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By far the worst cooking series ever created.

I love cooking shows.  I’ll watch pretty much any cooking series and it’s not often I come across one that I don’t care for and even fewer I outright hate.  Pressure Cooker makes that rare classification of cooking series that I outright hate.  The series falls into the No Reservations area where you put a chef in a different country and let them explore.  The catch here is Chef Ralph Pagano is blindfolded and dropped off in a different country where he has three days to raise his airfare home or else he has to eat a native dish that is built up as vile.  One episode it’s brains and butter or a kind of large guinea pig or some kind of grub and on and on it goes.  None of the penalties are that much of a sacrifice. 

Each episode, Chef Ralph runs from place to place trying to earn money doing different things.  Let’s breakdown the Italy episode, he arrives in Tuscany, the town in the off season so everything is closed.  Ralph gets a job gathering truffles, from there he goes on the road where he sucks at making pizza at a gas station, next it’s off to a coffee shop where he sucks at being a barista and finally, he ends up at a farmers market where he cons a woman into allowing him to cook for her.  There are two things working against Pressure Cook.  First, we never really see Chef Ralph cook anything or that he really has any skills as a cook, secondly, he has very little charisma on screen. The camera just doesn’t like this man and that’s a very bad thing when he’s the host. 

Even worse, Pressure Cook doesn’t showcase any of the exotic locations he visits.  From Mexico, Iceland, Belize, China, South Africa and other locations, there are lots of great chances to see the world but we have no idea where he is or any context for his antics.  The series does a horrible job filling in the holes making us care or giving us any feel for the local culture.  It’s just a pushy American a-hole forcing his way into situations that feel very scripted.  MOJO network calls this a “hit series” but marketing hyperbole aside, I can’t imagine anyone enjoy this series.  It fails as a cooking series.  It fails as a contest.  It fails as a distraction until something better comes on.  The pressure may be on Chef Ralph but it should be on the producers to make Pressure Cook worth watching if it makes it to season two.

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