Paris Hilton’s new cooking show offers little food for thought

In the first few seconds of Netflix’s latest cooking series, the instantly recognizable host informs viewers that, although she loves cooking, she is unequivocally not a trained chef.

And that’s about as complex as “Cooking with Paris” ever gets. The six-part show is inspired by Paris Hilton’s viral YouTube video (in which she made a lasagna during lockdown) and features the famously pampered reality TV star attempting to expand her culinary repertoire in line with a different theme in each episode.

To add in a bit more variety, Hilton ropes in a different guest each episode, from Kim Kardashian West and Saweetie to her mother and sister – there’s ostensibly some chitchat, but it rarely gets beyond complimenting each other’s outfits. And while she claims to be learning from her houseguests, each episode invariably devolves into Hilton burning or breaking something, before dousing it in glitter and basking in the sycophantic praise from her nervous-looking team.

“Cooking with Paris” does, at least, appear to acknowledge how ludicrous its own concept is. Everything is unashamedly tongue-in-cheek, and the sheer scale of Hilton’s flamboyance is never diluted – she has multiple different outfits and redresses her house (and dogs) for each episode.

It makes for a peculiar viewing experience. Hilton’s complete ignorance of basic cooking (or hygiene, alarmingly) is played for laughs — a lot. Sometimes it’s quite funny, but other times, there’s something vaguely infuriating about watching a 40-year-old socialite totter about her pristine kitchen in wildly impractical outfits, wasting bucketloads of food and breaking an array of expensive-looking appliances. For someone who claims to love cooking, her insistence that she doesn’t know what a whisk is, or what tongs look like, feels a little contrived.

Instead, for the most part, her guests cook, and Hilton calls everything hot or says how much she loves everything they’re doing — all delivered in her slightly weird, child-like monotone voice. “Cooking with Paris” isn’t really about cooking at all, it’s an updated installment of Hilton’s reality TV career — with fewer nightclubs and more artisan food markets.