‘Playing With Fire,’ playing with food

Some people can never make up their mind what they want to order in a restaurant. It can be easier to take them to a buffet so they can have a little bit of everything.

E! has taken the buffet approach with its new food-themed series “Playing With Fire,” which is just like one of those Bravo reality shows about supposedly colorful people working in supposedly glamorous fields. But rather than focusing on one person or a pair of partners, the show has taken a handful and given us small servings of each.

As it turns out, this is a good strategy. Previous shows in this genre — for example, “Kell on Earth,” “The Rachel Zoe Project” and “Dukes of Melrose” — generally prove that supposedly colorful people working in supposedly glamorous fields wear out their welcome quickly. But on “Playing With Fire,” when we start to tire of one star, the show cuts to another one, usually with an intervening beauty shot of a main dish, dessert or cocktail. Like a fast-food meal, these bite-size servings pass quickly and have little nutritional value.

Premiering this Sunday, March 17, at 10 p.m., the show can’t even make up its mind how many people to feature. Of the seven people who share the spotlight in the three episodes provided for review, two — the restaurateur Todd English and the actress and wannabe baker Jennifer Esposito — are listed as guest stars in the press materials.

The subjects are loosely linked. Anna Boiardi, an author and cooking teacher who is descended from the supermarket icon Chef Boyardee, is teaching Esposito how to make gluten-free pastries for the actress’s planned bakery.

Boiardi is also supposedly friends with Candice Kumai, a former model and television personality who is promoting a book called “Cook Yourself Sexy.” Boiardi sets up a blind date for Kumai, who ruins it by talking incessantly about herself.

English is supposedly friends with Daniel and Derek Koch, identical twins and former models who run several restaurants. One of the people attending the opening party for the twins’ restaurant Toy is Julie Elkind, a 25-year-old pastry chef.

Like most of these shows, “Playing With Fire” covers its subjects’ personal and private lives, which tend to overlap. For example, in the premiere episode, Daniel Koch is angry at Derek because Derek wants to skip the opening party so he can take his girlfriend, Molly, to Disney World. Derek is afraid to tell her that they may have to go one day later than planned.

Derek, who is portrayed in the show as the responsible twin, is angry with Daniel because Daniel isn’t working hard enough on their newest restaurant. When Daniel steps up and plans a promotional party at the place, the health department shuts it down just hours before the party.

When Elkind tries to introduce a new dessert at a restaurant for which she consults, she has to risk alienating the chef by going over his head to the owner. She tells the camera, “Sometimes it just takes a b—- to filter through all these people who may have doubts because you have a vagina.”

When Esposito comes to Boiardi’s home for a lesson in wheat-free gnocchi making, Esposito forgets the rice milk. The resulting gnocchi are inedible.

Boiardi is distraught when she has to drop off her two-year-old son at preschool. When her husband asks why she simply doesn’t keep him at home, she says that if he doesn’t get into the right preschool, he won’t get into the right kindergarten and grammar school, and his life will be over. To avoid traumatizing the boy by having him see his mother cry, they decide to have the nanny take him to preschool.

The only person with a relatable problem is Elkind, whose live-in boyfriend, Kyle, is a would-be actor who she thinks is slacking off.

But the stars are attractive, and their professional duties are enviably vague. They spend a lot of time eating and drinking in chic, expensive-looking restaurants or making delicious things themselves.

We see Elkind and her boyfriend checking out a high-rise apartment with views in all directions and a walk-in closet. She says they want to move out of her “dirt-hole apartment,” which is in fact a small Manhattan duplex that would have most 25-year-olds drooling in their actual dirt holes in the outer boroughs or New Jersey.

Those of us with rich fantasy lives will be able to set our envy aside and imagine ourselves with problems like those of these lucky foodies. By the time we realize we wouldn’t want to actually be one of them, “Playing With Fire” has already moved on.

Tags: Anna Boiardi, Candice Kumai, Chef Boyardee, Daniel Koch, Disney World, people, time, Todd English