Keep the Fried Chicken but Go Back to the Chili con Queso Dip and the Sliders.

Although generally pleasant with a nice beach location in Dunedin Florida, this was just not up to snuff. All of the plot points were utterly predictable from the romance to her career decision to the fate of her parents’ restaurant. I won’t review the plot because you know it even if you haven’t seen this particular version. I will just say: Unfulfilled TV chef,  Parents’ selling their small town restaurant, Memories of Granny, Looming decision over taking $$$$ vs. Creative Dream, and hometown old boyfriend living his best life. Throw in a black best friend/agent, a token gay couple, a festival, a cooking contest, a mean-girl rival, kitchen shenanigans, cooking montages, and lots of misunderstandings due to miscommunications. I was suspicious of this movie when it premiered on a Monday instead of the usual Saturday. Sadly, my suspicions were confirmed.

I am not an Erin Cahill fan, though I can’t give you a good reason. No matter her role, I always feel kind of stabby at her at some point. She is very popular so it’s all on me. I did like the guy who played her farmer love interest though (yes, farmer not former, He’s a farmer and he wasn’t former well before the first hour.) The guy who played her father was the bad guy in the Karate Kid and I couldn’t get over that. “Yes, Sensei.” The plot centers around Taylor (Erin Cahill) being offered millions of dollars to take her popular cooking show to primetime, but she doesn’t like the show’s “Quick and Easy” theme because she wants to be a real chef and do her own thing. I mention this only because after lots of angst, she actually decides to take the money! I was very pleasantly surprised. Throughout all of the waffleing (pun intended), I was like “Take the generational money now, girl, you can be a great chef later!” With the fame and the dough (pun intended), the sky’s the limit! But get this. Her agent/best friend doesn’t send in the contracts! Contracts that would make her close to a million dollars on the deal herself! For no other reason than it “felt off” plus a mysterious phone call from the formerly benign farmer boyfriend behind Taylor’s back. Words fail at the utter gall of the agent and all of the red flags being waved by the boyfriend.

Well of course, no harm done, she ends up doing another cooking show filmed in the family restaurant that she now owns and being all creative with her food. Oh, and she won the cooking contest at the festival albeit with two horrible-sounding creations featuring fried chicken, blueberry syrup, waffles, ice cream, donuts with blue icing, bacon, and something that looked like, I swear, jalapeños.