This episode is painfully self-indulgent on the part of everyone given screen time. Information and insight is minimal, as it's delivered through the filter of not-so-subtle 'look how cool I am'. Everything is hyper & rushed, and talked about in melodramatic detail. Most of the tales sound exaggerated and made up on the spur of the moment of telling. It has the annoying qualities of desperate wannabe Broadway actors auditioning, or worse: happening upon a producer on the same elevator, and blurting and begging for the entire ride.
The failing of this episode is that the food is barely mentioned, rarely shown, and certainly not the focus.
I suspect the focus is subsequent episodes was adjusted appropriately, after this soap-opera treatment. This episode has the sense of employing techniques of cinematic storytelling just for the sake of using the technique, not because the content is actually interesting or deserving of our attention, much less deserving of dramatic emphasis.
God-awful example of why foodie-elitism is so deserving of criticism and denigration. I SO wish these people, on camera and off, could be held to account for this dreadful pretentiousness.