Like The Amazing Race, but with food
A 40-day gastronomic race with 12 globetrotting chefs competing against one another is the theme of the new TV series Around the World in 80 Plates.
The culinary reality show, which begins airing at 10 p.m. Monday on Food Network Canada, provides plenty of challenges for the chefs, said co-host Cat Cora, the first and only female Iron Chef.
“It’s a pretty incredible race to the finish with lots of tasks involved,” she said in a telephone interview from Santa Barbara, Calif. “In a lot of ways it’s like Amazing Racein that sense and Top Chef in terms of some of the ‘quick-fire’ challenges.”
In the 10 countries visited — Argentina, China, England, France, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Thailand, Uruguay and the United States — the chefs must learn the local customs, cultures and cuisines as they battle it out in cooking challenges that test their skills and determination.
“Literally, in 24 hours, they had to learn where they were, they had to learn about the cuisine, they had to learn about what their challenges were, meet the challenges and then take over a restaurant, so it was a very, very intense competition,” Cora said.
Each episode has two challenges. “The Course” is a high-pressure scavenger hunt that has the chefs racing around each city seeking the “exceptional ingredient” chosen by the show’s producers, which Cora said may give them a leg up on their competitors in “The Takeover,” the next part of the contest.
The Course “can be anything from planting rice in rice paddies in Thailand to rolling a wheel of parmesan through Bologna to get to the next place to do their task, making tortellinis with ladies in a small little trattoria,” Cora said.
Then they take over a local restaurant and reinvent its menu. “They have to prepare a menu of local foods for local diners who have pretty much been living there their whole lives,” Cora said.
The team that loses this part of the match has to eliminate one of its members, who then is sent home.
Co-hosting with Cora is Australian celebrity chef and cookbook author Curtis Stone, who most recently hosted Top Chef Masters.
Helping the contestants in each episode as local ambassadors are food personalities Wolfgang Puck, José Andrés, Nigella Lawson, Narda Lepes and Toronto-raised Alvin Leung, who now makes Hong Kong his home and has proclaimed himself the “Demon Chef.”
The 12 chefs, who are divided into two teams, are all U.S.-based. “They’re chefs from all walks of life. Some have formal culinary education and some have worked their way through. Some have been cooking for two years, some for 20,” Cora said.
By the finale, set in Los Angeles, two chefs remain.
“They have a task and then have to cook for us. The ambassador in L.A. was Wolfgang Puck, so they had to cook for Curtis, myself and Wolfgang.”
The winner gets $150,000, a new luxury car, plus “bragging rights and lots of opportunities that will come out of it,” she said.