Ciao House

Did the casting call for this show read "Looking for awful human beings who happen to be chefs"? There's nobody to root for on this show. If you want a display of pure narcissism to end your Sunday night, this is for you. It's just such a shame. I'm sure there were more qualified chefs, who also had a shred of humility and basic decency that would have loved the opportunity. The two judges are good! Big fan of Alex and always have been. It's just a waste of her abilities, but I'm sure she is not complaining about being in Tuscany. I hope that if this show gets renewed for another season, they can find contestants that people want to root for and see succeed.

What a disappointment that.this show follows the Food channel's formula--ridiculous time constraints, cruel food critics, crushed competitors. Alex's biting comments are vicious. Gabriele's arrogance is irritating. They even insult the Tuscan guests--nona's, wine makers, and butcher so far--by allowing them only few minutes and missing a chance for the contestants and the audience to learn about Tuscan food. Isn't learning about Tuscan food supposed to be the point of this show? Apparently not. What a wasted opportunity. Not the best choice of chefs, but if culinary education were truly the goal of the show, there were many missed opportunities.

Love cooking competitions shows. But the basis of a competition is the better chefs ultimately win. The foundation of contestants leaving this show is other contestants voting them out. Judges as a result are completely unnecessary. They played 0 role in the progression of the competition.

Unfortunately, at the end of each competition, it wasn't the weakest chefs going home, but the opposite. Strong chefs got voted out by weaker chefs binding together to get rid of skilled chef.

Judges should have had the responsibility to vote out chefs based on their performance. Very disappointing to see deserving talents leave the show because less skilled chefs took advantage of the poor structuring of the competition.

I like the idea of a competition showcasing Tuscany and the great food in the region and a competition thrown in, but is ruined by the chef voting off someone themselves. Every challenge is a team and ends up getting worse with the lower numbers but the worst part is the voting off one of the team. The judges seem kind of useless as they don't decide who deserves to stay but get to target the more talented chefs as a captain which makes them an easy target for the weaker chefs to gain up on and get rid of. As the show goes on ends up being a showcase of best of the worst with the weaker chefs bringing down the better chefs then taking them out. Making the competition and the show pointless in the end and a loose definition of the word "winner".

We watched the first season of this show only because we were going to be visiting Italy soon. It seemed disjointed and very low budget. We are very pleasantly surprised with the second season. Much more compelling and the production values are far better. We like the concept of team members deciding who will be going home. We also feel like we are learning a lot about Italian cuisine. Alex is not as obnoxious in the second season as she was in the first. If you were not happy with the first season, I definitely think you should give the second season a try. The setting is beyond beautiful and the food looks fantastic. I hope it comes back for a third season.