A Complicated Palate: The Heaven and Hell of Reality-TV Food Shows

It’s a weeknight, and you’ve just settled into the couch with your wine and cheese (or whatever other artery-constructing snacks your heart desires). You flick on the show that’s meant to wipe your mind for the next few hours. Picture this: the camera pans across a stunning, serene English country estate. Birds sing and lambs frolic in the field. The voiceover is gentle and pleasant, rather like the Queen, if the Queen could be tasked with lulling you to sleep. A tent where contestants compete is decorated with pastels, softly lit, adorned with smiling people. Yes, it’s true: they’re about to start baking!(Record scratch.) Or maybe, that’s not quite right. Maybe it looks more like this: in Los Angeles, a camera zooms in on a dark building lit with flames that burst from beneath. The music brings to mind the soundtrack of the Saw horror franchise, accompanied by an ominous voice. A raging Brit in a white coat screams at men and women as they sweat, swear, and fight their way through appetizers and entrees. Pans crash, knives slice, and tears are inevitably shed.These are the opening scenes from two of my favourite reality cooking shows: The Great British Bake Off and Hell’s Kitchen (US). Having watched every season of both—sadly, more than once—I can tell you that this is some of the most addicting material to ever be aired.In case you aren’t familiar, Bake Off follows a group of charming Brits from all walks of life as they face three themed baking challenges in each episode, competing to become the week’s Star Baker. One is eliminated at the end of each week—but not before getting several big hugs. Hell’s Kitchen, on the other hand, is a culinary gladiator battle. The object? The position of Chef at a hot restaurant and the admiration of the host, Chef Gordon Ramsay, known for his pug-like face and vulgar language. The contestants compete in a team challenge (usually male vs. female because, apparently, it’s 1950 and boys and girls can’t play together) and a dinner service, during which they are berated, humiliated, and degraded by the satanic Ramsay. Eventually, one team loses and someone is sent home hanging their head in defeat and shame—usually while trying to swat away the knife one of their teammates stabbed in their back.

But the dark side of my appetite rises to the surface when I get a taste of an angry, wrinkly Brit shouting.

Could two shows be more different? Sure, they’re both hosted by British personalities, but can one even compare the elfin queens of kitchen innuendo—Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins—to the fearful Ramsay-monster? The atmosphere and approach to cooking that GBBO and HK each embody are wildly dissimilar. One is a supportive, cheerful environment shared by contestants and judges from all over Britain, where people have a cup of tea while their Battenberg cake bakes in the oven, and where even the hosts cry when someone has to go home. The other is a journey of humiliation, where the goal is to break down as many souls as possible, all while the chefs step over the bodies of their teammates in order to win the prize and forever surrender their dignity.Here lies the conundrum: how can I be drawn to two shows that could not be further from one another on the reality-television-cooking-competition-spectrum? How do I reconcile the desires and needs that the shows satisfy? Obviously, I would like to see myself as the kind of person who can be satiated by watching kind, plucky people bake lovely desserts, support each other when something gets stuck to the pan, and help in applying that last swirl of icing. This is the me I want to be! But the dark side of my appetite rises to the surface when I get a taste of an angry, wrinkly Brit shouting. He shouts about tuna (“I wouldn’t even feed this to my cat!”), and chicken (“It’s pinker than Paris Hilton’s lipstick!”), and the garnish (“You donkey!”), and everything in between. Why do I crave the terror-filled kitchen of Gordon Ramsay’s hell?It all comes down to taste, and it seems that I have a complicated palate. I bake on the regular for my family and friends, forever chasing the tingly sensation of butter and sugar melting on my tongue. Or that initial hit of sour that slowly turns sweet when you take a bite of lemon curd. Bake Off is the Portuguese custard tart that calms my craving. It’s not necessarily about what the contestants bake, but rather the people themselves, their compassion and patience for each other, and the way they banter while their suet puddings do whatever it is a suet pudding is supposed to do. It’s about the utopic idea that if you mess up, there’s always another baker ready to hop over and help out—the notion that perhaps humanity isn’t doomed.

It’s possible that the same sick pleasure stoked by watching the contestants being screamed at also flares when I take the first spoonful of a scary-hot curry: I know it’s not a good idea and I’ll probably pay for it later, but I love it anyway.

I’m also obsessed with spice and heat, in a I-can’t-eat-food-without-searing-off-a-few-taste-buds kind of way. If a pepper comes with a warning, it’s in my mouth before I’ve read the thing. When I ask for hot sauce at a restaurant and they give me Frank’s, my opinion of the place takes a dip. If you’ll forgive me the fiery metaphor, the same can be said about my love of Hell’s Kitchen: I crave a show that gets the blood pumping and the emotions raging. It’s possible that the same sick pleasure stoked by watching the contestants being screamed at also flares when I take the first spoonful of a scary-hot curry: I know it’s not a good idea and I’ll probably pay for it later, but I love it anyway.The trait that GBBO and HK do share is common to all shows of their ilk: dramatic tension. In every episode, there is a scene where something goes horribly wrong and the viewer finds herself on the edge of her couch, waiting to see how the culinary catastrophe will play out. On Bake Off, this scene usually involves a little old lady who reminds every viewer of their own Nonna, Bubbie, Oma, or Bibi. It’s always the folks of the older generations that bring out my emotions, because I don’t want that Grandma to go home! The clock runs down, she pulls her Victoria sponge out of the oven—and it’s rubber! Tough as a snow tire. Grandma looks dismayed as the hosts rush over to give her support, and I’m right there with them. Clenching my mug of tea tighter than the coils of a perfectly executed Swiss roll, I wonder, is there time to whip together another batter? How will she ever decorate it before the time runs out? Sometimes, it all works out, and Grandma miraculously presents a perfectly iced, three-tiered delight to skeptical judge Paul Hollywood and cozy, gin-loving partner Mary Berry. Other times, things do not pan out and poor Grandma is eliminated with a tearful and fond farewell from her fellow contestants-turned-friends. If you are not a soppy mess after all of this, you have no heart.Of course, the comparative scene in Hell’s Kitchen plays out a little differently. I’m geared up for this one because the music has already indicated that the salmon is about to hit the kitchen fan. It’s the middle of dinner service, both teams are on a roll with appetizers and entrees flying out to the dining room. Suddenly the camera focuses on Chef Joe from Chicago over on the blue team. Shit is about to go down. Whatever Joe has done—overcooked all the meat, forgotten a table, dropped the lamb—it doesn’t matter. Ramsay has seen it and is on Joe like white on risotto. This is what I’ve been waiting for: the screaming, scarlet Gordon Ramsay’s use of every known obscenity to describe Joe’s cooking credentials, topped only by the look of utter humiliation on Joe’s face as he slinks back to his section. Is it schadenfreude, that feeling I get when I see this man being reduced to a mound of sludge by his idol? What does this say about me as a person? More importantly, is Ramsay going to put his fist through the chicken? Are the blue team going to be chucked out of the kitchen? My adrenaline has taken over, the heat is up, and I’m no longer responsible for my reactions.If reality TV was a snack bar, I guess I’d only feel satisfied after tasting the extreme ends of the table. The sugary world and sunny dispositions of Bake Off are one craving—but when I need that hit of heat, I head to Ramsay’s kitchen and its special brand of shame, where contestants are pushed to the brink of insanity and I can just wait for one to fall over the edge as he screams, “Beef Wellington!”