The weekly program Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network showcases a culinary competition between four chefs who are vying for the top spot. There are three rounds, and one chef is eliminated at the conclusion of each round. Each is given $25,000 at the beginning of the show. They must make wise use of the funds to buy the tools and ingredients they will need at auctions to prepare their meals. Any remaining funds go to the last chef standing. Here are five things you didn’t know about Cutthroat Kitchen, a television show that has been airing on the Network since 2013 and has gained popularity among foodies.
By successfully completing the application process, chefs who appear on the show have proven their mettle. They are first evaluated to see if they can handle the competition pressures on television. Along with a resume and their Chef’s Roll profile headshot, they also share a number of recipes with pictures of the dishes. Finding out whether the chef meets with the committee’s approval can take up to four months.
The information that applicants have posted on social media is used to find potential participants in the program. Chef’s Roll, Twitter, and YouTube are some of the places where the most likely candidates for the show are chosen. This implies that a chef is unlikely to be chosen if they do not have some sort of social media presence. For busy chefs who have not found the time to create at least a website or promote themselves on social media, this is a problem. Frequently, those who do lack the time to dedicate to creating a website that properly captures their true culinary abilities.
Three of the four chefs competing on the show will not be paid anything for their time. The chef who wins the show is given $10,000. However, the show pays for travel costs to and from the Burbank, California event.
The Cutthroat Kitchen executives want to know a lot about each applicant, but they don’t want a real cooking contest. Chefs are judged by how they present themselves on Skype. This seems a little strange for a cooking competition, but it seems the casting staff is more worried about how the chefs will act during the competition. It is a given that they will base their decision on the applicant’s resume, information from their social media accounts, and information from Chef’s Roll.
One might anticipate that there would be some advantage beyond appearing on this well-known cooking program, but there isn’t There are no photo shoots or sponsorships available for the show. One advantage is that simply appearing on the show exposes each contestant to the media, allowing for potential follow-up interviews with interested parties.
Do they use real cash in Cutthroat Kitchen?
Whether itx26#39;s Cutthroat Kitchen, Letx26#39;s Make a Deal, or some big budget Hollywood crime drama, studios rarely use real money to film with. Therex26#39;s simply too much liability at hand when using real cash, so instead, studios use prop money.
Camp Cutthroat borrowed its set from a defunct reality show
Every successful TV cooking competition deserves a spin-off series, right? Cutthroat Kitchen was no different and in 2015 it got its own spin-off with Camp Cutthroat, a version of the show that took chefs out of the studio and put them “in a secret location deep in the wilderness.” Rather than simply have Cutthroat newbies, the spin-off series brought in previous competitors and upped the prize money by putting $75,000 on the line.
As for that “secret location” in the middle of the wilderness, well, as viewers noticed pretty quickly, it wasnt exactly uncharted TV territory. Camp Cutthroat was filmed in Santa Clarita, California on the set of a previous Fox reality TV show called Utopia.(Though producers did at least make some slight changes like putting up a new sign at the entrance.) Utopia was described as having elements of the reality show Big Brother, but proved to be far less popular and only lasted 13 episodes. As for Camp Cutthroat, well, perhaps it was just too “extreme” because camp ended for good a year later.
TV critics didn’t show Cutthroat Kitchen a lot of love
Whereas food shows like Top Chef and Mind of a Chef have been lauded with praise by critics, Cutthroat Kitchen never garnered similar accolades. At best, it was called “intriguing” by an Entertainment Weekly critic. Of course, that same critic also advised viewers of how to watch it and keep their “faith in humanity intact.” Ouch. The AV Clubs review of Cutthroat wasnt much kinder, with critic Phil Dyess-Nugent questioning whether Alton Brown possibly had a twin brother without any sense of shame, saying that the only thing entertaining about the challenges were “the fleeting glimpses of improvisational thinking.”
Many TV cooking competitions, including Iron Chef, Top Chef, and Chopped, have competitors try to prepare a dish within a time limit using, occasionally, unusual ingredients. So why is there so much criticism for a show that turned the standard cooking competition on its head? Cutthroat Kitchen developed the idea further and added a humorous element. Despite the seriousness of the competitors, the show never acted overly serious. Perhaps Cutthroat was just too low-brow for foodies.
As one review from Vulture pointed out — and something that too many other critics missed — the real stars of the show werent necessarily the chefs. What made Cutthroat Kitchen work were the writers, who episode after episode, found a way to take the standard cooking competition and combine it with circus-like absurdity.