “top culinary content creator” for his MrBeast-style stunt videos, which focus on food.
Can you spot the difference between 100 Cooks judges Alex Guarnaschelli and Nick DiGiovanni here? Hint: One of them has no personality! (Photo b Food Network)
Despite that TV experience, he just vanishes next to Alex. (He does appear to have heard the word “acidity.”) But Alex just has so much experience, and shows why she’s Alex Effing Guarnaschelli.
Speaking of censoring swear words, Alex is bleeped in the first episode when she refers to marijuana—as if the dish would be perfect after partaking—and what hilarious corporate cowardice to hear them censor even a reference to a substance that’s legal for recreational use in half of the United States and for medicinal use in most states.
But 100 Cooks could use some, or just some mellowing out. From frenetic cuts in the edit to the chefs who just pop up and disappear, it’s a lot for little
He only seems alive and interested when he’s chatting with the chefs. Reading off the prompter, oof: “That. Was a tough. One. Let’s take a look at the cook board.”
The cook board itself is hilarious, making a big moment out of the number of chefs being reduced by one. The drama of one being subtracted!!
Everything is random, literally: The cooks are selected to participate at random, and so are the challenges. “Let’s roll it,” Terry Crews says. Guy Fieri has to spin his Randomizer wheels; Terry’s bingo ball hopper spins for him, and he doesn’t even pull one out of the cage. So can we call this the Ball Dropper?
The ball-dropping randomness doesn’t work. We go from a 30-person egg challenge to a six-person party bite challenge.
Some people are selected to cook multiple times, some not at all. That’s odd to have one chef cook repeatedly and get eliminated for a decent dish, while others are just sitting there.
While I appreciate that chefs who can’t get something plated or miss the major ingredient just get cut and vanish, so do those who share one line of their bio in an interview.
Host Terry Crews waits for his balls to drop on 100 Cooks (Photo by Food Network)
There’s just nothing to grab onto in the first episode. And 100 Cooks has no personality like Last Bite Hotel, no laser focus like Tournament of Champions, no theming of challenges like 24 in 24: Last Chef Standing.
The differentiator is that they’re not professional cooks, just randos who like to cook, and that’s a refreshing change on a network that’s increasingly recycling the same chefs competition to competition.
Yet it’s not entirely accurate that they’re just in that you’ll recognize people who’ve had plenty of competition reality TV experience (such as Manny from Food Network Star and Masterchef) and culinary influencers from your social media scroll.
What has potential is “the community” that Alex points out in the first episode: chefs who weren’t selected chatting and Terry Crewsing advice to the chefs who are cooking.
So perhaps when the pool is narrowed to a more manageable number, 100 Cooks will give us more. 10 Cooks?
At the end of the two-hour premiere, there are 74 chefs remaining. But at the start of the second episode, 71. Terry Crews says one was sick (number 3; that sucks) while two of them (17 and 18) just decided to bail. I’m guessing they’re not alone.
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Dining and Cooking