Good Bite Offers Up a Buffet of Food Recipe Ideas

Every chef has his or her own personal style, and the best cooks imprint that point of view on their cuisine. But this means that we amateurs are left guessing as to whose advice to follow. Am I an Emeril? A Rachel Ray? A lesser-known but actually talented chef? How do you figure out whose advice matches best with your taste?

Well, you can either watch Food Network all day, or you can check out Good Bite, a new food site and cooking show from DECA. Rather than specializing on one particular genre or flavor, Good Bite works similarly to other DECA properties such as Momversation, focusing on roundtable discussions and recipe demos assembled by a group of food bloggers representing a wide range of styles and cuisines. The site’s motto? “Delicious made easy.”

The How To recipes are contributed by bloggers but so far are mostly demonstrated by Tracy Metro, who is not a food blogger but instead an actress and host-for-hire. As previously established, I’m not much of a cook, so I like that they acknowledge how a task like cubing fresh watermelon might seem simple to a professional chef, but doesn’t come naturally to all of us. However, a three-minute video to demonstrate the making of a dish that consists of feta cheese and watermelon cubes on a stick might be a little too simplistic, even for me.

The best part of Good Bite is that the roundtable videos allow many of the different food bloggers a chance to weigh in on topics with easy tips for, say, 4th of July barbecues or lazy dinners. And while each blogger films themselves individually, they’re given an opportunity to see what the other bloggers have filmed, and record responses. Those responses, once edited into the complete episode, allow for the appearance of genuine discussion — despite the lack of any real interaction.

Some of the contributors are clearly pretty new to the on-camera experience (not to name names or anything, Jeanne Kelley). But the amateur nature of their footage adds an air of authenticity to the otherwise polished production — watching some of the recipe videos, I tended to find the blogger point of view much more genuine than the demonstration segments hosted by Metro, whose well-lit demo kitchen is as bland and sterile as an operating room.

Good Bite may never have much of a voice of its own. But as long as it knows this, and instead spotlights the voices of others, it’ll be an interesting destination for those in search of their foodie identity.