It must’ve looked fairly appealing on paper.
Great idea for new reality / cooking / lifestyle module - a Dragons’ Den vs Masterchef fusion. Import the same chefs who mete out the nasty judgements on Masterchef and get them to judge food made by the Great British public. Like Masterchef without the constructive criticism. Like Dragon’s Den without the real business opportunities and vast sums of money. A chance to see restaurant critics really lashing out on poor, unsuspecting, non media-friendly fools. Guaranteed success.
It looks like a ratings-grabber on first sight but after five minutes viewing, the obvious flaws poke out like impetuous tongues.
Sweet Baby James presents Eating With The Enemy, playing the exact same role as Evan Davis in the old double ‘D’. He’s the go-between who liaises with the judges and cosies up to the contestants. He’s the viewers’ representative. It works with affable Evan, who humbles himself in front of contestants, folding his fists in front of himself and smiling from behind those kind, slightly off-kilter eyes. With Sweet Baby James it doesn’t quite work the same way, given his abrasive attitude. He spends the show mocking the efforts of the contestants to their faces and getting in the way. Yesterday he made a scene when he got splashed with a tiny dribble of custard, the big jessie.
The judges are vaguely known restaurant critics. You’d recognise them if you saw them. They are:
Toby Young - Probably the most famous. Likeable buffoon.
Kate Spicer - Evening Standard food critic. A sour-faced grunt of a woman who starred in possibly the worst television show ever, Super Skinny Me.
Jay Rayner - Son of Clare. Observer food critic. Pompous man-mountain with ludicrous hair and facial trim who appears to climax every time he makes a weak, food-related gag.
Charles Campion - Miserable, fat knacker who looks EXACTLY like Peter from Family Guy.
The show’s structured really badly. Dragons’ Den is so straightforward you’d have to be lobotomised to misunderstand the formula. Masterchef is slightly more confusing - with semi finals here and restaurant rounds there - but usually we know where it’s at.
Eating With The Enemy has so many segments that we seem to meet the contestants three times, say goodbye to them twice and have the main courses described (in some detail) endlessly throughout the shows fifty minutes.
Another flaw, possibly intended, is that the food is bloody awful. Walid, a Lebanese gentleman, made steak with a ’stilton vein’ running through it and bacon wrapped around the outside. It was completely over-complicated and rammed with essence of cardiac arrest. His sparring partner was Sam who made ‘rag pudding’ which seemed to be a weird arctic roll made out of mince and fat. Not to mock Sam or Wally - I probably couldn’t do much better myself - but surely it just meant we were going to have to watch culinary assassination as the non-professionals lined up their wares in front of people who talk shit about high end food for a living?
In the event, the judges shrank from the task and praised the dishes where they could. The rubbish in front of them was barely worth comment so they opted for the positive. And therefore the ‘fearsome’ judges pretty much turned the show into an irrelevance. They’re referred to throughout as ‘The Enemy’ in the same way Theo, Jonesy and pals are called ‘The Dragons’, but it doesn’t make any sense as they show sympathy, which is weakness, which drains the element of threat from proceedings. The closest they got, really, was asking Walid why he’d attacked an ‘innocent bit of meat’ and saying he’d ‘pushed it off a cliff’.
So what we have here is a redundant piece of programming. A pretty despicable concept in the first place - four twats who get paid to be pissy to waiters criticise some nice normal folk for giving something a bash - is then completely weakened when ‘The Enemy’ go all soft and praise food you’d clearly send back if you were served it even in a greasy spoon. So what, my friends, is the fucking point?
I’ve not even started on some other major weaknesses. Dragons’ Den works because the prize at stake is a large amount of money. Remove the return and you’ve kicked your programme in the groin. Masterchef works because those participating already have some degree of flair. Serve up two shit cooks and you’ve gone and slapped your show’s arse. Use restaurant critics as your judges and you’ve pretty much decapitated your own creation.
Restaurant critics, as any fool knows, are generally sniffy berks who lack any experience or expertise in what they do. They’re professional moaners. Where the Dragons have all worked their way to their personal wealth, this lot are promoted hacks who are now so far removed from the man on the street they think writing cynically about a fucking pudding represents a meaningful existence. I remove Giles Coren from that generalisation, as he barely even mentions the food, preferring instead to waffle on about his life - which is generally far more interesting.
These four ‘enemies’ and their supposedly daunting presence is acceptable when they’re asked to bitch for three minutes in Masterchef, but try and extend that three minutes to fifty and the whole thing collapses like an undercooked cakey pie.
I just hope they don’t make this rubbish prime time.
131 Comments
Jay Rayner is a good writer who has made th mistake of thinking this entitles him to a TV career.
Charles Campion is why people hate people.
I disagree, actually. Jay Rayner is a heavily sarcastic irrelevance. Yes - ‘heavily’.
The guy on the left looks like someone you’d duel with in a castle. A pie-eating musketeer, if you will.
That’s Claire Rayner wearing a false beard.
My God, have you ever seen the artwork of that guy who draws ‘real’ looking versions of cartoon characters and video game protagonists? That last critic guy looked like one of his creations, almost scary how much he looks like a real version of Peter from Family Guy. Good call SH!
I’m not the first to have said it, I ought to point out.
Bloody hell. First that fat pile of shit Masterchef, and now this. Are you turning into Piqued in his absence?
WIN A CAR HERE - http://bpperry3.blogspot.com/2008/07/ittodbtbia-scratchcard.html
Writing about cooking on a TV blog is essential, isn’t it? Seeing as cooking dominates the schedule… despite the fact you can’t taste what’s being cooked, making the whole thing very strange indeed. Like a stripper - you get to salivate but can’t sample.
Cooking dominates the schedules? What, five, six shows? Hardly domination in my book.
Not another cookery show! What is it with this country and cooking? One maybe two cookery shows is enough. We need mathematicians not cooks!
Mathematicians? Can they cook steak?
They can, but beware of cow lice.
Anybody can cook a steak. It’s easy.
You’ve clearly never met my mother, Mikey.
Have you, Mikey? Have you met Napoleon’s mother?
If he had, he’d know not to make brash statements like ‘Anybody can cook a steak’, I know that for sure. Similarly, if he’d ever run into the Sri Lankan woman who used to run a cafe I used to frequent, he’d definitely not say it. I’m not exaggerating when I sat she once managed to burn a poached egg - a scientific impossibility, as far as I’m aware. She also served someone up a deep fried Brillo pad, and one unlucky customer got the blood pad thing from under a chicken in their curry. Give that woman a steak, and she’d probably burn a small city to the ground.
That pleasure has not come my way, well not knowingly anyway.
Does she have probs with a steak? Quite simple..please pass on to the good Mrs. N.
” Get a steak, maybe flatten it slightly with a rolling pin. Put some salt n’ pepper on flattened steak. Meanwhile heat a frying pan with I recommend some butter. Really get it hot. Really, really hot. Chuck in steak, carefully cos it will spit. Turn occasionally and after 3 minutes take out of pan. Serve with salad”.
‘Blood pad’ - Christ, that’s grim. You’re right though, it’s effectively a supermarker sanitary device. A chicken tampon.
Burned poached egg - how can you burn something that’s drowning?
Thanks for stating the bleeding obvious Mikey - any tips on how to comb hair?
Can you give me precise details of length and texture of hair and what style is desired?
Actually, don’t worry, I’ll just go grade one all over.
‘Burned poached egg - how can you burn something that’s drowning?’
Ask a witch, one with a pointed hat and green face, not the boring ones.
The burnt poached egg mystified us all. Those that were in there blamed it on divine intervention. Another time, she’d been eating noodles covered in fish oil with her hands (and smoking at the same time), when a customer came in and asked for a cheese sandwich. She got up, grumbled under her breath about ‘bloody people interrupting her bloody dinner’, wiped her hands on her apron and made him the sandwich at the counter without washing her hands. When the customer complained, she said, ‘What’s the bloody matter with you? Just eat your sandwich, silly man.’ He ate his sandwich. The woman was a health and safety bio-hazard.
Cheese and fish - a winner for your dinner.
I took renowned ‘foodie’ Piqued to a lovely pub for lunch. I had a great steak and chips while he had steak and kidney pie with mash. He complained that the mash tasted weird. I delighted in the fact that they’d served him ancient, potentially lethal mashed potato. Ho ho ho!
You want to go to an old fashioned pie and mash shop. Good value and good pies.
Serves him right. You should have slipped rohypnol in his drink when he went to the loo. Then raped his ass.
It was fucking beyond belief; I reckon it had been sitting on the chef’s balls for a week.
Mikey, you need to add some oil to that butter or it will burn.
‘raped his ass’ ?
You writing from Sheffield or L.A. NC
Hey boy - play me a ditty on yaw banjow, y’hear or I WILL RAPE YO AZZZZ
See?
No.
Eh?
Piqued.. No I don’t, you foodie! Butter is enough. Anyway what kind of oil?
Egg oil, Mikey.
That’s like robbing an elf of its ears.
That’s the spirit, Mikey! ‘Foodie’ SHOULD be an insult.
Christ - what exactly IS a ‘foodie’ anyway? Anyone who likes food? That’ll be everyone apart from anorexics then.
In that case make me a ‘foodie’, a ‘televisionie’ and a ‘fartingie’.
and sexy?
I reckon I’m a foodie too. Last week I ate one of those large size Beef ‘n’ Tomato Pot Noodles. It was an explosion of flavours on the tongue - simply sensational.
That’d only count if you applied the ketchup sachet. I’ve been a proud owner of a Bombay Badboy for about 11 months now - I can’t bare the idea of throwing it out but also know from previous experience it tastes more of pain than anything else. What should I do?
Oh, and I also have one of those Walkers crisps badges from the early 90s, the one you wore in the hope of seeing some arsehole in a Walkers can (which never happened in Grappenhall). Does that make me a foodie?
can = van
Mikey, butter has a very low tolerance to heat as the milk solids of casein and whey burn. To prevent burning it needs a catalyst such as sunflower oil, olive oil, rapeseed oil et al…
I’m definitely a foodie - I ate a Marks and Spencer lasagne the other day and undercooked it so I could taste the ingredients fully. It gave me cheesegrater-colon for 48 hours.
Butter is enough …you FOODIE! Sunflower oil, rapeseed oil… pah! the olive oil (extra virgin) goes on the salad.
I’d say Marks and Spencer lasagne has a low tolerance to being undercooked judging by the state of my ravaged anus.
Mikey, SH declared ‘foodie’ an insult, you don’t have to take his word for it, you can think for yourself can you not?
With regard to butter ‘Really get it hot. Really, really hot’ will see you stood looking gormlessly at black flecked brown sludge.
If he likes his steak like that let him do what he wants, I say.
I was taking issue with getting butter ‘really, really hot’. It’s impossible
I couldn’t give a fat fuck how he likes his meat
It’s a good job you are not here piqued , I would batter you and then fry you in sunflower oil but you would probably start criticising my batter and frying heat.. FOODIE…FO~~ODIE!
I had sausages, bacon, beans and mash last night for me dinner, followed by a slice of melon and a glacier cherry. Yummy.
‘I would batter you and then fry you in sunflower oil but you would probably start criticising my batter and frying heat’
You thought that through Mikey… been eating infected spine have you?
Let’s not fight over this or I’ll have to get out my ‘most racist’ list.
Fry the damned steak any way you wish just as long as it doesn’t turn black…
…the what list?
I said I “recommend” butter. (Any half decent cook knows how to cook with butter).
How do you cook your omelettes? Mine are done with butter and are revered throughout the Western World.
Good news for foodies at the moment - TESCOs are doing those Bird’s Eye breaded chicken breast things for a pound. A gourmet’s delight, and only a pound (£1).
You actually said ‘Meanwhile heat a frying pan with I recommend some butter’
…which only made sense after I’d ‘de-touched’ parts of the sentence.
I do cook omelettes in butter mind you as the butter needs only to be ‘foaming’ to cook the aforementioned comestible, obviously, if I continued to heat the butter to say ‘steak-frying’ temperatures it would result in it’s being burnt thus rendering the omelette inedible and by default reducing me to screaming uncontrollable sobs.
I hope that’s answered your question.
Mikey - Piqued forgot to mention that the best steaks are Ross Grillsteaks. You can fry them in what ever you like, even water.
You’d be better off frying those Ross grillsteaks in water than butter NC as butter has a very low tolerance to heat as the milk solids of casein and whey burn.
Cook Ross grillsteaks in butter and you’ll be stood looking gormlessly at black flecked brown sludge, with a Ross grillsteak in it.
Piqued - would you eat a man?
only his cock
Butter or oil?
(maybe lick the odd ball a bit)
Well, I’d add some oil to the butter as butter has a very low tolerance to heat as the milk solids of casein and whey burn. To prevent burning it needs a catalyst such as sunflower oil, olive oil, rapeseed oil et al…
Cook cock in just butter and you’ll be stood looking gormlessly at black flecked brown sludge, with a cock in it.
Thanks for the advice, Piqued. What’s the best thing to have with these ‘ere grillsteaks? I’m thinking curry Super Noodles and frozen peas.
Actually, I laughed out aloud a few moments ago…
That piqued, he has criticised my cooking and implied I was illiterate. From now on I shall be keeping my cooking tips to myself.
You were laughing out loud a few moments ago
You’re so fickle
FOODIE!
That’s the spirit Mikey, etc…
What’s actually the definition of ‘foodie’?
Someone what eats food, I think.
A ‘gastronome’ is a short-arse with a stomach ache.
The droll words of a wag there, I’ll wager.
Is it someone who goes to restaurants regularly? I really don’t get it.
A foodie is like a food buff I think. That’s it, isn’t it? The type that grows cress in eggshells on their windowsill ‘herb garden’.
“Where can I win a car?”, did you say, Swineshead? Why, here of course …
http://bpperry3.blogspot.com/2008/07/ittodbtbia-scratchcard.html
I still don’t get it. We all have to eat three times a day so everyone’s a foodie, surely? I suppose the crux of it is ‘buff’… people who know stuff about food. It’s quite hard not to know about food though, unless you’re a moron.
Great promotion there Napoleon - promote a blog article on a blog where everyone reads your blog as a matter of course. You need marketing tips…
It ain’t only here where I’m doing my promotion work. Anyway, there may be stray readers who don’t know that my blebsite offers them a chance to win a car in my ace new scratchcard game. A car, by the way, that you may find eerily familiar.
That’s a valid pint, SH, the one about the knowing about food. I’d wager even a slug can discern between what is food and what isn’t - and a slug won’t overdo the salt.
I do recognise it - it’s the one you still owe Mr. Tits.
A valid pint? A valid PINT? Are you accusing me of being an alcoholic? Well I’m not. I’m just off the sauce, ALRIGHT?
*is not over-sensitive*
How do you know Mr. Tits never got his car? Are you claiming some connection to this Tits character? Anyway, regardless of whether he got his car or not, he’s DISQUALIFIED from my new scratchcard game as he doesn’t meet the criteria outlined in the terms and conditions.
Mr Tits complained about it in your comments section - THAT’S how I know. I wouldn’t know Mr. Tits from Adam (whoever he is)
Adam was the first man on God’s green earth. If you were sober you’d know that.
Mr. Tits doesn’t need you to fight his battles, you fat scoundrel. I still don’t see why it’s any of your business. P’raps you should take a chance on my scratchcard game? If you meet the terms and conditions, you too could win a four door family saloon - JUST LIKE MR TITS DID.
I never received that car, by the way.
Probably an admin error, but I felt I should point it out.
I don’t think is the right forum to be discussing competitions being held on other blogs, Mr. Tits. You’ve let the side down there, to be fair.
I didn’t recieve the car either. This is a national scandal.
It’s certainly looking that way, Mr Bakewells.
Cherry Bakewells - You would have received a car if:
a) You’d won a car
b) You’d entered any of my competitions.
I don’t make the rules.
Napolean Cock-Apart - You’d not have made the rules if
a) it wasn’t your competition (which it is)
b) you’d not have made up the rules (which you did)
Where’s my f*cking c*r!
I don’t make the rules.
Of course you did.
No I don’t. My competitions are regulated by an independent arbitrator. This all sounds like sour grapes to me, frankly.
Can I have the name of this ‘independent arbitrator’ because I smell fish…red herring.
By all means, Mr Cherry Bakewells. His name is Marchmount O’Cladgebatterer, and he lives here.
Well, that all seems in order. As you were, NC. About you go.
I’m glad that’s cleared up.
Scrathcard game, here, better than WWM, etc.
Sorry, that should be ’scratchcard’ game, not ’scrathcard’. And it’s available here.
Piqued - Would you eat your mother?
That opens up two possible fronts of reply, Dave.
I don’t follow…
EAT your mother? Yes? No?
Hmmm … looking at your pasty awful face in photos suggests you might not have been near enough to a woman to fully appreciate the double-meaning one can read into your question. I’m lost for what to say, to be honest.
Poor Dave…
Just because you’re some cartoon Benny Hill figure (Benny Hill was a pervert) and I’m not doesn’t mean I am useless with the lady-folk for not being delighted at your staing the fucking obvious (something you have a tendancy for these days).
Besides, your statements redundant. There are spastics and cripples out their enjoying the vagina so an ugly fucker like me shouldn’t be expected to have issues there.
You’re a fucking clown and a liability.
Last time I checked, we don’t use the word ’spastics’ any more, Dave. Don’t, for Christ’s sake, make me create a new list!
That ’spastics’ has clouded whatever Dave said there. All I can see leaping out at me is that ’spastics’ wot he wrote. May I be the first to say that this man’s comments are an outrage to decent society. Dave, you’re a monster.
I was born of a spastic, you inconsiderate shits.
I AM THE FRUIT OF A SPASTIC’S WOMB.
Seriously Dave, if you can’t be funny about it don’t use that word - you just look dim.
He said it twice there. I feel a bit sick.
It isn’t really offensive, is it? Not in the same way as handicapped or invalid, because spastic’s quite a neutral term really. The only reason we reset these kinds of names i because kids on playgrounds make up chants about them. They make up names about everything so what’s the point other than to appease overly-PC, cotton-coated chaps like you two?
I’d rather you didn’t use the term, you fucking idiot, because someone reading this might take offence. I personally am not offended because I already know you’re a small-minded gibbon and aren’t representative of the way most of us on this here blog actually think.
Tit.
MAKE HIM STOP!
‘I’m not offended but others might be’.
Well thank god you’ve got their back, SH.
Having worked with people who could be regarded as spastics and having a father who works closely with a range of people with physical and mental difficulties I can assert you’re being a pompous arse to stroke your sense of moral superiority. They’re people.
Pathetic.
Is this sour grapes because you were DISQUALIFIED from my competition, Dave? Is that why you hate the mentally and physically unfortunate?
AAh - the old ‘my Dad’s got cancer / my dog just died / I’m a virgin’ excuse for saying anything I fucking well want.
Grow up.
I must admit, I hadn’t heard the term spastic used since Primary 7.
I don’t like to look like some sort of over-sensitive cock or anything but I find the word ’spastic’ pretty offensive for er….. personal reasons.
It’s not like I’m going to stop dropping by here to read about shows I never watched and never intend to watch, but it does make me wince slightly.
Racist and Hater Of The Physically Confronted too? My God, Dave.
Don’t be blasphemous, Wagonwheel.
I obviously apologise if any offence was leaped upon with glee. As this is not my blog and the blog owner finds the term offencive, I have no grounds for defence regardless of what I may deem to be common sense. This is an overly left-wing hang-out for people that watch cookery shows afterall.
We need a list of offending words to be placed in every town hall in the land.
This is an overly left-wing hang-out for people that watch cookery shows afterall.
Dave - can you email me on the address in the right hand margin, front page? I’m not really into public battles like the one you’re after.
Whilst I agree that we can’t go about banning words incase someone takes offense, there are degrees of taste. The use of the word ’spastic’ is in very bad taste.
Thank god reasonable people exist…
I totally agree with the person who published this blog: well done!
UK is obsessed by the idea of celebrity chefs and cookery in a competitive way:
1) Because whatever a country is lacking of, it tries to compensate by talking about it all the time - in this case braodcasting cookery TV programmes, bad or good it doesn’t matter
2) Brits are competitive by nature
The lacking point in UK I want to point out is not cookery TV programme.
It’s a real food culture.
Thankyou Rex, it’s nice to be appreciated.
For once.
*weeps*
Absolutely Rex. The sad thing though is that we do actually have a food culture in this country. Traditional English food, steak and kidney pie and that kind of thing and also, believe it or not foreigners do enjoy our traditional puddings. But all these cookery programs, with some bloody awful pretentious ideas coupled with this notion of celebrity chefs just is tacky and vile. I also wonder if it isn’t politically motivated to encourage young people to go into catering, believing that it is some sort of amazing career, rather than long unsociable hours for low pay.
You’re right Swineshead. It does look really shite.
By the way, I’ve only just now discovered you are a man who writes very funny reviews. Up till then you were just the guy on Andrew Collins’ site scared of reading spoilers for The Wire.
Some really funny stuff. You and Napoleon are a good double-act. Loved the Carly Simon phone calls, very good.
Keep up the good work, sir. And continue to enjoy The Wire. Omar IS The Man, The Man, The Maaaan.
Thankyou Paul - I appreciate that.
Kate Spicer is described as a sour faced grunt of a woman but I think there is something quite sexy about her. I certainly would and maybe she might smile a bit more. My guide dog agrees with me
Lovely final sentence there, Scotsboy.
Interestingly enough, Kate Spicer has been our number one search term for people who’ve found our site so clearly she holds some appeal, presumably for visually challenged folk like yourself.
Can Ijoin in as I was on the show until you started talking about “Mikeys” obvious lack of cooking knowledge… Heat butter up really hot and it will burn you fool and if you want to cook a steak properly you oil the steak not the pan!!!