Convicts take over kitchen in Canuck reality show

By Etan Vlessing, Reuters, June 16, 2009

Canadian broadcaster Citytv is putting ex-cons with no culinary skills to
work in a classy Toronto restaurant for Conviction Kitchen, a new reality
series set to premiere in the fall.

Sure, TV chef Jamie Oliver trained disadvantaged youths to staff his
Fifteen restaurant franchise. But the Canadian series has a film crew
follow local celebrity chef Marc Thuet and his wife and co-restaurant
owner Biana Zorich as they whittle down 84 former bank robbers, thieves
and petty offenders to seven waiters and six cooks. The finalists then
endure a three-week culinary boot camp before Conviction Kitchen opens
its doors to ordinary restaurant patrons.

Thuet said the eight-part series is no media stunt to launch a new
business.

Instead, he said, Conviction Kitchen provides first-class food and second
chances for reformed criminals newly sprung from jail.

"This (TV show) will move viewers, and prove you can hire these people.
They are grabbing this second chance and turning round their lives," he
said.

Dramatic tension? The original group of 13 trainees is now down to 10
after one ex-con threatened Zorich when he was told to cut his hair.

Another trainee, like many an ex-addict, left after he was found shooting
up in the back of the kitchen.

Thuet, a former drug and alcohol abuser now four years sober, connects on
camera with ex-cons he wants to empower as chef trainees while they fight
the temptation to return to destructive habits.

"This is probably the most emotional show we've ever made," said Simon
Lloyd, president of Toronto indie producer Cineflex Prods. "You've got
someone taking heroin, who can't stay in the restaurant because he can't
be around recovering addicts."

Lloyd added that he and Thuet, a French-born chef who originally trained
at the Dorchester in London, originally envisioned a TV show where they
turned a prison kitchen crew into trained restaurant chefs just before
they are released.

But after they failed to secure the co-operation of Canadian prison
authorities, Thuet and Zorich decided to close and relaunch one of their
Toronto restaurants, Bite Me!, as an Italian restaurant.

Conviction Kitchen differs from most reality TV series in that no one is
voted off the show at the end of each episode. But Thuet and Zorich don't
disguise their challenge to keep the new restaurant open beyond opening
night.

And once the cameras stop rolling at Conviction Kitchen, Zorich hopes the
trainee chefs and dining room servers remain with the new restaurant
until they've learned enough to further their new careers elsewhere, or
even open their own restaurant.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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