Well, at least Top Chef is. If you are a food junkie how can you not sit and watch the drama that unfolds on this hit cable show? Granted the action is in the kitchen and not so much outside of it. And that’s a good thing, because what’s not to like about competing chefs going at it under the clock. Sure the producers of the show make it interesting with setting up the game rules each week and it doesn’t hurt to take the chefs out of their comfort zone now and then. That is why talent alone may not get the chef to the top.

Granted the dishes these chefs create each week are not the kind of dishes the average home cook whips up at home. These chefs are talented. They may not have all studied in France or have gain wisdom from apprenticing in some other culinary country, but they do know their way around the kitchen. A great feature of the show that points this out is the opening quick fire challenge. Here chefs bust their butts to put out a dish in the shortest of time often making do with what they have to work with on foods that may not be familiar to them.

What the show is not is a how-to-cooking show. If you want that you’ll have to switch over to the Food Channel.