We love food shows, one of our favorites being Anthony Bordain’s “No Reservations”. So when we saw the previews for “The Taste” we were so glad to have a new culinary show to watch.

“The Taste” is hosted by Anthony Bordain, Nigella Lawson, Brian Malarkey, and Ludo Lefebvre. In the first two episodes professional and amateur chefs auditioned by preparing a spoon with their best dish with the chance of being picked to be on one of the intense mentors team. The twist is it’s a blind taste test, the mentors do not know what they are eating or who prepared it. By the end of auditions each mentor had four contestants on their team  to compete in “The Taste”. Watching the auditions brought up a good question, what would we make if auditioning for the show? I still don’t have an answer.

Tuesday’s episode titled, “Comfort Foods” is the first time the contestants get a feel for what it is going to be like working with their mentor and other teammates. There are a lot of things going on in a one hour show.At the beginning, each contestant prepared a “comforting” dish for each of their team members to try. As a team they will choose one spoon to be judged by Gabrielle Hamilton (a guest star) giving the winning team help from Gabrielle on their next dish. Nigella’s team won the challenge with Lauren’s chicken soup which gave her immunity in that night’s elimination. All of that happened in the first 15 minutes of the show.

Once the challenge was over the contestants worked on a solo project where they had one hour to prepare a “comfort” food dish to be blind taste tested by the mentors. Diane and Uno got in an altercation and Diane shows us that she is full of herself and she becomes my least favorite on the show. Once the hour is up, the contestants listen to the judge’s criticisms from behind a curtain as they try each contestants dish. When they get to Diane’s Korean bibimbap, Malarkey does not have anything nice to say and Diane gives him the finger. Did I already say I didn’t like her attitude? The judges each pick their favorite and their least favorite dish, the four who had the worst spoons  are at risk of being eliminated. This week the bottom four included Lauren with her Sheppard’s Pie, Micah and his Mediterranean Chicken Stew, Renatta with her Apple Crumble, and Shaun and his West Indian Curry. Lauren admitted to trying something she has never made before since she had immunity. What a horrible choice, a competition is NOT the time to try something new.

Since Lauren can not be eliminated the judges are left with three contestants and need to send two home. Even though this is supposed to be a blind tasting competition the judges then discuss who they want to send home. This is where we and many others are questioning the whole “blind” judging. Who would choose someone from their own team to go home? I (like many others) do not understand that part.

In the end, it is Micah who quit his job to compete in the show and Renatta, whose own mentor chose her dish as her least favorite are the two that will be heading home that night.

Even though there are a few things I would change about the show, it is still better then most of the other reality television shows (c’mon aren’t you tired of all of the singing competitions, I know I am) In my opinion there are not enough culinary television shows out there to choose from, so come next Tuesday I know what we will be doing at 8pm.

 

 

Tagged: ABC The Taste, Reality tv