Some Complaints

In our never-ending quest to watch every cooking competition show ever made, my wife and I recently stumbled upon The Great British Menu on Netflix. Thinking perhaps it shares some DNA with what is probably the greatest cooking competition show, The Great British Baking Show, we were excited. But our excitement didn’t last, and in the end we barely made it halfway through one season.

To be fair, we were on maybe the 27th episode. Because, apparently, it doesn’t follow the traditional British television arc of three 4-to-8 episode seasons, followed by a Christmas special. No, according to Wikipedia, over the course of 12 series, there have been 544 episodes. That’s a bit north of 45 episodes per go-around! But that’s not even the worst part. Here are some more complaints:

1. I’ve never seen a show work so hard to edit in tension. Yes, it’s television. There has to be drama. But so often, as the chefs work on their meals, one will make what is clearly a joke, and the camera will cut quickly to the another chef glaring as he chops vegetables. What’s more annoying: they’ll use what looks like the exact same glare-shot, three, even four times per episode.

2. We made it through five or so regions, with three chefs competing in each one. They also always has a renowned chef that oversees the competitors. So that’s four people per region, meaning we watched twenty chefs, overall. Among those twenty chefs: one woman.

3. And maybe this is my biggest complaint: in the season we watched (it was, admittedly pretty old) the chefs are competing to serve dishes at a dinner honoring British Olympians. That’s really cool. But it also meant that they couldn’t go two minutes without talking about how they planned to take their innovative dishes to “Olympian levels.” Furthermore, the judges–first the overseers, then later a panel of food critics–constantly concerned themselves with which dish pushed the boundaries, sometimes, favoring its level of innovation over its flavor. But what really bugged me was that they used the athletes themselves as a scapegoat for this reasoning. And sure, many Olympians likely have highly refined palates and adventurous tastes. But there are also just a lot of young gymnasts and runners and javelin throwers, as well. And if I was some 18 year old kid, who’d spent my entire life working out ten hours each day to represent my country, I’d be stoked for a banquet in my honor. But I might be less stoked if the main course came out and I found out they’d forgone what some judge referred to as “the best barbecued beef” he’d ever had in favor of a thimble-sized fried pigeon heart tart with sea buckthorn foam-snow and a drizzle of pine-needle puree. And yes, that’s partially a joke, because if you’ve ever watched GBM you know that the judges hate sea buckthorn and foam, but still, my point stands.

Anyway, the contestants often use sous vide ovens, and that also happens to be what we’re selling today.