Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Five Star Chef’ On Netflix, A Cooking Competition Where A Job Running The Kitchen At A Top London Restaurant Is The Prize

Five Star Chef is a cooking competition that offers the winner a big prize: The head chef position at The Langham’s Palm Court restaurant. Judging along with Michigan-starred chef Michel Roux will be restauranteur Mike Reid and top pastry chef Ravneet Gill.

FIVE STAR CHEF: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Only a handful of chefs in every generation have what it takes to get to the top,” says Michel Roux, a Michelin-starred chef at The Langham hotel in London. As he says that in voice over, we see him cooking and plating dishes.

The Gist: The competition starts right away, with 14 chefs making a dish that accompanies a concept that they want to execute for the Palm Court. It’s an audition of sorts; seven of the chefs will be eliminated and seven will go on to the competition, where the chefs will be under the gun to create dishes for demanding customers.

The contestants come from all over, and the concepts they put together are… interesting. Some seem to get the five star dining concept, like Jordan, who does a “3 things” plate featuring rabbit loin. Some, like Lara, go for more performance-oriented aspects; she actually has an actor dressed like the White Rabbit come out to surprise the judges. One chef from Texas tries to do an elevated Tex-Mex course, while another promotes Congolese cuisine.

Six of the seven spots are filled, but the two chefs given a “maybe” face off in a second competition, where they have 75 minutes to make a steak with sides. One stays, and the other goes home.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think Top Chef, but a bit classier.

Our Take: In essence, Five Star Chef isn’t a whole lot different than any other cooking competition show, although the prize at stake seems to be a whole lot more valuable than even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a bit surprising to us that the head chef position at such a prestigious restaurant is what awaits the winner, but it also seems that the level of contestants that were chosen were already pretty high, so maybe the prize won’t just go to someone who got lucky for a few episodes.

Anyway, the structure is pretty simple, and the production eschews a lot of what is irritating about American cooking competition shows; there’s no walkaround by the judges, no cross-talk among the chefs, no pressure-filled montage of plating as the last seconds tick down. In fact, the first task wasn’t even timed, and the time limit on the cook-off task was treated as more of an afterthought.

Most of this stems from the idea that this isn’t merely a game show, it’s one that’s going to determine the next chef at one of London’s top restaurants. So even the competitions after this one will consist of more real-world situations, not contrived contests with a clock. The idea is that the winning chef is going to be able to make creative, delicious and well-presented dishes that would fit at a five-star restaurant, and do so in a way that can be marketable and profitable. That and the challenge of running the kitchen provides more than enough pressure, so it feels like an artificial time limit isn’t necessary.

The judging is solid, though there does seem to be a few different places where the question, “Is this a five star dish?” or some variation using the word “five star” is used. And, though we’ve eaten in our share of high-end restaurants, it’s hard to know what a five star dish is, except in broad strokes, like the idea that Tex-Mex just won’t work at the Palm Court, or a dish served on a picture frame with a dude in a scary rabbit costume goofing around.

Sex and Skin: Nothing except for food porn.

Parting Shot: The loser of the cook-off exits the hotel, then we see scenes from the upcoming season.

Sleeper Star: We do have to give Lara credit for being as daring as she was, even though there isn’t a chance in hell that the way she presents her dishes would ever fly at a place like the Palm Court.

Most Pilot-y Line: One chef presented his dish over coals, and, while it looked great, the judges didn’t think it was a “five star” presentation. Not much explanation why. Maybe it’s because people at fine dining establishments don’t want to have to finish their proteins over an open fire?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Five Star Chef elevates the cooking competition format a little bit, but at its heart it’s still a cooking competition.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.