Dinner Impossible with Michael Symon Review

The new chef on Dinner Impossible, Michael Symon, makes the show fun to watch.  I couldn't stand the show with the former host, Richard Irvine, but Symon has made the show everything it was intended to be.  Symon is a good natured and fun and light-hearted.  He wants to succeed at the challenges and wants to make great food, but doesn't do it at the expense of treating everyone around him poorly.  He doesn't scream at anyone.  He doesn't blame difficultys that arise on others.  He makes the best of the situation.  It's fun to watch him cope with the challenges in creative ways with a light happy spirit.  When a challenge is hard, he doesn't get angry that it's hard.  Yes, it's hard to make every course of a meal for Hershey's employees contain Hershey's chocolate.  But, that's no cause to get angy and foul-tempered.  That's the premise of the show.  If it were a show where you were making food out of whatever ingredients you desire, with however much time you need to plan and prepare the food, with all the skilled help you might expect, under normal conditions, it wouldn't be called "Dinner Impossible".  I would be called "Dinner as Expected" or "Restaurant Kitchen", and a terribly boring show to watch.  Symon rolls with the punches and thinks outside of the box and does his best to create food to meet the requirements and the deadline.  He's like-able.  You want him to win.  And even when he doesn't, he's graceful.  He faces failure with grace and dignity and takes personal responsibility for it. 

The challenges are along the same lines as they always were.  Some of this seasons challenges have included making a Mother's Day picnic quickly for 300 with his mother's recipes as a base for the dishes and his mom and sister as his assistants, making dishes matched exactly to the colors of randomly chosen colors from Crayola Crayons for the employees of Crayola, making upscale food on the Boardwalk using only food available on the boardwalk, and making dinner for Charlie Daniels and his fan club based on the lyrics of the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".  While the challenges are far from realistic, they are exciting.  If you are looking for a cooking show to be realistic and relevant to what chefs normally do or are expected to do, Dinner Impossible isn't it.  It takes challenging food situations and ramps them up dramatically.  They inspire you to think and talk about what you'd make to meet the challenge.  "What would I make that's violet blue or red orange?"  ," How would I make a savory main course out of chocolate?", "How would I adapt my mom's lasagne so that it could be ready in an hour and eaten picnic style?" 

I thought when Richard Irvine was the chef that the show had a great premise that was ruined by his terrible personality.  Symon is everything that Irvine wasn't.  He is a good chef and a nice guy.  He takes the challenges and makes a fun, inspiring, extreme cooking show.