Alberto Chicote embarks on a new television adventure. A Nightmare in the Kitchen (filming of the ninetieth season has just started) and Are you going to eat it? (the third installment of his is pending release), the chef premieres this Thursday the program Battle of Restaurants, based on the same German format as the successful Joc de cartes presented by Marc Ribas on TV3. “The public that thinks this is going to be more of the same will see that it will not be like that. It's going to be much more,” warns the popular chef.
Battle of restaurants is Atresmedia's version of My restaurant rocks, which in addition to TV3 is also broadcast on more regional channels such as À Punt, ETB and Telemadrid. The mechanics are the same: four restaurants from the same city or area and specializing in the same local dish will compete to determine who is the best and win a prize of 10,000 euros. Over eight episodes, Battle of Restaurants will tour Cádiz (which opens the program tonight in search of the best bluefin tuna), Vigo, Menorca, Zaragoza, Gijón, Murcia, Toledo and Madrid.
As in Joc de cartes, the owners of each restaurant are the judges who evaluate their competition, but it is Chicote who has the decisive vote. The space, the cuisine, the food, the service and the price, together with the execution of the typical dish of the region, are the elements to be evaluated and scored. Although Chicote specifies: “Here there is no written rule on how you have to vote or what you have to take into account, therefore, each of the opponents who visit the rest's restaurants vote as they see fit. But, in the end, my vote ends up being decisive in deciding who is the winner of each of these battles.”
Chicote explains to La Vanguardia that the big difference between Battle of Restaurants and the programs of the regional chains is that “each of the episodes is very different when traveling throughout Spain because we have very different idiosyncrasies: it is not the same to make seafood from I see the tuna from Cádiz, the migas from Zaragoza or the stew from Madrid.”
“And then we put a lot of emphasis, and the name of the program itself indicates it, that this is not coming to hang out and have an experience. This is a battle and each restaurant has to defend that its option is the best of the quartet in each program,” warns the presenter, who denies that we go to a more relaxed Chicote.
“On paper it seems relatively simple since you are going to eat at restaurants that have a certain level and fame. It seems like you're going to have a good time until the knives start flying, figuratively, and things stop being so nice and become a real battle," she says.
When Atresmedia proposed this format, Chicote watched a couple of Joc de Cartes programs to get an idea of the format and mechanics, “because it is always better to see it explained to you,” but not to try to be similar. “Both the Zeppelin production company and the network made an effort to tell me that the usual Chicote had to appear on this program.”
