Bravo: Better Half

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Do spouses of chefs need to know how to cook in order to love the food their partners prepare? Is understanding and being able to do what your partner does the key to happiness? To judge from Bravo's new show, The Better Half, (premiering on October 3rd, at 11 pm ET/PT)let's hope not. The premise is that every week two couples compete for $20,000. One person in each couple teaches the other their job in two days. Then they compete to win the prize money. The partner that wins is the "Better Half". In the first episode two New York chefs, Paolo Catini of Basso56, and Kyle Kingrey of Vespa, have to teach their partners, Ellen and Sarah, (a gemologist and a bartender) how to be chefs. The final challenge is to prepare and serve (with the help of line cooks) 25 diners and the three judges: Gael Greene, Harold Dieterle, and Donatella Apia. The host is Susie Essman star of Curb Your Enthusiasm. She delivers comedic barbed witticisms and sympathies with the two women who are hopeless in the kitchen. These two women are with guys who love food more then anything in the world and they know nothing about cooking. But cooking and appreciating food are two different things. Maybe its all lust, maybe its all physical attraction, and the food is secondary. There's certainly enough shots of Kyle and Sarah cuddling to suggest that is true. The show is fast-paced and fun to watch. All four contestants prepare a meal (which demonstrates just how badly the women cook) then the Kyle and Paolo come up with a menus that include lobster, sweetbreads and half a dozen other ingredients mandated by the contest, and then they try to teach their partners. Although both women struggle, their styles of learning are very different. The younger Sarah sits back and isn't very aggressive about asking questions. She and Kyle have only been together for a year, and it isn't clear how devoted she is to him. She obviously doesn't want to aggravate her already aggravated boyfriend. Kyle says at one point, "There is no way Sarah is going to learn this in two days." Ellen, however, demands to see, touch, and try everything herself. Paolo, her husband, barks at her, but she perseveres. They are both older; committed (they have two kids) and know what they want to do with the $20,000 (take a holiday). Despite the stress, Ellen insists that her team is going to win. After training, the two women go to the restaurants and observe how their partners run the kitchen. Then the women take over the kitchen while the men watch them on TV, groaning, gasping and laughing at how badly they mess up the recipes. It's fun to watch the men squirm, as the women try to lead their kitchen, but it doesn't seem quite fair. There is no balance. The women end up respecting how much work is involved in being a chef, but the chefs have no idea of what it takes to do their partners' jobs (neither do we, the viewers). It all seems to come down to which man was the better teacher, and which woman was the better student. Maybe its too tough to have the women and men switch jobs – but it certainly would have been easy to have a female chef instead of two males. Then the emphasis would have been on the job instead of the gender. Previous articles: Top Chef 2: Ilan Hall Wins FOOD FLICKS: Svullo, the Other Swedish Chef? Tom Colicchio: Top Chef 2 Carrie Nahabedian Knocks Top Chef Tom Colicchio: Top Chef 2 Top Chef 2: Already Casting Top Chef: Harold Dieterle Won Top Chef: Tom Colicchio [Food Television - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef