Cook at All Costs

Dec 20, 2022

Short version: An over-produced, disingenuous, inauthentic-feeling knockoff of cutthroat kitchen without enough heart to carry through.

Long version: This show is trying so hard to be cutthroat kitchen, but its format is questionable at best. At least in cutthroat kitchen the cooks get to choose their own ingredients and set their own prices to a certain extent, and can choose to never bid if they don’t want to, so it has at least some feeling of authenticity and agency—something this show severely lacks. Also, having the same judge who tastes the dishes be the one who assembles all the curated ingredient options just makes the show and its judging feel disingenuous and staged at worst, questionable at best.