Scott Conant presides over grueling '24 Hour Restaurant Battle'

Ask any restaurateur and he'll probably tell you that opening a new eatery is so stressful that it can make strong men weep. And that's with months, maybe even years, to plan it.

Now, imagine doing the same thing, from identifying a concept to putting food on the table for customers, in the span of a single day.

That's the gauntlet thrown down for contestants on "24 Hour Restaurant Battle," the new Wednesday Food Network series in which dueling two-person teams have just 24 hours to accomplish all that, with the finished product being evaluated by a chef, a restaurateur, a food writer and a public relations person.

"There's always a level of tough love involved when I am critiquing people," says chef and restaurateur Scott Conant ("Chopped"), who hosts the show and sits on the judging panel. "I want them to really learn, because they want to do this in real life. This is a chance for them to ask questions and get feedback from us, always in a positive way. The intention is never to beat somebody up to the point that they don't want to do this. Here's an opportunity for them to make the mistakes now, so when they go out on their own, they won't make the same mistakes."

On each team, one member handles the front-of-house responsibilities, including choosing the decor of the restaurant, while the other runs the kitchen (the show provides waiters and kitchen staff as well as labor to paint the dining space). In the best reality TV tradition, the excruciating time crunch brings out the best and the worst in the contestants, with the winners receiving $10,000 in seed money toward realizing their dream.

"We had a lot of fun doing this," Conant says. "Even the people who didn't win walked away with a very positive sense of 'I can do this' or 'I probably need a few more years before I can do this really well.' It serves as a nice temperature gauge as far as how they feel about moving forward in this field."