A Look at SBS' New Competitive Cooking Series, The Chef's Line

SBS has launched their newest cooking program, The Chef's Line, employing a competition format that gives an inside look at how commercial kitchens really operate. The nightly program follows four amateur cooks and four professional chefs over the course of a week as they battle it out to prove who does it best.

Every week, the show features four chefs from a particular restaurant, ranging from the apprentices and the chef de parties, to the sous chef and the head honcho. Each night, the contestants go head to head with one member of the chef's line, and the contestant with the least impressive dish is graciously shown the door. On Thursday nights, the last amateur standing unleashes their skills against the head chef. The dishes are judged blindly by Australian food icons Dan Hong, Mark Olive, and Melissa Leong, who take turns each night to either taste and decide the winner, or get about the kitchen, having a chat with the competitors. The week culminates with program host Maeve O'Meara heading to the restaurant in the spotlight for a behind-the-scenes peak at their chef's line in action.

It's a pretty interesting twist on something viewers have seen plenty of lately — aka the contemporary cooking competition — as there's less emphasis placed on drama and things going wrong. Instead, The Chef's Line has the kind of vibe you'd expect when a few mates cook up some wicked food in the kitchen. With the relatively small number of contestants getting a complete refresh each week, there's no time to develop a narrative arc of intrigue and cutthroat competition, so the show relies on simply showing some home cooks making rad dishes while hanging out with chefs who make the same dishes for a living. Which, really, is what a cooking show is all about: good food and good people make for good watching.

With a multicultural focus, the program brings a new cuisine to the fore every week, ensuring a swathe of various challenges as contestants aim for authentic, global dishes. Week one ran from April 3, championed Vietnamese cuisine, and took its chef's line from the guys behind Dandelion in Melbourne, as led by Geoff Lindsay. "It's a really wonderful way to celebrate diversity," said the program's creator, Chris Culvenor, calling the unique format a "celebration of the diversity of Australian food culture."

The Chef's Line airs on weeknights on SBS at 6pm. If you're keen on the great dishes whipped up on the show, recipes will be made available from sbs.com.au/thechefsline.