Channel 4's Come Dine With Me is a gourmet success.
I laughed when singer Jimmy Osmond stood at the door of lingerie model Caprice’s home and purred, “What a lovely home. It’s gorgeous.” What’s wrong with saying that? you might ask. Nothing. But it’s silly when Osmond knocks on the door, barely takes half-a-step inside and proclaims to fall in love with the host’s home — that he’s never seen before — in just two seconds. What’s funnier is, he uses it as an opening line to announce his arrival, not once, not twice, but on three different occasions when he’s invited to dinner at different places.
Of course, his face falls when he sees “a carcass of an animal” that the host, model Caprice, expects him to eat. “I can’t eat that,” he almost cries while the host glances at the dead fish, turns to Osmond and shrugs, “Why not?” It is, she reasons, a delicious baked sea bream lined with tomatoes and fresh salad leaves. Osmond continues to make a face but the host — and the fish — look so menacingly at him that the singer has no choice but to oblige.
While it’s all going well, Nancy, a TV announcer by profession and someone who had invited the three guests earlier to her place for “silly sausages”, as one of the diners proclaimed, is aghast at Caprice providing the guests generous doses of entertainment that, besides the fish carcass and a spinach and feta filo pastry, also include an evening with synchronised swimmers in Caprice’s underground pool. “They freaked me out,” mumbles Nancy when Caprice, who is clearly miffed, moans, “Why? They were good.”
Wow, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my outing with Come Dine With Me, a Channel 4 production that takes the television camera out of the studio and brings it right into the kitchens and dining tables of real people and — occasionally — celebrities. While the episode that features four celebrities, including Nancy, Osmond, Caprice and hairstylist Jimmy, is an old one, there are other episodes of the show that determine just why food gives people the ultimate high. Started in 2005, Come Dine With Me continues to attract enormous attention not only for the £1,000 prize money but for its genuine offering of delicious food for connoisseurs. So, even as Jimmy offers his fare of spaghetti vongole, a salted sea bass and a dessert that Osmond calls “meringue on steroids”, I find it fascinating to discover how people — not just professional chefs — go to such extreme, and delicious, heights to research and rediscover the art of cooking.
That’s the premise of Come Dine With Me, to enjoy cooking a complex meal where a host serves three complete strangers his/her dishes, accepts criticism and subsequently defends the exhaustive preparation that should, according to the rules of the show, include a starter, main course and dessert. It also encapsulates the journey of four people and brings them together for a culinary experience, based on which the hosts gives them points. Not a bland show, its most recent episode took an ugly turn when one of the participant’s muntjac medallions with lemongrass risotto, a complex recipe for which he personally hunted a deer, was called “food for maggots” by another guest.
The show, like previous years, has taken UK television by storm this year. Schools are hosting shows centered around the programme, fans are hosting their own Come Dine With Me nights, online fan clubs have registered a surge in memberships, special “CDWM” blogs are doing the rounds, the Independent recently called the likes of Nigella, Jamie and Gordon “so last year”, and Dave Lamb’s riveting commentary on the show has already been declared a winner.
Never mind olive oil ice-cream, finding hair in the food — as many on the show have — kitchen sinks collapsing and dining chairs falling apart, the show, with its innumerable converts, reveals that food has — and continues to be — a winner.
