Summary
Doing so vicariously through these far-flung businesses might be the only chance we get to eat out for a while, but the trip still scarcely seems worth the effort.
This review of Restaurants on the Edge Season 2 is spoiler-free.
As tends to be the case, Restaurants on the Edge Season 2 isn’t really the second season of Netflix’s globetrotting business-salvaging reality series – it’s really the second half of the first season, which came out in late February this year. With that rapid turnaround explained, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that these seven new episodes, which range from Slovenia and Finland to Hawaii and Arizona, are pretty much exactly the same in terms of quality as the first lot. That makes my job easier, if a little redundant, but it won’t persuade anyone who was so-so on the trim first outing that this is a trip worth taking.
Since we’re all currently enjoying more free time than ever, though, Restaurants on the Edge Season 2 might well enjoy an uptick of eyeballs trained on its upscale dining locations, all of which are teetering on the brink of a stunning view but also financial ruin thanks in large part to crippling mismanagement. Enter, then, interior designer Karin Bohn, restauranteur Nick Liberato, and chef Dennis Prescott, as these three bring businesses back from the brink in a mash-up of Kitchen Nightmares and a pretty travelogue.
The highlights remain: The show’s full of stunning locales, laidback Canadian niceties, and that fuzzy feeling you get when experts manage to implausibly turn around a failing project. But the lowlights also remain: how implausible is it, really, when each episode follows basically the same essential structure and each one fails to really hone in on why the businesses went wrong in the first place. What seems like a selling point is really, especially across so many episodes, a bit of a drawback – these restaurants might be on the edge, but the show’s vibe is as smoothed-out as such things get.
