The latest Fox-based Gordon Ramsey project, I'm catching up on it via the DVR. It's more or less Top Chef for amateur cooks, though somewhat in reverse. The main challenge occurs first (typically in teams, though not always), and the losers then have to compete against each other to see who goes home (a "Pressure Cooker" challenge). The main competition has mostly been cooking for groups (Marines, truckers, and in the next episode a wedding), while the elimination events have required contestants to pick out ingredients from a finished dish or name ingredients in their natural state using all the senses except taste.
It's an OK derivation of the cooking competition, helped by Ramsey taking it down several notches. His co-judges, chef Graham Elliot and restraunteur/vintner Joe Bastianich (frequent partner of Mario Batali's places and son of PBS fave Lidia) add a kind of good cop/bad cop element, as Elliot is more likely to champion contestants while Bastianich is more cutting (and, occasionally, pervy, at least in vibe). It is still a Fox production, which means lots of useless voice overs, banal contestant interviews, and the like.
It's not the best show out there, and it's not even the best cooking show out there. But I do like that there's now an outlet for amateur chefs, even if it's one that can tend towards insufferable. It's still better than The Next Food Network Star, though that's not saying much.
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