You must not be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and, above all, be endowed with a formidable ability to adapt to make your place in the culinary competition. Heads of wood.
Judge-mentor Martin Picard and host Mathieu Baron return to service for the second season, which lands on the Vrai platform on Tuesday.
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The two men are surrounded by a new cohort of chefs ready to deal with the elements of nature, for 15 days, to the rhythm of multiple challenges in an isolated place at the Kenauk Nature Outfitter in the Outaouais. Cold, humidity, rain, hunger, you name it, the conditions mean that candidates can miss both their cozy bed and their fully equipped professional kitchen.
“Cooking on the fire as they do is a bit like learning to cook again, it’s like a new job,” Martin Picard told QMI Agency. For him, the worst trap is to “close in on oneself”.
“You have to open the valves. You’re leaving vulnerable in there, it’s the same way you find benchmarks to move forward. You have to accept the comments of the people around you, otherwise you’re going into a wall, ”continued the judge-mentor.
Each chef has his own outdoor station to take on the culinary challenges, and the goal remains, as in any program of the genre, to eliminate the participants in turn.
Chefs have few ingredients on hand – they must constantly take what nature gives them – so Martin Picard observed that difficulties inspire them to surpass themselves. “It’s surprising how in misery you can become creative,” he slipped, he who embarked on a blind tasting during the first episode.
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For this second season, we grant privileges to candidates following events and we wanted there to be more twists and turns, explained Mathieu Baron. There are alliances and strategies to be deployed to move forward. It starts badly for two chiefs, who are the last to reach the camp by canoe. They are eliminated before they even light their fire.
Emotions are quickly on edge. “You wash in cold water, you sleep in a tent, you eat oatmeal, your clothes are always damp, the stress, the hardships, the fatigue, the impatience… at some point, it accumulates,” said Mathieu Baron, who will be seen in September in the new daily “Indéfendable” on TVA.
And Martin Picard frankly says what he thinks. “It’s never to hurt, on the contrary. I want to accompany you and I tell you what I think of your dish. It’s arbitrary, I could be wrong, but based on what I know and my experiences, I tell you what I think and you do what you want with it.
This year, the candidates are aged 24 to 49. Quebecers and First Nations benefit from getting to know each other, the competition welcomes two women who will share their culture, Wapokunie Riel-Lachapelle, 38, who is Métis and chef and owner of the Nikosi Bistro Pub, in Wakefield, in Outaouais, then Krystle Rosalie Regis, 35, an Innu from Maliotenam, on the North Shore, who is the chef of the Pourvoirie Nipissis.
“It brings diversity, and that’s what’s nice, because they have different ways of doing things and if you express it, everyone around becomes aware of it,” said Martin Picard.
Produced by Avanti-Toast, in collaboration with Quebecor Content, the second season of Heads of wood is offered on Vrai with two new episodes every week until the grand finale on May 3. The grand prize is $25,000. Note that the first season of Heads of wood ends this Tuesday, at 9 p.m., on TVA. The next day, at the same time, the curious will have access behind the scenes of the production.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca