World Chocolate Championship

[Darienne]

Tuesday, December, 22, 2009 at 01:00 AM ET on TLC

World Chocolate Championship

19 of the best chocolatiers in the world assemble in Paris to compete for the prestigious title of World Chocolate Master. These elite pastry chefs must use all their skills, creativity and cunning to impress judges in five mouthwatering categories.

Might be fun to watch

[cmflick]

Repeats Thursday, Dec. 24 at 9PM on TLC and Friday, Dec. 25 at 12AM on TLC for those of you like me that missed it last night.

[Darienne]

No. No. My information is that it is TONIGHT, December 22nd. But you could check again with TLC.

Oh...perhaps my info is for Canada?

Edited December 22, 2009 by Darienne (log)

[cmflick]

It was on at 1AM this morning in the US.

[John DePaula]

World Chocolate Championship on TLC

[emmalish]

Oooh, thanks Darienne. I'm out tonight but I'll swing home quickly and see if I can set my recorder in time.

[CKatCook]

I saw this last night. What beautiful work!! Amazing!

[Darienne]

I saw this last night. What beautiful work!! Amazing!

CKatCook was correct in that the work was beautiful. However that having been said, the program was dreadful...not worth watching at all. Just called friend Barbara who also saw it and she agreed.

You can't make a one hour meaningful program about 19 different chocolate chefs from 19 different countries with 19 different judges and several commentators, including Andrew Shotts (who did give it his best shot). Not to mention that each competitor had to make four different kinds of creations. The camera zipped everywhere, staying for only one or two seconds on each competitor or piece. You couldn't even tell what you were looking at some of the time. There was way too much useless chit chat with certain chefs...notably the one from Mexico and the one from Germany. Heck, the chef from the USA was French. Not sort of French, real French.

There was nothing about most of the chefs and their work at all. No mention of the Russians or Spaniards. The Canadian chef got three seconds worth.

So, if you missed it...you missed basically NOTHING!. So there. IMHO.

[Holly Moore]

Frustrating editing. The chocolate work was incredible, but the extremely rapid cuts made it impossible to savor the individual pieces.

[confiseur]

I attended the competition and it was a great show...terrifically high standard all round...

As people have commented previously ( and there where also more than a few eyebrows raised at the event) why on earth was the US representative French?

I realise that foreign competitors can take part in the trial events, but the representative chosen to represent the country should be the first placed national of that country...as in atheletics or swimming for example...I thought it was very humiliating for the US to have a Frenchman representing them as I am sure there is a great deal of talent in the states..IMHO much better to come last in such an event with your own representative than win with a hired-gun from abroad..

[Darienne]

I attended the competition and it was a great show...terrifically high standard all round...

Dear Confiseur,

I am so glad that you wrote. I had the feeling that the standards and the pieces must have been amazing and enchanting.

Please don't watch the show...you will be so disappointed. Rather like watching the movie after reading a book you loved: Chocolat, for one.

How lucky for you that you could attend.

[emmalish]

I've just gotten around to watching the show now. Very disappointing. I wish this had been covered by Food Network – for all their faults, I would hope they would have paid more attention to the actual food.

We really don't get to see much of anything. They skim over everything, poke their cameras into the kitchens occasionally to show us completely random snippets of the preparation, they skim past the descriptions of what the different competitors present, and then quickly list the winners of each segment.

I'm watching this show because I'm interested in the competition – I understand we can't see everything, but at least show us all the finished chocolates. I'd like to see more of the techniques, and I'd like to see some of the judges' comments.

Pfft. Off to look it up online instead...

[Darienne]

I've just gotten around to watching the show now. Very disappointing. I wish this had been covered by Food Network – for all their faults, I would hope they would have paid more attention to the actual food.

We really don't get to see much of anything. They skim over everything, poke their cameras into the kitchens occasionally to show us completely random snippets of the preparation, they skim past the descriptions of what the different competitors present, and then quickly list the winners of each segment.

I'm watching this show because I'm interested in the competition – I understand we can't see everything, but at least show us all the finished chocolates. I'd like to see more of the techniques, and I'd like to see some of the judges' comments.

Pfft. Off to look it up online instead...

Dear Emmalish, you said everything I thought and when I think of how much trouble we actually went to to watch this program and what a major disappointment it was... I can't believe that the producers thought that this was a good production!

[Kajikit]

I just wanted to drool over all the beautiful chocolate creations... but they hardly showed ANYTHING! It really was a total waste of an hour.