A couple of weeks ago Food Network’s “ Chef Wanted ” series featured the selection of a chef at Raleigh restaurant Coquette. The show’s framework features four chefs applying for the Executive Chef position at the featured restaurant. The contestants prepare a course, and one is eliminated. The process is repeated, and the two finalists each have the opportunity to run the restaurant’s dinner service to show their mettle. At the end of the show, one contestant gets their “dream job”, and the three losers ride off in the sunset seeking another opportunity elsewhere. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?…But it doesn’t.

(spoiler alert) As with every episode of “Chef Wanted”, both Coquette finalists find themselves “in the weeds”, lagging behind in the dinner service. Customers waited inordinately long for items as simple as salad. Contestant Michael Bryant is challenged by the show’s host, Chef Anne Burrell, because he is dying in the salad and soup course. The show’s typical storminess reaches a record high, however, with the other finalist, Pippa Calland. Her success begins to waver with the creation her duck-heavy menu. Not only does Pippa lag behind in the show’s typical fashion, one of her dishes becomes a jar of duck fat mixed with a scant amount of duck meat by the time it is served. The show portrays the service to be such a disaster that owners Stacey and Kevin Jennings cancel the service and disqualify the finalist.

As it turns out, the winning chef for this episode filmed in January was unable to relocate to Raleigh and did not take the job at Coquette. According to the restaurant’s website, the Executive Chef remains Beth LittleJohn. Too, Andrea Weigl’s column in the News and Observer says that the restaurant was never intending to move Chef LittleJohn and place the show’s winner at Coquette, but rather place him somewhere in their Urban Food Group restaurant family.

Curious, as well, is the reaction of the embattled contestants on this show. Kitchen staff members, the show host, and the restaurant owners literally scream and belittle the contestants, creating an embarrassing situation. Yet the contestants, especially the embattled Pippa, show a disturbing amount of poise not only during the service, but also in the exit interviews (that were presumably filmed after the belittling display). Many in Raleigh know about the contrived confrontation that was portrayed on the Ludo Bites episode filmed in Raleigh, and the behavior of everyone on “Chef Wanted” makes me even more suspicious about the honesty of this show, too.

It’s all entertainment, right? Obviously we don’t patronize expensive restaurants for sustenance alone, so the dining experience in America has always been a form of entertainment. Food Network’s mission of high brow instruction seems ever-distant as the network has opted for drama instead. It isn’t enough to show a straightforward interview process, we apparently have to have fireworks in every episode.

Some say the show is good advertising for the restaurant, right? Who doesn’t get excited to see a beautiful production on national TV from a setting we know and love just a few blocks away, right? I’m not so sure. Were Todd English’s sneers at the imbeciles applying to work for him good for Olives? Is it good for Urban Food Group when Raleigh residents see one of the owners pounding her fist on a countertop, screaming at the top of her lungs like a 4 year old? Is the image of the restaurant’s presumed chef smoking in the service area the image that will bring in more business?

I’ve been to dental school and I’ve spent enough time around culinary education to know that the education process in many institutions is the antithesis of “collegial”. Tempers may flare in the real world, too, however I have a hard time believing that interviewers act this way with mere applicants. If anything, this is the phase where the interviewers display an artificial amount of respect to their potential employees.

It isn’t entertaining to watch “reality” shows like that seem so scripted and send a bevy of unfortunate messages to the viewer. The intellectual dishonesty of shows like “Chef Wanted” aren’t improving the state of American cooking and are putting a once-loved cable channel into the weeds.