‘Marcel's Quantum Kitchen’ brings the wow factor

Marcel Vigneron survived an ugly onscreen bullying incident, making it into the final rounds in the second season of “Top Chef” on Bravo. More recently, he took his leave from the “Top Chef: All Stars” after an ignominious blowup with fellow chef-testant Dale.

Personalities do seem to clash and collide when Marcel is in the kitchen. While small in stature, he’s got an ego as big as his hair and a faith in the wizardry he practices in a foodcraft called “molecular gastronomy,” which fuses the cutting edge of haute cuisine with the scientific method for edible creations that boggle the mind.

In the opening segment of “Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen,” which premiered this week on Syfy, he boiled an orange in liquid nitrogen, shattered it and reconstituted it within its rind with gelatin-infused orange juice as a demonstration for a classroom of children. He said he enjoyed the process of reinventing the conventional, going beyond the expected -- and occasionally beyond the limits of what seemed possible, something long-time viewers of “Top Chef” have witnessed again and again.

While some of his techniques seemed overused -- it seemed there wasn’t a challenge that arose he didn’t address by making some sort of foam or emulsion -- these are not techniques I’ve ever encountered in my day-to-day life so they do seem kind of amazing.

In the opening challenge for “Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen,” the team he assembled crafted a menu for a fundraising party in support of a wildlife preserve.

The team turned apples into a fruit leather, creating an edible parchment map for the party-goers. They crafted birds nests from shredded potatoes and put tiny golden cherry tomatoes in a puff of tomato foam for the “egg.”

Team members then crafted a main course from braised short-ribs wrapped around a center cut that ended up looking like tree bark, which they surrounded with pork rinds dyed to resemble snakeskins presented in grass.

Closing the meal was a li-quid nitrogen treat featuring wild rice puffs that, as the guests ate them, made their breath visible. This recalled the exotic dragonfruit cocktails served at the beginning of the evening, which the client deemed overall to be a marvelous success.

Reality show

“Top Chef”-testant Marcel was somewhat different than caterer Marcel, but there is some consistency -- a nervous energy and a drive for perfection that struggles against a reach that occasionally exceeds his grasp.

For one example, the client didn’t give him very much time to plan the menu, and he didn’t have the opportunity he wanted to walk the space with the party planner. These facts combined to create a false sense of urgency. In all reality, Marcel is responsible for the food -- not the presentation, not the exotic animals on loan from the preserve, not even the space itself beyond having a prep area to work in.

The food itself turned out beautifully and that’s all the client hired him for. The fact that the rest of it worked was a bigger credit to the party planner working within all of Marcel’s exacting requirements. But again, he’s a perfectionist, obsessing over every detail. Really, he could’ve relaxed and it all would have worked out exactly as well as it did.

But that’s the nature of this show as a reality show. The production team reads as a veritable “Who’s Who” of reality programming with such credits as “Project Runway,” “Blow Out” and “Hell’s Kitchen” on their resumes.

So we get the quirky editing, the disaster editing, the irritating confessionals, the “oh no, everything’s all falling apart we’re all going to DIE!” editing and all of that artificial tension that adds nothing to the experience of watching a master chef lead a team of talented individuals through the process of crafting magnificent food for a variety of events.

The argument, I suppose, is that no one would tune in for that. My response is, why would they tune in for a show about potential disasters that never come to be? The worst thing that happened is the little birds nests were originally meant to have mozzerella eggs in them filled with tomato foam.

Well, in order to shape the cheese into an egg shape they had to heat it, and the heat from the mozzarella melted the cold foam, so it didn’t work. The eggs burst and they had to do something else. Which they did. Oh, and a couple pans of apple leather were ruined. Not precisely life-and-death drama.

I did appreciate the tiny handwritten descriptions that popped up whenever Marcel used a technical term. I thought the countdown was more of a production imperative than anything the caterers needed -- especially in the last segment when it started counting down by thousandths of the second.

But all in all, I thought it was a good first installment. The science was interesting, Marcel himself and his team are excitingly creative and I enjoyed seeing him respond to real-world challenges. These are the best elements of these talent-show reality programs, and “Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen” retains them.

New episodes of “Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen” premiere Tuesdays at 10/9c on Syfy, and encore during the week.