Chefs

I've been cooking almost all my life, including a stint in a continental kitchen as a sous chef so I know what's what in a commercial kitchen - which, to be honest, is a dangerous dirty thankless profession. I began watching "Chefs" when my spouse and I first started subscribing to MHZ but after viewing a few episodes, I found it too dreary to continue - very dark storyline in a dark kitchen and alleyways with the occasional pack of German shepherds in attack mode and brutal beating scenes. Once in awhile after a shift, the personnel go up on the roof to view the Seine, but they are all smokers so how can they with their impaired taste buds be judges of fine food prep? And anyway, there are just too many cooks in the kitchen and hardly any customers in the front of the house to justify all the employees who are there "because they need paychecks," according to the elderly dish washing guy. When a rookie cook squirts yuzu on a tiny array of paper thin zucchini coiled up in the middle of a big plate, the head chef (very surly and drunk most of the time) proclaims it a masterpiece, like no one on earth ever before thought of using citrus juice as a flavoring. I had to laugh when a female manager, dolled up in a royal blue sheath, demands tweezers to rearrange one leaf of parsley (or is it sorrel?) before letting the plate be taken away to a diner. The French is hard to decipher in this series and I'm tired of seeing dead people popping up everywhere like muses (a plot device I've seen in numerous other French TV shows). I'm disappointed because a series about the tribulations of commercial cooks should be more, shall I say, appetizing.

I watched Chefs through the first season knowing a second season was available. I loved it. The storylines were intriguing and the mixture of professional super-chef's work and personal lives made me binge watch into Season Two. Conflicts were great, but after a few episodes, none had been resolved satisfactorily for the viewer. I had had hope for the downward spiral to at least have some ups to go with the downs, but there never were ups. I found there wasn't one major character I liked well enough to care what happened to them and stopped watching. If you can take two seasons of gastronomic knife fighting, the series is well made and for you. If you look for some humanity in at least one, a hero of sorts, you may be as disappointed as I was halfway through the second season.

This series is pure silliness. It revolves around a group of chefs, each with their own issues. It is full of flowery dialog about food and never really gets anywhere. The story drags and the viewer has to suffer through episode after episode of really bad acting. Not surprisingly, it lasted just two seasons.

How would you run a restaurant in Paris? How would you stay in business, when the cut throat competition is looking to oust you? Is blood thicker than water, are there loyalties at all? This series takes place in the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the inner city in Paris, where real estate for restaurants is hard-won. And there needs to be a following of patrons to keep afloat. Patrons that can be lured away by someone else's wonderful cuisine. There is drama between a father and son pair of chefs, and a dark story behind. There is some wry humor in some of the episodes, comeuppances, and coup de grace........ You should watch! Wish this was available on DVD!

A very silly story, with a waste of actors, time, etc. The plot seems improbable, the main character, also the director, seemed self-obsessed and it really doesn't help the series. There seemed to be less of a love for food, with more attention paid to competition for the sake of it, with a ridiculous amount of smoking. How can people who smoke this much actually taste anything? Made the whole story implausible to be. Add in the over-the-top Japanese-cliched produce grocer, and the whole thing just seems a farce. The series would also be more enjoyable with one or two genuinely likeable characters.