Chef School is a reality television

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

 series which airs on Food Network Canada

Food Network Canada

Food Network is a Canadian English language Category A specialty channel with programming related to food, cooking, cuisine, and the food industry. Food Network is a joint venture between Shaw Media, Corus Entertainment, and Scripps Networks Interactive....

. It is a 26-part docu-soap that follows the experiences of 12 students at the Stratford

Stratford, Ontario

Stratford is a city on the Avon River in Perth County in southwestern Ontario, Canada with a population of 32,000.When the area was first settled by Europeans in 1832, the townsite and the river were named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is the seat of Perth County. Stratford was...

 Chef School, one of Canada's most prestigious culinary schools.

The show airs in Canada and Hong Kong.

Top chefs from restaurants in Toronto, Vancouver and New York judge and critique the students' cooking.

Series development

Crystal Asher, a second-year student at the school, approached Red Apple Entertainment president Rachel Low with the idea. Early in the program's development, the idea of a formal competition was ruled out, as the creators expected there would already be sufficient dramatic elements. For the first season, the producers chose 12 of 36 enrolees in the school to follow. 1,000 hours of footage were edited down to the 13 half-hour episodes of the series' first season. Of the twelve students, only nine returned for the second season. One student, Danielle, did not graduate.

Reception

At the time of the series debut, John Doyle

John Doyle (critic)

John Doyle is one of the two television critics with Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper. Doyle also covers major football events for the paper....

 of The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

wrote, "It's a charming series, much less noisy and more astute than some of the higher-profile cooking-school shows."

The 12 students

• Alex Landheer, the group's "troublemaker".
• Allison Jones, who is a former pastry chef.
• Andrew Coristine, who chose chef school over entering a PhD program in physics.
• Ben Sachse, Swiss-Canadian, studied Anthropology before pursuing a career in cooking.
• Danielle Stahlke, a former amateur hockey player.
• Dave Lingard, who has the most prior restaurant experience of the 12.
• Joyce Singh, a Stratford native.
• Kelsey Murray, the youngest of the group.
• Matthew Duffy, with a B.Comm in Hotel and Food Administration
• Mike Brennan, who is a known party animal.
• Richard Francis, who is putting his life back on track after drug-and-alcohol rehab.
• Tim Besserer, the oldest and most overlooked member of the group.

External links

• Chef School on Food Network Canada
  Food Network Canada
  Food Network is a Canadian English language Category A specialty channel with programming related to food, cooking, cuisine, and the food industry. Food Network is a joint venture between Shaw Media, Corus Entertainment, and Scripps Networks Interactive....