Crazy delicious recipes5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() The prize for winning is a golden apple, which means when crackers break and parfaits don’t set, it’s pride and self-worth that are at stake, not money or prestige. ![]() The stakes too often feel too low, and with each 45 minute episode being a self-contained story, there’s little time to develop intrigue or connections to the people on screen. These are keen, often technically proficient cooks, and there is quality technique and great skill on display, so it’s a shame that they’re dealt kind of a raw deal. The diversity in every episode is a welcome development, and it’s interesting that contestants are neither the rank amateurs of Masterchef nor the trained chefs of Chopped. ![]() The contestants don’t quite get to realize the fantasy either. There is no need for them to be culinary gods other than to be culinary Gods - deified shibboleths, set apart from the mortal contestants who try to please them by walking up a slightly steep hill godly mountain with their possibly crazy, possibly delicious food. The choice of name also unfortunately recalls Time Magazine’s infamous “Gods of Food” feature, whose anointing chefs as figures of worship excluded women entirely. When Heston Blumenthal becomes a Food God in his Edenic realm, he’s still being leaned on as a famous chef - the famous chef subject to widely reported accusations of wage theft and restaurant mismanagement, and a late-career pivot to casual sexism. Ekstedt references Michelin stars as a point of comparison when praising dishes Hall harks back to her time as a contestant on Top Chef. While their duties rarely go beyond encouraging praise or gentle criticism, the show asks them to show off their conventional culinary credentials, rather than representing anything transcendent or wacky. The Food Gods, though, are also actual people with restaurant chops. They are Food Gods: remember this and do not forget it - but in case you do, production is here to remind you with thunder, lightning, and, well, that’s all. While in recent years, shows like Great British Baking Off and Australian hit The Chefs’ Line have extricated themselves from boorish villain/hero tropes, Crazy Delicious wants to go as far as to extricate its judges from earth itself. Its best efforts to bring something new to food TV only reveal just how conventional Crazy Delicious actually is.įood TV shows, crazy or delicious, pivot on power dynamics: the relationship between the judges and the judged, mediated and molded by the hosts. What unfolds in the short season is six episodes torn between total culinary fantasia and convention, the result of which is a basic cooking competition, but with more crafting supplies for sets and costumes. While Crazy Delicious aims to break the food show mold - creating something more zany than Chopped and Masterchef, more bonkers than Nailed It, and cuter than The Great British Baking Off - it falls short on everything but the set. (When a contestant tells Hall, that their dish is made with love, Hall replies, “Well, doesn’t have salt, unless you’re crying, honey.”) Host Jayde Adams, meanwhile, adds a decidedly dry British slant to the show’s proceedings, despite the show trying to turn her into a Lewis Carroll character. ![]() Dressed in their pristine white costumes and accompanied by ominous music, the trio might be set up as transcendent, but their actual job is that of the classic food show judge: offer some opinions, throw some concerned looks, and dish out zingy one-liners. Enter the “Food Gods” - made up of Blumenthal, Top Chef legend Carla Hall, and “Michelin-starred chef” Niklas Ekstedt. No mere panel of mortals will judge such a show. The first round is based on a hero ingredient like a strawberry or tomato, the second is a reinvention of a classic, and the third is a showstopper, with inspiration ranging from brunch to barbecue. It’s not a lucid dream diary: it’s the newest cooking show on Netflix, Crazy Delicious, wherein three contestants compete in three rounds, taking ingredients and inspiration from a Willy Wonka-like garden where nearly everything is edible. Chef Heston Blumenthal descending in a thunderclap, wearing a tight white suit. Prosecco waterfalls and cheese growing on trees. ![]()
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