The Taste on ABC: a review

The Taste is a brand new cooking show on ABC, Tuesday at 8/7c which takes traditional cooking shows and turns them on their heads.

Rather than the typical cooking show where the judges get to watch everyone cook and then judge them on what they know the individual made, the Taste has the judges try a spoonful of the meals and judge it without knowing who cooked each meal. 

 Four teams each with their own coach, who doubles as a judge in the elimination round, are challenged each week with a new, difficult cooking task.

The chefs have 2 rounds to impress with their cooking talents.

The first challenge determines which chef has immunity for that wee.

 Each chef in each group cooks a meal around the challenge, then only one chef from each group will have a spoon full of their meal blindly tasted by 2 judges. The winner of that challenge is also the winner of the immunity.

The second round, the chefs all cook another meal around a similar challenge as the first round. 

This time, each meal is tasted blindly by the four coaches while being watched from above by their teams. 

Each "taste" or spoonful is criticized by the judges. Once every dish has been tasted, it's time to announce the winner(s) for the week and who is eliminated. Each judge gives their favorite dish a gold star and least favorite a red star. 

The more gold stars, the more impressive the dish. Red stars are obviously something that should be avoided. Once the best and worst chefs of the week are shown, the best are congratulated. The worst are told how disappointed their respective judge is at their abismal meal choice. 

The judges deliberate one last time to decide which chef to send home and announce their decision.

I have to admit, I think that the blind tasting is a great idea to keep coaches from intentionally picking their own team members to stay on the show, also so people can't be judged on appearances. Like "The Voice" in the audition round, the chefs are judged 100% on the taste of the food that is presented to the judges and how well it matched the challenge. 

I love cooking shows and I think that this will be another one to add to my must watch list!

You can check out The Taste on Tuesdays at 8/7c on ABC. 

You can also check out a preview here:

http://vimeo.com/59697185