Network: Bravo
Season Year: 2026
Watch: Peacock
Yes, I still watch this show twenty-three seasons in. I’m honestly not certain why, though. It’s lost any and every modicum of relevance it once had. It’s the one reality series that has somehow gotten more vanilla, less controversial and more boring over its lifetime. I imagine most of this is casting. A problematic industry not wanting to put problematic people on screen. So they go for the most bland and least volatile people they can find to stick in front of the public as the face of the food industry. This ain’t The Bear (which has it’s own PR thing going on) or Kitchen Confidential or even the best version of itself. It’s boring. And safe. Not only the personalities, but the food. Everyone kind of cooks the same thing, avoids cuisine they don’t think the judges won’t be into and generally keep things as dull as humanly possible.
And, look, maybe this is editing. Maybe the chefs are constantly screaming at one another, throwing things and drunkenly harassing each other in the chef house. But, if that’s actually happening (which I doubt it is), those highs are stripped out of the show. The tenor hardly rises above some gentle ribbing. And, in this season, one chef was kinda snarky and pissy when he got eliminated and the series played it up like he was a super-villain and the judges acted as if he’d peed in their soup. He would have been like the 17th worst sport in the show’s initial run. Putting aside the cast and the cooking, there has been a definite shift in terms of the actual production of the show. COVID clearly put a dent in their ability to travel and film the series in locations outside the studio kitchen. But, even when they do go places now, it feels stunted in some way. Lacking in character. Lacking in dimension. And doing stupid shit like cooking outside at a race track because I guess NASCAR gave the series some money. Or making a chili pepper contest occur outside in the south in summer to apparently torture both the contestants and the judges — though, as if it were an embodiment of the show itself, even the hottest dishes barely rated on the Hot Ones make-the-hosts-drool-and-sweat scale and fell completely flat. Everything feels kind of haphazard and often shoehorned into sponsor-related challenges that make zero sense. Which I know has always kind of been a part of the show, but now seems almost cynical and eye-rolling in its execution.
This season we go to the Carolinas. Okay, I suppose there are two of them. The studio kitchen is supposedly in Charlotte, though we honestly have no clue where in the world these people are for the majority of the series. It could be in Canada for all we know. Are we introduced right off the bat to the cuisine of the region and given a kind of culinary explanation and reasoning for why this is being held here? Nah, North Carolina must have just given the production company some sort of tax break. Again, this is part of what makes a good production. At least the way I see it. Get us into it. Set things up for us. Make a show. Because casting two identical twin brothers and a not-married couple isn’t going to really sell the series for me. Even if the guy in the couple is a weird, self-deprecating dude who clearly can[‘t hang skill-wise with some of these people, and the wife, while talented, seemingly comes into the contest with some sort of undisclosed shoulder injury or nerve condition or something that hinders her the entire season. The shoulder pain and the aforementioned kinda bitter, snarky dude being the height of drama for this season. That involves 0% drama or controversy. Just the way the show seems to like it. Not that I want Housewives in my cooking shows, but for even the slightest anger to not flair between contestants in what has traditionally been a pretty volatile profession seems just a bit unbelievable.
With that all said, I dare anyone who watched this season to name five dishes that were cooked. Honestly, there is a not a single memorable meal for me. The group was admittedly pretty up and down across the season. There were weeks where I thought Tom Colicchio might send the whole lot of them home. There was a weird sense of group think, where multiple contestants often ended up cooking very similar dishes to one another — and simultaneously failed at those dishes. There were lots of lows and very few highs. And very few things that I was like, “Man, I totally want to go to this person’s restaurant!” Of course if you’ve read my Booze & Grub Reviews you might not exactly trust my tastes, but believe me when I say that this was a pretty uninspiring, lackluster season of television. I’m not sure how exactly they get this thing back on track. Or perhaps it’s time to pack it up and leave the reality television to more entertaining pursuits. Because the restaurant industry can’t afford to be controversial, or loud, or even full of personality these days. Both because of their past misdeeds and reconciliation, but also because even a “normal” fancier meal these days is outside the price range of your average American. It’s an issue that the industry needs to grapple with if it’s to ever work its way back into our hearts —and our wallets. But let’s start with unique personalities cooking unique food that can inspire both good TV and encourage consumers to be willing to take a chance on a paycheck wallup to experience something new and exciting. This ain’t it.
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