'Beat the Chefs': Singing Weavers and a Beau Mac Voodoo Doll Equal Success

It was with some skepticism that I tuned into the Game Show Network's Beat the Chefs competition. Food shows are extremely popular these days, and even though many of what you find on stations such as The Food Network and Bravo are competition based, I just was not sure that an actual game show would be entertaining. Well, if the season premier of the show is any indication, there is plenty of fun to be had in tuning in this series every week.

The setup has a family of four amateur cooks competing against professionals such as with this first hour's Chefs Beau MacMillan, Antonia Lofaso, and Jeff Henderson, for a $25,000 prize. It would seem on the surface that any team with professional chefs would win, much like on Iron Chef where the odds are always on the side of the Iron Chef to win. This is especially true since the 2/3rds of the judging panel is comprised of professionals and not just ordinary folks or even so-called foodies.

The family cooks get to name the dish, which the pros do not know about in advance. They also set the time of the competition, based on how long it takes them to cook their best dish.

In the opener, the pros faced off against two families, the first being a charismatic quartet, the Weaver family, and the second an energetic foursome from New Orleans. The Weavers gimmick was that they love to sing as they cook. From Florida, their segment was musically pleasurable as they could really cook, in more ways than one. Their dish, chicken and dumplings with green, was a winner.

The second family, using the team name Jougs of Joy named for their mother and her style of cooking, brought with them a lot of terrific banter and a doll that looked suspiciously like a Beau MacMillan voodoo doll. Their dish, shrimp potatoes and garlic bread, didn't quite match the chefs, though.

On the whole, the show was fun, entertaining, and on a cooking level, a bit educational. I'll be watching again.