The Taste may star Nigella Lawson as one of three judges trying to find Britain’s next foodie superstar but the first episode was a tad bland.
For the uninitiated it’s like The Voice – three mentors, including Lawson, American food writer Anthony Bourdain and chef Ludo Lefebvre, coach their own teams of four contestants, handpicked from a group of 25. But where The Voice has spinning chairs The Taste’s USP is spoons.
You know, the ones that hor d’oeurves are sometimes served up on and are really tricky to eat from.
What’s wrong with a cocktail stick? (Now, The Stick would have been a brilliant idea.)
The judges can choose their team members based on just one mouthful of their food (thankfully, when it comes to the spoons, no one does a Gregg Wallace).
Again, like The Voice, the candidates come from all backgrounds – some are trained, some food bloggers and others home cooks.
So inevitably a chef with celebrity clients chokes under pressure and is duly sent packing – a junior sous chef, however, glides through.
The most interesting factor in The Taste so far is Nigella and the opportunity to see what she’s like outside her fairly tongue in cheek cooking programmes.
This is a culinary superstar, remember, whose kitchen is bedecked with fairy lights, who slips down to the kitchen for midnight feasts in a silk dressing gown and who puts up a Christmas tree with a Lychini in one hand (good for her).
MORE: Nigella Lawson in sexy new advert for The Taste
This is also the cook who created the Girdlebuster Pie. Try having any more than a spoonful of that!
She’s rather a fantastic judge. Comforting a crying teenager who fails to make the cut: ‘Food is a very emotional thing,’ she soothes, beautifully.
She puts Anthony Bourdain in his place when he uses the word ‘shrimp’. ‘We call them prawns in this country,’ she corrects crisply. And stands up for home cooks against the ‘very, very French’ chef Ludo Lefebvre.
She also uses wonderful phrases such as: ‘I found it instantly seductive.’
The problem with episode one of The Taste is precisely what’s supposed to make it unique. The spoons of food.
It’s really difficult to get excited by an endless parade of little white cutlery piled with unidentifiable ingredients. You have to concentrate really hard in order to know what’s on them as things move very fast – there’s a lot of figs in this first episode.
Where the Great British Bake Off screams individuality and eccentricity with its showstopper tasks that produce Dalek biscuit towers and loaves in the shape on an octopus this doesn’t happen in the Taste’s opener. It lacks the Bake Off charm, is more serious and as a result less fun.
And it’s difficult to get to know the contestants too: 25 are whittled down to 12 in under an hour, so no one really stands out after the first hour. Who wasn’t supporting Howard on last year’s Bake Off after the first episode aired?
But, stick with it. Once the contestants are chosen and we move into the second episode the judges, still tasting blind, run the risk of eliminating their own proteges and that’s where the egos burst and the drama really starts.
This is also where you get to see who the maverick geniuses are and whose talents should never, ever ever be judged on just one spoonful.
