Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Cook At All Costs’ On Netflix, Where Home Cooks Make Meals From Ingredients They Bid On

In each episode of Cook At All Costs, three home cooks get a $25,000 bank that they use to bid for different sets of ingredients. In the first round, they’re asked to bid on three boxes: The highest bidder gets the “Spend” box, which has high-end ingredients. The lowest bidder gets the “Save” box, which has basic ingredients found in an average supermarket. The one in the middle gets the “Surprise” box, which has a surprise ingredient.

COOK AT ALL COSTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Three home cooks walk into a brightly lit cooking studio. Host Jordan Andino comes in and greets them, with a large conveyor-belt contraption between him and the cooks.

The Gist: All three boxes are prepared by the guest judge, who will also taste the meals created by the cooks. In episode 1, the guest judge is Esther Choi, and while the first round is going on, she prepares and sends out “upgrade” ingredients that the cooks bid on while making their dishes. For instance, she sends out filet mignon wrapped in bacon, which Jordan thought would get snapped up by the cook who got a beef heart in his “Surprise” box.

The winner of the first round has an advantage in the second round; that person assigns boxes to the other contestants, which are all at fixed — and higher! — prices. The second round is themed; in the first episode, the cooks are charged with making an Asian dish from their ingredient set. Again, the guest judge prepares and sends upgrade ingredients down “the line,” this time in the form of “kits” with multiple ingredients. Choi also sends out her homemade “Chili Soil” (sauce and oil) that can add some oomph to the winner of the auction for it.

The winner of the second round goes home with whatever money remains in his or her bank. Will people spend wisely and make something great out of “plain” ingredients or will people go for it and get the best stuff, even if that means they go home with less?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Chopped mixed with Storage Wars.

Our Take: Cook At All Costs suffers more from fixable structural problems than the actual format of the show. We thought that the bidding would distract from the cooking part of the contest, but in reality it breaks up the monotony that we usually see during the cooking phase of shows like this. People running around, boiling things, frying things, chatting with each other and the host… That’s all old hat by now. But pushing buttons while you’re working against time in order to win an auction for a key ingredient? Now that’s something new.

Our issue with the show is the presence of the guest judge, who is stuck in another room, preparing the upgrades to send out on the line. One of the things we do like about shows like these is when the host and judge interact with the cooks and react to how they’re doing. Again, it’s a way to break up what can get monotonous. But with Choi unseen in the other room, not interacting with the cooks until she comes out after the second round, that back-and-forth is gone. She even tastes the dishes in the other room.

It gives the proceedings a cold and mercenary feel that other cooking contests don’t have. We don’t have a solution that would have the guest judge be more interactive with the contestants, but if the show gets a second season, it’s something the producers should consider.

Sex and Skin: Food porn shots, of course. The contestants are actually shown plating 3 servings even though there’s only one judge, mainly because at least one serving has to be for the cameras.

Parting Shot: After the winner is declared, the three contestants, the guest judge and Andino all gather in the middle of the studio.

Sleeper Star: The personalities of the contestants need to carry the episode, and they do in the first episode. We were especially enamored with Nick, who kept grabbing the “plain” stuff based on the fact that he has to create meals his picky kids would eat, using what he has in the house.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Ryan arrogantly said he had “Michelin-star talent,” we knew that he wouldn’t win. That’s just the way things go on cooking competition shows.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We like the auction factor in Cook At All Costs, which makes it feel a bit different than other cooking competition shows. We wish there was a bit more interaction between cooks and the guest judge, though.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.