I Hate How Richard Blais Plays Next Level Chef, But I Also Respect It

We’re a few episodes into Season 5's gameplay portion of Next Level Chef, and I need to talk about Richard Blais. The former Top Chef winner and buzzy culinary star is, for the second consecutive season, playing with an aggressive and borderline reckless strategy that treats the individual players on his team more like chess pieces than human beings. As a viewer with some level of human empathy, I absolutely hate it, but as a seasoned reality show viewer and gamer, I can’t help but respect it.

Let’s do a quick recap of the rules to make sure we’re all on the same page before I start hating and praising Blais in equal measure. Each week, the chefs on Gordon Ramsay, Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais’ teams cook on one of the levels according to a specific theme. Whoever has the best dish amongst all the competitors wins immunity for themselves and their entire team. Afterwards, the captains of the two losing teams must pick a representative to head into a 1v1 cookoff in which the loser is sent packing. It's a lot of fun.

For the first few seasons of the show, all three judges essentially responded to their team losing in the exact same way. Whoever had the worst dish amongst their own players was sent into the elimination challenge to cook for their lives. The logic there is pretty straightforward. Whoever did the worst job amongst the eligible players needs to step up and fight for their life. After all, they put themselves in that position by making a bad dish. Last season, however, Blais changed things up and started taking a far more strategic approach.

Instead of picking his chef who did the worst and hope they survive the elimination challenge, he would often pick one of his better chefs to more proactively try to knock out another contestant. From a ruthlessly strategic standpoint, that’s a terrific idea, at least if your goal is getting as many people on your team as far into the game as possible. Your best chef is very likely to beat another team’s worst chef, especially in the earlier rounds, and by maintaining a fuller roster for longer, your team is more likely to get shared immunity since you have more total dishes in contention. There’s also the bonus of giving your best chefs more sudden death experience so that, in theory, they’re more ready for the later rounds where they’re going to have to cook for their lives regardless.

From a fairness standpoint, however, that’s an infuriating strategy, and it also completely ignores that the competition is only kinda sorta a team competition. Sure, you’re sorted into teams initially and someone else getting the top dish from your team does save you for that episode, but part way through the show, the teams are disbanded and everyone competes as individuals. The first goal of Next Level Chef is to advance past the audition rounds. Then the next goal is to advance past the team competition into the individual competition. Finally, the last goal is to win by yourself. You don’t get any prize money if someone else on your team wins.

Ultimately, that’s what seems so morally complicated about Blais’ strategy. These chefs are competing to win $250,000 and a culinary mentorship. Most of them will never get a chance to win this much money in a short period of time again. Richard Blais wants someone from his team to win, but if you’re an individual chef who made a great dish on a given episode, I can’t imagine it feels very fair to be thrown into a sudden death cookoff specifically because you’re more capable.

Maybe the added advantage of feeling that pressure before will pay off down the line. Maybe eliminating a good competitor benefits you by not having to face them later in the show, but I’m not really sure those benefits outweigh just being safe and advancing to the next round. Weird stuff happens, and while the best chef will probably win a heads up cook-off, it’s not so likely they’ll win 3 or 4 heads up cook-offs.

I respect Richard's strategy. It brings a lot of intensity to Next Level Chef and serves as a nice contrast to Nyesha and Gordon, which creates a clearer rooting interest. It also plays well into the rivalry between the hosts, which the show leans into. His ruthlessness is definitely a value add, but as someone who cares about fairness and wants his chefs to get what they earn, I hate the way he plays the game.

You can check out Next Level Chef, which is way more fun than you'd guess, on Thursday evenings on FOX. It's also available to stream on Hulu.