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(Image: Food Network Canada)
Tonight at 9 p.m., a fresh crop of 16 cheftestants will take to Food Network Canada to vie for the approval of Top Chef Canada head judge Mark McEwan (and to attempt to evade the disapproval of resident judge/meanie Shereen Arazm). Season three features five Torontonians—Ruth Eddolls, Jonathan Goodyear, Rebecca Ross, Dennis Tay and Rory White—so you better believe we’ll be recapping the show once again. Check back tomorrow for our take on episode one.
Chopped, the purest of all competitive cooking programs, is getting a Canadian edition courtesy of Food Network Canada and Paperny Entertainment. Unlike Top Chef and MasterChef (and their various spinoffs), every episode of Chopped features four fresh contestants, who are whittled down to a single winner after three challenges (appetizer, entrée and dessert), each featuring a basket of three or four mystery ingredients. There’s no manufactured drama, no tearful shots of the chefs pining for their adorable children and no season-long arcs—the show is an unadulterated display of culinary skill and invention. The producers are now casting for professional cooks to appear in Chopped Canada, which is slated to air early next year.
(Image: Top Chef Canada)
Season three of Top Chef Canada kicks off on March 18, and earlier today Food Network Canada unveiled the slate of 16 contestants, including five from the GTA (that’s one less than in seasons one and two). Returning this year are host Lisa Ray, head judge Mark McEwan and resident judge Shereem Arazm, and just like last season, the winner takes home $100,000 and a new GE Monogram Kitchen (plus a custom Caesarstone countertop installation, which was the prize in episode 12 last year). The celebrity guests will include Montreal chef-hunk Chuck Hughes, U.S. Top Chef season six champ Michael Voltaggio and Food Network regulars David Rocco and Robert Irvine, as well as the usual sprinkling of CanCon’s finest like Trish Stratus, Russell Peters and, gloriously, Jann Arden. Below, we suss out the Toronto contestants’ chances.
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Brampton’s Rich Matharu (Image: Food Network Canada)
Last night on Recipe to Riches, the seven finalists gathered for the first time to find out who’d be bestowed with the grand prize of $250,000 and the honour of having their concoction added to that “prestigious line of President’s Choice products.” We won’t lie, we had our favourite: Tracy Rigden with her Salt-Kissed Dulce de Leche Brownie. But just as in our unofficial poll, Canada didn’t see it that way—indeed, Rigden didn’t even place in the top three.
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This week on Recipe to Riches, things got a touch gritty. For the first time this season, the show’s usual rapid-fire montage of home cooks vying for a spot in the final three was cut with shaky, behind-the-scenes footage of them rushing about to prepare their dishes for the judges. Likewise, the competitors, normally a polite bunch, didn’t hold back, taking sarcastic potshots at each other’s dishes and replacing the usual optimistic sign-offs with bitter parting shots. Is Canada’s most polite reality program showing a little teeth? We sure hope so.
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It can be hard to root for any given contestant on Recipe to Riches. They come and go so fast, without the multi-episode arcs of other reality shows, each peddling a recipe that will almost surely get changed anyway. Plus, it’s just not a “character” reality show: there’s no big villain, no everyman hero, no lovable quirky clown. It’s one shot, two if you’re lucky, and then home. But when we first saw Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec’s sweet Chantal Bekhor trying, in vain, to eyeball her recipe for the batch-up challenge, our Recipe-hardened hearts softened up. After all, just how does one multiply a pinch of salt by a thousand?
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In the Canadian reality TV family, Recipe to Riches is the responsible Dockers-clad cousin to the stilleto-wearing, alternatively shrieking and sobbing Bachelor Canada. In true Recipes fashion, the second season promises nothing if not consistency; the judges have all returned, the stakes aren’t any higher (although $250,000 is nothing to sneeze at), the contestants don’t seem any meaner and the dishes seem no more extravagant or risky (OK, butter chicken lasagna does have us a little worried). Even the format is exactly the same. Not that we’re complaining—there’s something to be said about the show’s dastardly integration of product development, marketing and sales (the winning dish shows up on Loblaws shelves the weekend after the show airs). And anyway, the inaugural episode of season two has brought out Recipes’ wild side, relatively speaking. That’s right, desserts are first. Game on.
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The GTA contestants for Recipe to Riches, season two (Images: Food Network Canada)
President’s Choice marketing master stroke reality show Recipe to Riches returns to Food Network Canada on October 17, and it looks like season two is going to look a lot like season one. Judges Laura Calder (French Food at Home), Tony Chapman (Capital C), Dana McCauley (Janes Family Foods) and host Jesse Palmer (Live! with Kelly, ESPN Sunday Night Football, The Bachelor) are all returning to make or break this year’s batch of contestants, which includes a five-strong contingent from the GTA (up one from last year). And since it’s his brand on the line, Galen Weston Jr. will once again be dropping in as a weekly guest judge, having (we assume) the final say in who gets the $25,000 purse for stocking Loblaws shelves with their marketable, mass-producible sorta-home-cooked favourite. Of course, the final $250,000 is awarded by the audience, not the man in charge.
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The stars of SugarStars, the new Food Network Canada “real life sitcom” (Image: Food Network Canada)
Food Network Canada has released its fall lineup, and it looks delicious (if one’s definition of delicious includes spending many hours on a couch). A grand total of 13 new shows are set to hit the air beginning August 27, four of them all-new (Chef Michael’s Kitchen, SugarStars, Restaurant Takeover and Food Factory) and the rest Canadian premieres of already-established foodie series, including: Chef Wanted With Anne Burrell, Chuck’s Week Off, Cupcake Champions, Nigella Kitchen, Meat Men and 24 in 24. Here’s what to expect from the new shows:
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Anthony Sedlak, the Vancouver chef best known as the host of The Main on Food Network Canada, has died at the age of 29 of a previously undiagnosed medical condition. Sedlak’s body was found in his North Vancouver apartment on Friday evening, although the precise nature of his illness has not been disclosed. The young chef had recently been spending much of his time in Toronto preparing for the official relaunch of the Toronto Don Valley Hotel and Suites, whose food service program he signed on to overhaul. The notice of Sedlak’s death comes on the heels of the passing of Dan DeMatteis, the well-loved executive chef at Café Belong who was only a few years older than Sedlak.
The chefs during the quickfire challenge of the Milestones episode (Image: Food Network Canada/Insight Productions)
One aspect of Top Chef Canada that always comes under fire from our commenters is the ubiquitous sponsor integration. But apparently it’s working: that Milestones-themed challenge from season one has been short-listed for an award at the Cannes Lions advertising festival (the winner is announced tomorrow). Of course, this isn’t your typical under-the-radar brand-awareness type of advertising. For the Milestones campaign, the entire elimination challenge (from service to judging) centred around building a dish for the casual dining chain, with the winner awarded a feature spot on Milestones menus nationwide. The ad agency’s submission for Cannes reports that 25 minutes of the 60-minute show was dedicated to the Milestones brand, but when you factor in the Milestones advertisements featured during the commercial breaks, we suspect the total time devoted to the brand was even greater. And it seems viewers don’t mind being hit over the head with sponsored messages: many guests at the restaurants told Milestones servers that they came in just to try the food they had seen on Top Chef Canada, with 23 per cent ordering dishes off the special menu (those dishes apparently had profit margins that were 30 per cent higher than any other core item to boot). In other words: don’t expect less product placement for season three. Read the submission [Cannes Lions] »
Sedlak at The American Cheesesteak Co. (Image: Sedlak)
Hidden away on Wynford Drive, at Eglinton and the DVP, the Toronto Don Valley Hotel and Suites is undergoing a $4-million transformation, which includes a food service overhaul courtesy of Food Network Canada star Anthony Sedlak, of The Main. Allied Hotel Properties, which bought the property in 1998, has joined forces with Atira Hotels of Chicago to re-brand the 353-room hotel as “the city’s first urban resort.”
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Top Chef Canada has just been picked up for a third season, and Food Network Canada is looking for a fresh batch of competitive cooks. Hoping to be one of them? The questions on the 23-page application range from training (“Have you attended a culinary school or any other cooking program?”) to the not-so-food-specific (“Describe your most embarrassing moment”). The form and a five-minute video are due June 19, so there’s still plenty of time for applicants to bone up on their best offal-prepping skills. After the first season, critics (and Torontolife.com commenters) complained that the cast wasn’t diverse enough to represent Canada—and the show did indeed put together a less white and less male cast for season two. Anything you’re hoping to see in season three? Let us know in the comments.
(Image: Top Chef Canada)
Last night’s episode started with some reflections from the chefs back at their, um, glamorous condo. Xavier Lacaze was amazed that he’d made it so far. Ryan Gallagher thought that Curtis Luk had been sent home too early. Carl Heinrich missed his girlfriend (it was her birthday). And Jimmy Stewart? He revealed that he still lived with his mom. “A lot of people might find that embarrassing,” he said. “Home will always be there. This will not.” Was that a sly forshadowing by the producers of things to come? Read on to find out.
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