Cutthroat Kitchen
By Melissa Camacho,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Silly cooking challenge serves up snarky sabotage.
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Cutthroat Kitchen
Community Reviews
Based on 4 parent reviews
Terrible show
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Alton, you are the best nerd since Booger on "Revenge of the Nerds". You're such a good nerd that you're cool (Gawd help me).
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What's the Story?
CUTTHROAT KITCHEN is a food competition show that has chefs competing for cash while sabotaging each other. Host Alton Brown assigns the cooking competitors a dish to prepare at the beginning of each of three rounds. After each one, their food is tasted by a guest judge to determine who will be eliminated. The catch? Each chef receives $25,000 that they can use to bid on special equipment, ingredients, and other things throughout each round that can be used to sabotage one another. At the end of the competition, the chef that remains in the kitchen gets to take home whatever cash s/he has left.
Is It Any Good?
From making the perfect pie to forcing a fellow chef to slice ingredients and wrap burritos in oven mitts, the series offers lots of fast paced cooking entertainment. It also contains some brief discussions of interesting ingredients and taste profiles. The way chefs improvise when key ingredients or utensils are taken away from them is also fascinating to watch.
The challenges definitely produce some interesting results. But while the competition is designed to be fun, occasionally the chefs' behaviors go from being competitive to being just plain mean. Foodies may like it, but the show is more about how far the chefs will go to hinder one another than the dishes they are preparing.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the show's format. Does the behavior featured on this show represent the chefs' real personalities? Or is this behavior manufactured to make the show more entertaining?
Where do chefs learn all the things they need to know to create dishes with limited or unique ingredients? Which of these challenges would be the hardest for you or your family?
TV Details
- Premiere date: August 11, 2013
- Cast: Alton Brown
- Network: Food Network
- Genre: Game Shows
- Topics: Cooking and Baking
- TV rating: TV-G
- Last updated: June 1, 2023
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