Three Meals a Day: Sea Ranch (2017)

This outdoor variety show was entertaining mainly because of the cooking element. Lee Seo Jin and Eric Mun are quite adept at cooking outdoors and making a variety of dishes-chicken, fish, octopus, pizza, pasta, soups, breads. I was amazed at what they were able to put together over a wood fire and in a brick oven. They made side dishes and sauces on the fly out of what they had on hand or what was in the garden. This is not a show to watch when you are hungry.

Yoon Gyun Sang was cute as the mostly clueless helper. I enjoyed the different guests they had visit. Some were better in the "kitchen" than others.

Now to what didn't work as well for me. I thought the episodes were too long. An hour would have been enough time for me. There was an awful lot of filler. If I never see someone scooping up goat dung again it will be too soon. A lot of time was spent taking care of the goats, traveling, watching the cats frolic, and watching the guys fishing or playing out on the water. There were other times when practical jokes went on for nearly 20 minutes. There were also episodes where there wasn't any scintillating conversation taking place, just a lot of standing or sitting around with little conversation. These guys have been in the business for awhile and must have some interesting stories to tell. I wish they had opened up more and told us some. There was one conversation with Lee Jong Suk that that I thought was revealing but those moments were brief. If it wasn't for the pop-ups this show might not have been as entertaining. I could have also used less dirty bare feet close-ups when someone was preparing food on the floor.

Had it not been for all the filler moments that completely lost my attention I would have rated this variety show an 8.0 or 8.5 The cooking aspect of this show inspires me to look at food and flavor combinations in a new way. Spoiler! Although for a Pizza Margherita I'm still putting the basil on as it comes out of the oven so that the basil doesn't scorch like theirs did by putting it on before baking.

I can definitely recommend this show for the cooking scenes, they were very interesting. And if you like to watch goats doing goat things or cats trying to escape their room this may be just the ticket for you.

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