TORONTO — Cathy Habus considered it a victory when no one threw up at her dinner party.
The night wasn’t perfect. Habus, 34, admits she drank too much wine and frightened her guests with bizarre after-dinner entertainment, but it was more successful than her last attempt.
For one thing, “all my food was edible,” she said, laughing, any embarrassment over her faux-pas long gone.
Habus, an English tutor from Mississauga, Ont., had hoped to make up for her disastrous performance on Come Dine With Me” a W Network show that has five strangers host dinner parties for each other on consecutive nights.
The contestants secretly rate their host at the end of each night and the person with the week’s top score wins $1,000 in cash.
In the show’s first season, Habus “sampled” too many mojitos and served unintentionally raw scallops, overcooked lamb and a beet mousse that had one notoriously picky guest retching in the bathroom.
The show — the Canadian version of a hit British series — returns for a second season Sept. 12 and shakes things up Thanksgiving Monday with a “redemption round” that pits Habus against other catastrophic Season One cooks.
Experience helps, but it doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing, the returning contestants learned.
“This time around, I decided that I would be classy, confident and cool,” Habus said at a luncheon to promote the upcoming season. “I wasn’t any of them.”
Beth Bovaird, another past competitor knocked out of the running when her signature smoked ribs burned to coal-like lumps, said she tackled a simpler dish on her second try, hoping it would be easier.
“I’m not really too sure if I redeemed myself as well as I would have liked to, but I sure gave it an honest effort,” said Bovaird, a professional hypnotist, though she wouldn’t discuss the menu or how it turned out.
Missteps — whether it’s a dog eating off the table, an hour-long delay between courses or a cake that deflates in the oven — seem almost inevitable, but that hasn’t deterred would-be contestants.
More than 1,000 people from across Canada applied for a chance to show off their entertaining savvy in the second season, said producer Amy Hosking.
In the end, 80 were chosen, double the number featured in the inaugural run last fall, she said. For now, the show is shot only in Ontario.
“I think the successes are sort of more entertaining and more deserving, or people are trying harder because they saw the first season,” Hosking said of the new episodes. “But I do think the disasters are bigger as well, and to be honest, that’s a lot of the reason why people watch the show.”
Season Two will break a lot of new ground, Hosking said. For the first time, an overwhelmed and irate host kicks everyone out of her home; another drops out of the competition altogether.
Those outbursts and all-too-likely mistakes give Come Dine With Me universal appeal, she said.
At least 20 countries have made their own versions of the show.