Cooking battle show rekindles waning popularity
From left, Sam Kim, Choi Hyun-seok, Lee Won-il and Lee Yeon-bok pose at a press conference for “Cook Representative,” Feb. 16. / Korea Times photo by Lee Jung-hyun
By Park Jin-hai
The soaring popularity of cooking shows was waning as TV channels aired their own shows almost every evening. Yet JTBC’s new cooking show “Cook Representative” is appraised to have opened a new chapter in the otherwise mundane cooking shows that have glutted TV schedules.
Although it started out as a spinoff of the cable channel’s “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator,” sitting on a familiar format of a cooking competition with a 15-minute time limit with the same chef cast, the new TV show adopted a new element of a national competition to spice up the show with a competitive edge.
In the first episode aired last Wednesday, celebrity chefs Choi Hyun-seok, Lee Yeon-bok, Sam Kim and Lee Won-il flew to Hong Kong and had Choi compete against a Hong Kong Michelin-starred restaurant chef to finish appetizers under the theme of “romanticism.”
During the 70-minute show, Choi, who is known as the “bluffing chef” for exaggerating his movements whenever he sprinkles salt or garnishes his food, was depicted as struggling, having difficulty finding ingredients in the unfamiliar opponent’s kitchen and making small mistakes that would never happen on his home turf.
Choi’s struggle under unfavorable circumstances and waiting for the final judgment in a blind test by local gourmets recalled the same adrenalin-soaring moments seen rooting for a Korean national sports team competing in an international match.
The cast of football commentator Kim Seong-ju and footballer-turned-commentator Ahn Jung-hwan, together with ssireum (Korean wrestling) star-turned-comedian Kang Ho-dong, also made it more like a sporting event.
In the first episode, Choi lost in the first round match against his Hong Kong opponent by 2-3.
Lee Yeon-bok and Sam Kim will compete tonight in the second Hong Kong match.
In all, the cooking show has garnered decent attention from viewers.
The online bulletin board was filled with viewers’ opinions, saying that the competition was unfair on many grounds including the selection of the judges and the setting of the kitchen, as if expressing their anger to a national sports team.
One netizen vented his anger saying that the show forced him to leave a comment on the board. “The competition is not fair at all. If the first episode is like the rest of the show, the Korean team will definitely lose. The judges, all comprised of Hong Kong people including the restaurant’s owner, will all work for the Hong Kong chef,” he said.
The show’s first episode recorded a 2.3 percent viewer rating, surpassing that of “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator” which started out with 1.78 percent.