HBO Max‘s The Big Brunch offers a delightful twist on the cooking competition concept, but the show’s biggest treat is judge Sohla El-Waylly. Sohla — as fans simply know her as — has steadily built a reputation as one of the most talented, creative, and outspoken voices in the food landscape. However The Big Brunch proves she’s more than just an incredible chef, cooking instructor, or Bon Appetit Test Kitchen’s misused secret weapon. Sohla El-Waylly is our next great food TV judge. Like a perfectly balanced bite, she knows how to balance the bitter and the sweet in her critiques. She’s exactly the voice the genre needs moving forward.
Created by Schitt’s Creek mastermind Dan Levy, The Big Brunch is a competition asking chefs who have contributed to their community to battled it out for the best brunch. Each week, the chefs will have to create a starter and a main dish for host Dan Levy and judges El-Waylly and Will Guidara. Fail to impress and the chefs go home. If they survive the whole competition, they’ll take home $300,000.
While The Big Brunch does offer some intriguing innovations to the reality cooking competition genre — There’s an in house bartender! The dining room adjoins the kitchen! — it’s still finding its legs. The pacing drags in places and one does have to wonder if building a competition around just brunch is a good idea. That said, one thing The Big Brunch definitely does have going for it is Sohla El-Waylly.
Sohla El-Waylly is a chef, restauranteur and educator who shot to fame as a culinary personality in Bon Appétit‘s uber-popular YouTube videos. El-Waylly was an assistant food editor for the magazine and often found herself roped into the videos of the (mostly white) main cast to offer technical knowhow, creative advice, and literal help. When it was later revealed that the magazine’s then editor-in-chief had once attended a party in blackface, El-Waylly led the charge to ask for his resignation. On the heels of this scandal, it was revealed that Bon Appétit had the nasty habit of paying talented BIPOC chefs for a fraction of their white colleagues’ salary.
Read Related Also: Aelfwynn The Last Kingdom Actress
After leaving BA, Sohla began appearing in a slew of YouTube videos. She briefly worked within the popular Babbish Cinematic Universe before hosting her own videos for History, Food52, and The New York Times (where she is also a contributor). Through it all, Sohla El-Waylly has proven that she has a rare mix of technical chops and the ability to warmly teach amateur cooks how to up their recipe game. What The Big Brunch shows is that she’s also a brilliant reality show judge.
First of all, Sohla seems to understand the function of a judge in these otherwise feel-good reality competition shows. When fellow judge Will Guidara frets that he likes all the chefs and doesn’t want to see editing turn one into the villain, Sohla quips that they are the villains. After all, it’s the judge’s job to critique the hard work of these sweet, hardworking chefs and to crush the dreams of the eliminated chefs.
However, Sohla isn’t catty or cruel. She’s playful in her critiques, happy to let tension rise before giving her prognosis of a dish. But her criticisms are always constructive. She looks for excellence in technique first and foremost and encourages chefs to work harder. “I know you can do better,” she says, like a coach. She also was the first person to note that the chefs’ biggest collective blind spot was not tasting their own food.
But what’s so fun about Sohla is she gets legitimately excited when the chefs dazzle her. There’s no condescending “Hollywood Handshake,” but sheer awe over the contestants’ creativity. Sohla might understand that she is the heel to the chefs’ baby faces, but she is never not rooting for them to slay her with an unimpeachable dish.
As the kids say, The Big Brunch judge Sohla El-Waylly understands the assignment. She totally gets what her role is within the eco-system of a reality competition show and embraces it. Sohla is a fair judge, she is a fun judge, but most of all, she is a ferocious judge. She’s not afraid to point out failures, nor is she above crowing over the chefs’ successes. She’s exactly the kind of judge food TV needs more of (and I’m not-so-secretly hoping Padma Lakshmi has her on speed dial for a future season of Top Chef).
