Editing Chef! (section)

==Reception==
According to the [[Museum of Broadcast Communications]], the show was "highly critically acclaimed for its high production values, its comic-drama scripts, and its lead performances. Most of all, perhaps, the series [was] a landmark programme in the sense that Henry plays a character who just happens to be black; the fact of his blackness does not limit the narrative or the audience the series reaches."<ref name="mbc"/>

BFI's [[screenonline]] noted that "what really marked out ''Chef!'', however, was Henry's development as an actor. As the kitchen tyrant Gareth Blackstock, he proved himself capable of representing a multifaceted character far beyond the caricatures of his sketch shows."<ref name="screenonline"/> It also noted that ''Chef!'' "managed some acute observations on food and contemporary Britain: the celebritisation of cuisine, the pathological obsession with hygiene, the near impossibility of securing genuinely excellent produce in a culture dominated by industrial farming and supermarket giants."<ref name="screenonline"/>

Some contemporary critics were less positive, however. Reviewing the second series in the ''[[Evening Standard]]'', [[Victor Lewis-Smith]] described it as "...not funny enough to be classed as sit-com, nor believable enough to be classed as drama, forensic science has been unable to detect any trace of humour or subtlety in this dismal hybrid".<ref>Victor Lewis-Smith, "Inside the Magic Rectangle", Indigo 1995, p63</ref>