Celebrity Food Fight

By JULIETTE ROSSANT The race is on for the fastest paced, most frenetic food show. Make room for Celebrity Food Fight – the name suggests Animal House meets Hollywood Squares – a one-hour pilot produced by Al Roker Entertainment, hosted by -- you guessed it -- Al Roker and featuring super chefs Daniel Boulud and Todd English as they teach cooking to celebrities like Morgan Fairchild and Mario Cantone -- in competition with each other. The plot may sound a bit familiar -- much like NBC's reality TV cooking show with celebs, Celebrity Cooking Showdown produced by Sean "Diddy" Combs (see previous story). In fact, isn't NBC the network where Al appears (the weatherman on NBC's Today Show)? Turns out NBC isn't the only network that thinks teaching celebs how to cook may make for interesting television. Both production companies claim that they have had their shows in the works for months, acccording to Variety, so this may be another case of reality-TV copying reality-TV. Hey, it happens in the movies, too: remember Armageddon and Deep Impact, or Volcano and Dante's Peak? "Two people came up with similar ideas," Roker told Variety on Tuesday. "I don't think there's any scandal." Still, he added, "I think I can say we had the idea first. I'm sure there's room in the kitchen for more than one show." What is Al's show all about? Al Roker Productions describes the show like this: In the special, complete with live audience, it’s a race against time as two celebrities don chef’s hats and to prove they’ve got the talent to out-shop and out-cook one another. Fairchild and Cantone will begin with culinary boot camp and learn to cook 5-star style in high-pressured kitchens - with Fairchild in English’s renowned Gramercy Park restaurant Olives and Cantone in Boulud’s contemporary French east-side eatery Daniel. They then take their newfound skills into the grocery store and ultimately back to the kitchen set to battle it out one-on-one for the title of hottest new celebrity chef. There are time limitations, chef lifelines and plot twists to this delectable food fight in which the celebrities are judged by experts on presentation, taste, creativity, and accuracy of cooking a full-course meal. The one-hour show crams in a crash course on cooking technique, shopping, cooking, and tips and corrections by the chefs --more than you get in an hour of Iron Chef America. Food TV is becoming what many movies have become: frantic chase scenes, rather different from what they started as: shows about cooking. Stay tuned to see how Celebrity Food Fight fares against Celebrity Cooking Showdow, Maybe one of these shows can get the formula to work with audiences. Previous news: Variety United Press International Previous articles: Celebrity Food Fight: New Game Celebrity Cooking Showdown [Food Television - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, food television --> back to superchefblog