Culinary Competition

Top 5 Reality Cooking Competitions

Reality cooking competitions serve up some of the best viewings on TV. You get the joy of watching chefs at war with each other (and all the backstabbing, egomania and melt-downs that go with it) and you get to see their innovative solutions to challenges. Plus their final creations are far more mouth-watering than any collection.

Here are the five best reality cooking competitions on TV:

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'Top Chef'

Since 2006, Bravo's has pitted numerous rising chefs in competition against each other in challenges that test their culinary skills and creativity. Three colorful judges and unique challenges make the show a fulfilling creation.

Each episode features a Quickfire and Elimination challenge. A fan favorite is Restaurant Wars, the elimination challenge where two teams launch pop-up restaurants. The top three chefs of the season compete in the finale for the chance to win $200,000 (previously $100,000) and an editorial feature in Food & Wine Magazine.

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'MasterChef'

While Top Chef focuses on established, professional chefs, Fox's MasterChef features amateur and home cooks. One hundred chefs cook their signature dish but only fourteen will really compete. Contestants must meet challenges like cooking with strange ingredients and recreating unusual dishes. The judges are vineyard owner Joe Bastianich; chef Graham Ellio and a kinder, gentler Hell's Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay.

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'Hells Kitchen'

If you like to imagine world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay as a strict but loving father-figure mentor, watch MasterChef. If you prefer to watch an acidic, bile-spewing Ramsay put aspiring chefs through incomparable challenges and then be brutally honest in assessing their flaws--and when I say 'honest' I mean 'devastating'--then Hell's Kitchen is the show for you. There's a reason I ranked MasterChef higher: I'm tired of the verbal abuse that passes for criticism. Still, there is something undeniably compelling about the Fox cooking competition or it wouldn't have survived for so long.

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'The Next Iron Chef

The Next Iron Chef is a spin-off of Food Network's Iron Chef America and submits ten highly successful chefs to food challenges in locales around the globe. The finale pits the top two contestants against each other in the Food Network's Kitchen Stadium, where the winner is declared a new Iron Chef and can compete on Iron Chef America.

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'Chopped'

Former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy culinary expert, Ted Allen, hosts this Food Network cooking competition, where chefs compete by cooking three-course meals. The twist--that each course must include ingredients from a mystery box--leads to delightful creations as chefs struggle with incorporating things like Animal Crackers and seaweed. But also features a fresh batch of cooking contenders each episode, so viewers never have the chance to get to know them or root for favorites through a full season.

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Honorable Mention: Spin-offs

Like most movie sequels, reality spin-offs rarely succeed in recreating the magic of their predecessors. But there are a few that have managed to beat the odds. Here are three reality cooking competition spin-offs as engaging as the shows that spawned them:

Top Chef: Just Desserts: A logical spin-off from Top Chef--where season after season, chefs were taken down by failed desserts--this competition follows pastry chefs delivering mouth-watering creations.
Iron Chef America: Sure, Food Network's Iron Chef America gave birth to Next Iron Chef, but before that, it was itself a spin-off of the Japanese original. It features cook-offs between some of the best chefs in America, including Cat Cora and Bobby Flay.
Top Chef Masters: Similarly, this Top Chef progeny stars world-renowned chefs. Each week chefs compete against each other, and one is eliminated until the finale where the remaining chefs have a cook-off for the $100,000 grand prize (which is donated to the charity of their choice).

Meet the Stars of ‘Top Chef: Kentucky’

Left to right: Caitlin Steininger, Eric Adjepong, Kelsey Barnard, Pablo Lamon, Justin Sutherland, Sara Bradley, Kevin Scharpf, Eddie Konrad, Natalie Maronski, Brandon Rosen, Nini Nguyen, Adrienne Wright, Brian Young, David Viana, Michelle Minori -- (Photo by: Michael Hickey/Bravo)

Season 16 of Bravo’s hit show Top Chef premieres at 9 p.m. tonight, with a cast of 14 chefs from around the country. This season has a Kentucky theme, so a hot brown cook-off seems likely, and don’t be surprised if bourbon find its way into a few of the challenges, too.

As always, Padma Lakshmi is the host of the show, and Tom Colicchio and Graham Elliot are back at the judges’ table. Regular judge Gail Simmons will be in a few of the episodes, although she stepped away for maternity leave during part of the filming of this season so former Food & Wine editor-in-chief Nilou Motamed will fill her seat. Top Chef: Kentucky will also feature guest judge appearances from chef Eric Ripert, Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill, boxer Laila Ali, and actor/writer/director Lena Waithe.

Here’s everything you need to know about the chefs competing this time around:

Sara Bradley (Paducah, Kentucky): Bradley is the chef/owner of Freight House, a farm-to-table destination in her hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. After graduating from Johnson & Wales, Bradley spent time working in Michelin-starred kitchens under big-name chefs John Fraser and Paul Kahan in New York City and Chicago, before returning home to open a restaurant featuring modern Southern cuisine.

Eric Adjepong (Washington, D.C.): Adjepong does not work in a restaurant kitchen, instead running a catering and personal chef company called Pinch & Plate. A first-generation Ghanaian who grew up in New York City, the chef previously helped with the opening of D.C.’s Kith/Kin (operated by Top Chef alum Kwame Onwuachi), and he now uses his business to introduce Beltway diners to West African cuisine.

Kelsey Barnard Clark (Dothan, Alabama): In the small town of Dothan, Alabama, the so-called “peanut capital of the world,” Kelsey Barnard Clark serves Southern fare that is dressed up thanks to her big-city resume. Clark graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and gained professional experience in New York City under Gavin Kaysen at Cafe Boulud and John Frazer at Dovetail, before returning to her hometown to open KBC in 2008.

Edmund “Eddie” Konrad (Philadelphia): One of two Philadelphia-based chefs competing this season, Eddie Konrad may have a leg up on the Top Chef competition thanks to some advice from his employer — he works as a sous chef under Season 11 winner Nicholas Elmi at French-American standout Laurel. Konrad, who specializes in French and Italian cookery, obtained a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales, and his resume includes stops in lauded kitchens such as New York City’s Del Posto and Philly’s Le Bec Fin

Pablo Lamon (Miami Beach): Lamon, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, brings global experience to this season of Top Chef, having working at the award-winning Palacio Duhau Hyatt hotel in his home city before cooking for wealthy ocean enthusiasts on luxury cruise lines. Lamon has worked under celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Top Chef: Season 13 winner Jeremy Ford in Miami, and he is now chef de cuisine at 27 Restaurant & Bar, where his food is inspired by the Mediterranean, Latin America, and Europe.

Natalie Maronski (Philadelphia): Maronski is one of two Philadelphia-based contestants this season, taking a break from her day job of launching an experiential dining venture called Underground Concepts in a “nationally historic and iconic Philadelphia landmark.” Maronski’s military family changed addresses often in her childhood — she spent time growing up in Indonesia, Malaysia, Hawaii, and Virginia — and the highlight of her resume is 10 years with celebrity chef José Andrés, cooking a variety of cuisines at multiple restaurants.

Michelle Minori (San Francisco): Minori plies her trade at Barzotto, a fast-casual pasta bar in San Francisco, where she serves Italian-influenced California cuisines. A graduate of San Francisco’s Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, Minori previously worked at Michelin-starred Bay Area restaurants Aqua, Acquerello, and La Folie. The chef has also run the kitchen at Flour + Water in San Francisco and overseen pasta and bread operations at Faith & Flowerin Los Angeles.

Nini Nguyen (Brooklyn, New York City): Originally hailing from New Orleans, Nini Nguyen is the culinary director of the Brooklyn education center Cook Space. Before joining the school, Nguyen worked on the pastry station at Sucre and Coquette in New Orleans, and at Manhattan’s celebrated Eleven Madison Park. “I like to hone in on my heritage — I am Vietnamese and French-trained, and Vietnamese food has a lot of French influence in it,” Nguyen recently told AMNY.

Brandon Rosen (San Mateo, California): Rosen got his start in the food world working in his family’s Detroit-area chocolate factory. After high school, he moved to New York City to work at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House and at Eleven Madison Park, before decamping to Yountville, California to join the French Laundry team. Later, Rosen helped his colleague Corey Lee open Benu in San Francisco, and then he accepted a position running the kitchen at Richard Reddington’s Redd in Yountville. After five years at Redd, Rosen is now working as a private chef in Silicon Valley.

Kevin Scharpf (Dubuque, Iowa): Midwestern chef Kevin Scharpf cut his teeth in the kitchen at Daniel in New York City, Elizabeth in Chicago, and Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis before landing in his home state where he now runs the three-year-old farm-to-table restaurant Brazen Open Kitchen & Bar. Scharpf recently told the Des Moines Register that it’s “great to have the opportunity to represent Iowa and the growing culinary scene that’s happening here.”

Caitlin Steininger (Cincinnati, Ohio): Steininger currently runs a restaurant with her sister Kelly Trush in Wyoming, Ohio called Cooking with Caitlin. The sisters are also planning to open a new smoked meat restaurant nearby called Station + Family BBQ. Steininger has been watching Top Chef since its first season, when she was just a culinary student. “I didn’t want to apply until I thought I could win it,” she told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Having the restaurant really made me feel like I could do it.”

Justin Sutherland (St. Paul, Minnesota): Sutherland is the executive chef at the nose-to-tail restaurant Handsome Hog in St. Paul, and the seafood restaurant the Pearl and the Thiefin nearby Stillwater. Earlier this year, Sutherland won an episode of Iron Chef, and he recently took over culinary operations for the Madison Restaurant Group, which includes Twin Cities hot spots Eagle Street Grill, Fitzgerald’s, Public Kitchen and Bar, OxCart Alehouse, and Gray Duck.

David Viana (Old Bridge, New Jersey): Parole officer-turned chef David Viana spent time in the kitchens of Eleven Madison Park and Centro Vinoteca in Manhattan before heading back home to New Jersey to open the tasting counter restaurant Heirloom Kitchen. “I grew up in this industry, and I have always worked hard, but watching Bravo’s Top Chef over the last twelve 12 years has truly been motivation and inspiration to push myself even further — to be the best chef I can be,” Viana recently told the Asbury Park Press. “So to actually be on the show is a dream come true.”

Adrienne Wright (Boston): As a young chef, Connecticut native Adrienne Wright worked in kitchens around the Northeast before landing at Michael Schlow’s Radius in Boston. After serving as sous chef for nearly three years at that restaurant, Wright moved to Chris Coomb’s restaurant Deuxave in 2011. She’s been part of Coomb’s restaurant group ever since and now oversees the kitchens at Deuxave, Dbar, and two locations of Boston Chops.

Brian Young (Boston): Before becoming the chef de cuisine at Cultivar in Boston, Brian Young worked at nearby hotspots Harvest and Citizen Public House & Oyster Bar. Although Young and his fellow Top Chef competitor Adrienne Wright both work in Boston, they’d never met each other before shooting the show. “We have respect for one another, because even though we didn’t know each other, we were familiar with what the other does in the community of restaurants and our body of work,” Young recently told Boston Magazine. “So it was nice to be able to have somebody to relate to and cook next to who I knew I could trust.

Russian chefs offer soup to warm homeless on cold St Petersburg nights

ST PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Most weeks, Roman Redman does a few extra hours in the kitchens of his ribs and burger joint in Saint Petersburg to cook for a less hipster clientele: the city’s poor and homeless.

FILE PHOTO: A chef of Caffe Italia restaurant cooks soup as part of a charity program to help homeless people in St. Petersburg, Russia November 28, 2018. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov

The traditional meat and cabbage soup is ladled into big flasks and driven by volunteers to places around the city where people live rough or subsist on small state pensions.

It’s then distributed free to enable people to eat and stock up on supplies and it’s particularly welcome in winter when city temperatures can drop to -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit).

“It’s only because of this that I survive,” said one man after glugging down soup handed out from the back of a van on a frigid evening last month.

Homelessness existed in the Soviet Union, even though the government offered cradle-to-grave provisions, but since the collapse of the system in 1991 and its replacement by a free market the number of homeless people has risen.