Three Men and an Attitude

Master Chef "Hosts"

I like food.  I like good food.  I am especially fond of very good food.  When I leave my little burg for an urban excursion, I research the restaurants well in advance of reaching my destination.  And, if the food is not up to snuff, oh well.  Better luck next time.  I won’t be lugging along a trunk full of attitude just so I can unleash it on restaurant employees that cannot meet my bloated expectations.

I’m not fond of reality television shows.  I like good shows. I prefer someone to write a good story, create a layered environment, and round up a herd of good actors to perform.  There is a great wall between the “reality” of today and my choice of programming.   But there are times one just wants to turn on the television and get a quick entertainment fix.  After a three-day walking and eating visit to New York City, the hubby, his mother and I were relaxing in front of the tube.  What to watch?  A show about food?  Sure!   And then we stumbled across Master Chef.  A roomful of amateur contestants ready to cook, and three big, flaming assholes reading to judge their attempts at culinary greatness.

Master Chef was a huge disappointment to me.  There were three judges.  I have only two hands.  Therefore, I was short one middle finger.  Am I the only person left in this country that does not think insulting others is funny?  Sure, those contestants expected critiques of their cooking.  And they expected that those that could not perform well would be eliminated.  Don’t all of these reality and talent shows follow the same formula?  A roomful of pretties waiting to be knocked off one by one?  What I did not expect was for three grown, supposedly respectable men, to act like complete dicks.  At least Freddy Krueger had a deeply-set issue prompting him to turn on others.  Individually, hosts Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot have built food empires based on restaurants, books, television shows, and wineries.  Together on Master Chef, they are three unpalatable turds on a plate.

As I see it, a chef cooks, trains and educates.  They take raw ingredients and form them into beautiful, tasty piles of sustenance.  It is an art form.  The best should be and are looked up to by us lesser life forms.  We want them to feed us.  To share their joy of cooking.  To educate us about their ingredients.  Etcetera.  I don’t feel that a chef needs to spread the knowledge that they would do better in life by running a string of S & M clubs.

No, I don’t think that any of these three men would notice or care that I don’t support their empires after seeing this show.  I don’t want to eat in their restaurants.  I don’t want to buy their books or wines.  I don’t want to watch their ugly, catty Master Chef show.  I prefer a larger entrée to a larger ego.  In my world of eating food and watching food television, these three have just been eliminated.  If this is the direction gourmet food is heading, I’d rather stick to Stouffer’s.