Netflix’s Cannibal-Themed Cooking Competition Has Heart and Guts

Queue It or Screw It: Netflix’s ‘Ultimate American Chowdown’

Photo by Markus Spiske

In the last few years, Netflix has gone “whole hog” into the cooking competition craze. With series like The Scottish Sugar Shakedown, Tania’s Twisted Tapas Tournament, Southern Stu’s Stew Skirmish, and that show’s all-star edition, Stew Skirmish: All-Stews, the streaming service has become the #1 home for TV culinary competitions.

The Ultimate American Chowdown is their newest addition to this growing catalog.

The title is — perhaps deliberately — vague.

First Impressions

Judged and hosted by “nontraditional meat” chef Cornelia St. Connelly-Smythe and “alternative food guru” Johaan Vandoerplatzengaag, The Ultimate American Chowdown features home chefs who specialize in alternative food battling it out for a quarter-million dollar prize.

The raison d’être of Chowdown appears to be “waste not, want not.” A dozen home cooks from all across America are tasked with the daunting challenge of using animal parts as far afield as the liver, pancreas, and colon that other cooks might scoff — or gag — at.

Our Take

The first episode begins in media res, with a dozen chefs in an underground, warehouse-sized kitchen full of stainless steel, huge meat freezers, and enough buzzsaws and scalpels to make a coroner jealous. They have just begun a frantic three-hour challenge.

Each cycle features a challenge where the players are asked to pair different cuts of meat with different side dishes. Vandoerplatzengaag and St. Connelly-Smythe often throw curve balls mid-challenge, asking the chefs to improvise an additional component to their final dish. For example, in the first episode, the hosts announce halfway through the allotted three hours that they want the chefs to make a milk-based dessert. Once the chefs plate their dishes, they are critiqued by the judges, who then milk the drama for all its worth as they rank the chefs’ dishes. The last-place finisher is given the chop.

Our twelve contestants represent a cross-section of America. They come from places as far-flung as Moosebreath…