TV Review: ‘Love Bites With Joey’
A recent article in Open magazine says that Joey Matthew could be “India’s answer to TV celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. Or Julia Child”. After watching the first episode of Matthew’s cooking show, Love Bites With Joey, on NDTV Good Times this Monday, June 11, we’re not sure who should feel more insulted. Lawson, perhaps, because Matthew, a former model with a beady-eyed stare, occasionally digs into Lawson’s bag of tricks, dipping and licking for the camera. Or maybe Child, because the comparison is so horrifically mismatched—an iconic figure in culinary history versus a newbie cook with dubious skills—that we’re apt to believe that Child’s heirs should sue.
Matthew’s sexiness is clearly her shtick, but whereas with Lawson that is just icing on a very substantial cake of skills, for Matthew it’s just about all she’s got. Most of her half-hour show is a superficial amalgam of pouty directives, inane factoids, and an inexplicable desire to make food “glamourous”. There’s no chopping, filleting, grabbing and stirring here, no hint at rigorous process, of the sensual stir of something in a pot—even her half-hearted claim that “it’s no fun without getting a bit dirty” is undercut by Matthew so gingerly handling the food that you’d think she was one lick away from contracting Salmonella. It’s not all Matthew’s fault however; the camera work is exceptionally bad, with everything bathed in a yellow-y light that makes the food—a sad-looking Pavolva and a watery pumpkin soup, in the case of the first episode—appear as insipidly dull as the commentary. Do what we ought to have done instead: go onto Youtube.com and watch the fetching Rachel Khoo, also billed but deservedly so, as the new Nigella.
Love Bites With Joey airs every Monday and Tuesday at 10pm on NDTV Good Times.
Tags: Joey Matthew, Love Bites With Joey, NDTV Good Times, Television, TVComments (11)
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Wateve it is , she is picking up the show.. N she so sweet you know…..:)
Love your way of cooking, keep it up. I am looking for veg continental and brunches.
Comon….be original at least for once…..fake guests…show off… we see the same thing in Master chef Australia ..then why to repeat all stuff again over here ???show some original Indian food and people who actually understand the food and culture..by showing asparagus and backon etc etc wont glorify your show..
dont know why the producers picked her, she cant cook for nuts….. puts in the meat in hot pan n then splashes oil on it….oh common!!! any half decent cook worth his/her salt knows to bring oil to the right temp for perfect browning. And secondly if your going to have soo many closeups on your face. Go visit a dentist. pseudo nigella. letdown
I watched the first episode and was horrified. Watched the second one hoping it gets better, but no. Her vocabulary is no better than that of a pre-schooler. In fact, she mis-pronounces half the ingredients or mis-pronounces the same word in different ways in a single episode. I am a big fan of cooking shows, but this one is really bad. HOMP makes street food look more appetizing than what Ms Matthews cooks up. The whole show is obsessively sexed-up without any real cooking.
Love Bites with Joey – leaves a lot to be desired
1. Get a host who smiles and the audience can relate to
2. Erase Blender Sounds – seriously!
3. Food is all about presentation and this one was shoddy – kids can do a better job
4. Camera work on the food needs a lot to desired – it doesn’t make it look good – hold the attention. Get someone with food photography experience.
5. Once again to make this show a success – watch and learn from Nigella’s Kitchen, Donna Hayes and Master Chef Australia. Even Master Chef India did a better job.
Another addition to Good Times’ gallery of bad chef/ presenters- Chib, Bal, and the lady with the mole on her chin ( I forget her name)- the domestic Baba Yaga, I used to call her. Maybe they all can cook, I don’t know, never having eaten their food, but presenting good TV? Nuh- uh.
Absolutely rubbish. May be an unintended comedy.
I watched this show and squirmed my way through it, I had to watch it to the end but only out of a morbid sense of curiosity!
The whole point of Nigella’s flirt is that it is tongue in cheek, she knows you know, and therefore quite amusing. And as you rightly said, this is just one part of her act. Whatever else Joey pulled out of Ms. Lawson’s bag, and it seemed that she groped in there a while, unfortunately this was not one of the tricks . Why do we have such a low standard of cook show presenters? From Vicky Ratnani to Aditya Bal, Ritu Dalmia and now Joey! Such rubbish!!
You can tell the show will be awful simply by watching the promos. So wannabe.
You ought to check out a girl called Ravinder Bhogal, writer of book called ” Cook in Boots”, a British Sikh. She not has the skills of a chef but presents herself perfactly. India needs talent like hers.