Weekend Cooking: The Final Table (Review)

It's the end of another week of stay home, stay safe, and though we're not having any particular disruptions in our everyday life (I've been working from home for decades, Mr. BFR is semi-retired), we do miss socializing with friends, going to the farmer's market, and grocery shopping in comfort.

We tried home-delivery of food this week, and while we were pleased with the processes (though not that happy with the extra costs), the shoppers couldn't find substitutions for two needed items--one of those items was 8-inch flour tortillas. Umm, I can't believe there were no tortillas of any size or type or no wraps at all in the entire store. The grocery's app shows those item in stock. Oh well, I'll figure out something else to do with the enchilada ingredients.

This week I decided to give the Netflix original series The Final Table a try. The setup is generally the same as other such elimination shows: You start with 24 successful chefs (some with Michelin stars) and end up with one winner.

Andrew Knowlton from Bon Appetit magazine is the host of the The Final Table. Although I have no doubt he knows the food world, he didn't display a particularly dynamic personality and doesn't draw us into the competition. He is joined in the first part of each episode by three celebrity judges and by a world-renown chef for the second part.

The contestants cook in teams of two and prepare a signature dish from the country of the week; the first episode, for example, featured Mexico and the teams were asked to make tacos. That dish is judged by the three celebrities. The bottom three teams then cook again for the famous chef, making a dish from the week's country that focuses on an ingredient of the chef-judge's choosing (for Mexico it was napoles/prickly pears).

Although the contestants start out in teams, at the end there is only one winner.

While I was interested in some of the innovative dishes, I was not caught up into the competition and didn't have a favorite contestant or team. Yes, of course, I watched only one episode of The Final Table, but there just wasn't enough there to make me want to come back for more. I risked spoilers and read a variety of reviews about the series--apparently I'm not the only one who was not impressed. If you have an hour to kill, you might want to give it a try, but don't go in with any kind of expectations.

Here's the trailer:

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