Summary
Apart from the cool concept, this food reality series is like all the others.
Netflix’s Best Leftovers Ever! season 1 was released on the streaming service on December 30, 2020.
As soon as I saw the premise of Netflix’s Best Leftovers Ever! I was fondly reminded of when someone asked me if there was any way of making leftover KFC fried chicken into a healthy meal. Of course, it makes me chuckle the thought of making saturated chicken into a low cal meal, but Netflix has clearly seen a gap in the reality cooking market, and they have taken advantage, well and truly.
It’s a competition. Budding chefs compete against each other to make the best meal from leftovers, and the winner wins a whopping $10,000. That’s quite a generous prize for a couple of rounds, mashing together leftovers for the judges. So there’s a clear incentive for the chefs to make high-end plates.
Apart from the cool concept, this food reality series is like all the others; the judges are cheesy, some of the contestants are cheesy, and the route to victory is the same — the best dish wins. We appear to be lowering our standards in these competitions; next up, we’ll be asking aspiring chefs to dig in bins behind restaurants and making a Michelin-star dish — I don’t make the rules I’m afraid. In fact, I’d actually watch that.
But I cannot deny, this is interesting. One of my main pet peeves is food waste, so I spend most weeks ensuring my dinner leftovers are also lunch. There’s nothing as heartbreaking as throwing away items from a fridge or a couple of boxes from last night’s takeaway. Maybe Best Leftovers Ever! season 1 will inspire cooking enthusiasts who always buy too many ingredients, or order too much KFC from Deliveroo.
