“Top Chef,” “Chopped” and “Cutthroat Kitchen” alum chef Antonia Lofaso is the head judge of Food Network and Discovery Plus’ upcoming primetime cooking competition “The Julia Child Challenge.” It’s important to make that title clear up front as, though Lofaso is the vibrant live chef in the room with the contestants, the vibrant Julia Child herself serves as host via a giant screen playing classic black-and-white footage of the food icon hosting “The French Chef” in the center of a kitchen modeled to look just like her own.
And if the show didn’t have that literal larger-than-life component at its core, president of Food Network and streaming food content at Discovery Courtney White tells Variety she wouldn’t have picked up “The Julia Child Challenge.”
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“We had been pitched Julia-centric ideas over the years,” White said. “They always felt like they were very technical focused. And