If you haven't been watching "Top Chef: Just Desserts," you've been missing out. Probably lots of people say it's not as interesting as the original Top Chef because it's all one general idea (Make a fantastic dessert...GO!), but those people must not have enough cake, ice cream, or salted caramel in their lives. I love it. Plus, it's fun to see how weird pastry chefs apparently are...I mean, Seth is making Marcel look almost suave. (P.S. Am I going to have to wait for the reunion to find out how Heather gashed her forehead open?)
If you've missed Just Desserts until now, the good news is that you've still got lots of season left. The same is not true if you missed "The Great Food Truck Race," which I really think was the most under-publicized and under-rated food show of the summer. (I say that having no idea how it was publicized or received by critics.)
With the premise being simply that six food trucks were going to drive around the country trying to outsell each other - and with the host being everyone's favorite Applebee's chef Tyler Florence - there was a high risk of failure for The Food Truck Race. But fail, it did not.
Sure, it might have been even more fun if they'd made the teams solve clues to figure out where to go and what to do, but as it was, the way they'd make them drive to some new city and then set them loose to figure out how to get their ingredients and where to park their trucks and how to make the most money, was awesome. The lack of strict rules was pretty refreshing, as most reality shows pretty much control everything so tightly that contestants rarely have room to show how they got good at what they do in the first place. But alas, it's over. All I can do is hope for a season 2...and watch "The Amazing Race," which finally started its new season on Sunday!
I love treasure hunts. I love clues. I love travel. The Amazing Race is all of that, plus reality television drama. And I'm happy to see that they're bringing back the requirement that contestants have a tiny bit of common sense in order to solve some of their clues. If you've ever watched the early seasons (they are now in season 17!), they used to make the clues kinda hard. Then it got dumbed down to the point that no one really had to figure anything out, they just went where the next card told them to go...which, I should add, did not stop me from watching the show, but I like it better when there's more room for error.
While I don't particularly fantasize about being a contestant on The Amazing Race due to all of the surprise bungee-jumping and bug eating, I do fantasize about running around the world solving clues and traveling for free...maybe with more happiness and fun and less fear and injury.
But as soon as the Top Chef producers get together with The Amazing Race producers to create some sort of competition involving racing around the world to eat gourmet food, I'm totally in.
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