Ted Allen's Show Chopped: Is it Fixed?
Categories: Buyer Beware, The Critic
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| Hey, Ted: Who's picking the winners on your show? |
It also seems entirely fixed.
The show that exemplified this first aired January 29. The first round set the stage for a match that seemed picked by the producers.
The four chefs were asked to cook appetizers using sake, grapes, and chicken
wings. All in 20 minutes. Only one chef managed to fully cook the wings, but the worst offender was John Sierp, executive chef at White Cloud Catering in New York City. His dish had to be the most disgusting plate ever served on Chopped.
Sierp first tried to deep fry his wings, but when the oil didn't get hot enough, he switched to boiling them. With time running out, he took them out of the water and dropped them into butter and hot sauce that didn't stick to the wet, uncooked chicken skin. The finished product looked rubbery, white, and entirely inedible.
To finish, he plated them with a lettuce leaf, some grapes thrown on the plate, and what looked like a bowl of store-bought ranch dressing. The sake appeared to be missing entirely.
It seemed that there was no question Sierp would be "chopped." But no, the judges axed Linda Laestadius, the pastry chef at the Bear Cafe in Woodstock, New York.
Laestadius had produced what appeared to be three well-cooked chicken wings and one that had some pink in the middle. She also produced a grape and sake salad that the judges raved about.
Reached by phone in Woodstock, Laestadius says she's not sure why she got chopped.
"I felt it was really weird," she says. "I'm not sure exactly what happened. As far as I know, nothing's fixed, but we are not there when we are being judged, so I don't know if there is somebody influencing things."
So what could have been the motivation behind the decision? Laestadius, a native of Sweden, has a sweet, quiet demeanor. But a sweet, quiet demeanor doesn't equal stage presence. Meanwhile, Sierp works as a New York City firefighter on the side and has a personality as big as a ladder truck. He has appeared on TV several times, including with Martha Stewart, Bobby Flay, and Rachael Ray. The producers must have known they had a crowd pleaser with Sierp. Losing him in the first round could lose viewers.
So Laestadius went home, and Sierp moved on to the entree round, where he produced a dish of catfish that was simply thrown on a plate cafeteria-style. Judges are supposed to consider presentation as a main criterion, but Sierp moved on to the dessert.
In the final round, Sierp finally got chopped. He lost to Justin Gaines, executive sous chef at Zanaro's Italian Restaurant in White Plains, New York. Gaines produced plates all day that looked better than Sierp's -- but then, so did the other contestants.
For his part, Sierp says he doesn't think the show is fixed. He answered that question by email:
No, I definitely don't think it's fixed. They edit a lot of the comments out, and the other apps were worse than mine. If it were fixed, I would have won. My entree was actually better than both of the competitors (it was only sloppy on the plate. they LOVED every component), and my dessert was better than his was. They all said that also. I spoke with the judges the night the show aired. They all thought I should have won, but that I lost because his wings were cooked, and mine weren't. They really do argue about who they think should win, and that's the winner in the end. They don't show A LOT of the happenings that go on.
For his part, Ted Allen couldn't be reached. Food Network spokeswoman Lisa Krueger said he "is not the appropriate person to give answers to these questions..." Instead, Krueger forwarded an emailed response from Allison Page, vice president of programming for the Food Network:
Chopped is not fixed. We rely solely on the opinions of the three judges in each episode to eliminate contestants in each round and select a winner in the end. Each judge will have their own opinions on the executions of the contestants' dishes, but they come to a consensus every time and agree on who will be eliminated.
If the show is fixed, it wouldn't be the first time the Food Network has lied to its viewers to build the drama on one of its reality-TV-type shows. Earlier this month, Krueger admitted that the vegetables used on an episode of Iron Chef were not from the White House garden, as had been claimed on the show.
So is the show fixed? Aren't all reality TV shows?
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