Things come in threes. Regular Top Chef, Top Chef Junior, and now, Top Chef: Masters, debuting spring 2009. Sounds like a fusion of the Iron and Top Chefs. "Award-winning, widely-renowned" cheftestants compete, not dudes you don't recognize (but eventually learn to love deeply). Do the celeb chefs have time for television, on top of cookbook deals, blogs, and big deal kitchens? Will Bravo change its name to Top Chef-o?
Remember the Real World locale guessing game? "I heard Los Angeles! No, it's totally New Orleans, stupid." The same intrigue and mystery now follows Top Chef, except sources like food blog Snack and now Grub Street have revealed that season five will in fact call New York home. Come July, you can whip out your camera phones and start stalking the wandering knife cases.
So how do you feel now after the finale of Top Chef Chicago? It's over and done, and I'm totally cool with that. I met some awesome people, I got to cook with some great chefs, and overall I had a great time.
What was the hardest thing about being on the show? The hardest thing to deal with was being in seclusion, with no outside contact with the real world. In the reality TV world, you have to get permission to go to the bathroom, to have a cigarette, to do anything. It's like you're a little kid. And they don't even turn your mic off when you go the bathroom.
Did we get to see the real you on Top Chef? Top Chef is reality-show reality, it's selective reality by definition. The cameras are running 24 hours a day, but they only show a tiny part of what they film. The producers often focus on a small part of someone's personality because they're trying to make the best reality show they can. I understand that. It doesn't mean that all of us on the show are going to like everything they show. But that's part of the deal.
Do you regret anything you said on the show? Of course. I'm a human being. I say stupid things, like we all do. But I try to never look back or to live my life being full of regrets. I definitely learned from my mistakes.
How do you feel about the blogosphere? I'm like everybody else, I think. I find it difficult to read negative comments about myself. But I don't want to focus on the negativity. I didn't mean to offend anybody, and I'm sorry if I did. I totally overreacted. [Major spoiler after the jump.]
We're still in Puerto Rico, having just witnessed the departure of Antonia last week. The three remaining chefs—Richard, Lisa, and Stephanie—are brought before Tom and Padma where they find three famous New York chefs—Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin, Dan Barber of Blue Hill, and April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig—each standing by a separate table of proteins and ingredients.
Tom announces that the final challenge will be simple: Create a four-course tasting menu for nine diners, starting with fish, moving to poultry, then red meat, and finishing with dessert. As the challenge is outlined, both Lisa and Stephanie express some concern about being forced to produce a dessert. One senses that a storyline is unfolding, even with just this one small hint.
The "sous chefs": Eric Ripert, Dan Barber, and April Bloomfield.
Furthermore, Tom tells the contestants that they'll have Ripert, Barber, and Bloomfield as their sous chefs for the competition. Who gets whom? And, perhaps more important, who gets the smorgasbord of proteins arrayed in front of each one of them? [A table full of spoilers, after the jump.]
Do you love Top Chef, and yet sometimes find yourself ruminating, "Man, are the contestants old!"
Then Top Chef Junior has your name on it. Bravo announced today the development of its new competition series, where teens will compete for the Top Chef title and accompanying prizes and fame.
A docu-series is also in the works. If Jackie Warner of Workout fame gets a show about running a gym, then why shouldn't Jean-Christophe Novelli star on a show about opening a cooking school? Bravo executives think he should.
With Top Chef as the number one food show on cable, Bravo is seeking to expand their food domain. Frances Berwick, the executive vice president and general manager of Bravo Media, made the following statement:
The season finale of Top Chef: Chicago is tonight of course. If you'd like to catch up on what's gone down in previous episodes, check out Serious Eats' Top Chef coverage here, including Lisa's infamous denunciation of food bloggers "who can't even afford to eat in my restaurant, let alone know how to cook." After the jump, our predictions on who will win.
The Los Angeles Times profiles Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, glossing over her past as a former model and actress who made the transition to cookbook author, and now as a judge on the popular Bravo TV series. She also drops the news that she's developing a new show where "a group of fun, eclectic people come over to her house for a dinner party; we watch her prep, get ready and guests arrive and eat; maybe someone plays music."
Most people are surprised that she's made it this far—the finals of this season of Top Chef—what with her back-stabbing and pettiness. Everybody seems to hate her; bloggers don't seem to be fans; commenters everywhere seem to generally despise her. Maybe Bravo's producers painted her as the villain, but when asked by the New York Daily News if she's read the reactions online, Top Chef contestant Lisa Fernandes responded:
Oh no, I don't read the blogs—you couldn't pay me to read the blogs. I don't want to know what people who can't even afford to eat in my restaurant, let alone know how to cook have to say about me, and the few comments I did read on Eater.com a few weeks back because my job asked me to read 'em. The best they could come up with was that I was ugly.
Previously: 'Top Chef' Episode Wrapup: Pork and Beans
Time has passed. Fauxhawks have changed hue. Do-rags have been discarded. Hair has been shorn. Other than that, it's a remarkably familiar bunch that arrives in sunny Puerto Rico for Top Chef's penultimate competition.
Once Antonia, Richard, Stephanie, and Lisa land on the island, they're immediately whisked away to the beach where they meet Padma and guest judge Wilo Benet, one of Puerto Rico's pre-eminent chefs. He informs the crew that they've got a Quickfire challenge to attend to, which consists of creating pairs of small fried snacks called frituras. Basically, it's beachy snack food. Good for carbo-loading with an ice-cold cerveza. And the chefs will need to center their snacks around the plantain, a favorite local ingredient.
[Spoilers después del salto.]
We've got five chefs left. Lisa, Stephanie, Richard, Spike, and Antonia. Last week, we lost Dale. If you are still misty-eyed over that cut, head on over to Bourdain's blog for the straight dope on why Lisa and Spike are still wearing their whites.
As this week's episode begins, there's just one more elimination before the remaining four chefs head to the finals in Puerto Rico. On the way to the Top Chef kitchen, the group makes a side trip to Allen Brothers, a well-known meat purveyor in the Chicago area. Here, the contestants don hairnets, gird their loins, and sharpen their knives before heading into the back to cut some steaks.
The Quickfire challenge is laid out by Joanne, a representative of Allen Brothers. Each chef is given a dry-aged rib rack that they need to convert into Tomahawk Chops, thick steaks with long, completely frenched ribs still attached. They have 20 minutes to make the steaks look perfect.
[Thinly sliced spoilers after the jump.]
Flipping through this week's Cook the Book selection, Top Chef: The Cookbook, is a sensory experience. And not just because of the up-close and personal photographs of memorable dishes such as Dave Martin's Truffle and Cognac Macaroni and Cheese from season one, or Hung Huynh's Sous-Vide Duck from season three. The book itself is wrapped in a canvas cover made from the same material as the jackets worn by the contestants on the show. Pretty cool.
More than a collection of recipes, Top Chef: The Cookbook is a backstage pass to the hit television show. Tour the kitchen and pantry to discover what staples Top Chefs always have on hand, or learn how to open a bottle of Champagne with a knife a la season one's Stephen Asprinio. There are insightful interviews with producers and judges, plus lighthearted inserts devoted to the "Top Coif," and the Anthony Bourdain Insult-O-Meter.
From perfectly executed classics to outlandish, newfangled creations, we'll be excerpting a recipe from Top Chef: The Cookbook every day this week. In addition, you can enter to win a copy for your own collection. Just tell us in the comments section below: If you were in a cooking competition, what dish would you prepare?
I have a feeling that Tom Colicchio regularly shows up at 5:45 AM in most of the chefs' nightmares. That said, at the beginning of this episode, well before the sun cracked the horizon, the head judge arrived loudly at the Top Chef barracks.
And if the pre-dawn wake-up call wasn't enough, Tom tells the six remaining chefs that their Quickfire challenge will be to work the egg station at one of Chicago's best-loved (and busiest) breakfast spots. Of course, in the hustle, I managed to miss the name of the place. Any Chicagoans? A little help in comments, please...
[Spoilers, over easy, after the jump.]
Alright, we're still in Chicago and we still have six more chefs to sort through, several of which I hadn't pictured making it past week two, much less week ten.
Here's who's left, with a cheat-sheet in case you still don't have the names straight: Lisa (pierced eyebrow), Antonia (unflappable expression), Stephanie (curls) , Richard (fauxhawk), Dale (headband, grimace), Spike (hats), Andrew (beard, crazy eyes).
As we head into the Top Chef kitchen for the Quickfire, we see that this week's guest judge is Sam Talbot, a popular finalist from Season Two. He and Padma introduce the opening challenge, which is to make an innovative salad, or as they embarassingly put it: "bring the sexy back to salad." [Insert eye-roll here.] The chefs have 45 minutes and access to whatever ingredients they need.
[Incredibly sexy spoilers after the jump.]
Looks like we've got a supersized hour-and-fifteen-minute episode this week called "Wedding Wars." So, before it even starts, we already know it's a group catering challenge. Right out of the gate, the eight remaining chefs head to the knife block and break out into two teams of four.
On Team Fork, we've got Antonia, Andrew, Richard, and Stephanie. (Lots of wins on that team.)
On Team Spoon, there's Dale, Lisa, Nikki, and Spike. (Lots of hats and bandanas on that team.)
And it makes sense that teams have formed because it's time for everyone's favorite the Quickfire Relay Race, with Tom Colicchio subbing in as referee and arbiter of relay hand-offs.
[Spoilers after the jump.]
Last week Jen was sent home, under slightly saucy circumstances, apparently. I think that means all my local San Francisco contestants have been kicked to the curb. On a related note, I nearly ran over Zoi in SF's Mission District a few days ago. Sorry, Z. My bad.
Still, even with the City by the Bay woefully unrepresented, the show must go on. The guest judge for the Quickfire and the entire episode is Oprah's personal chef, Art Smith. The Quickfire Challenge gave the nine remaining chefs 15 minutes to make a complete entrée. The consensus was that this was no easy task. Several contestants claimed that even the 30-minute challenges caused near bedlam on the cooking line.
So what's the answer to this seemingly impossible situation, which is meant to simulate the intense time pressures of a popular restaurant? Uncle Ben's microwavable whole-grain rice.
[Once you stop laughing, make the jump, where the spoilers will be ready in about 90 seconds.]
What's Casey Thompson from last season's Top Chef up to? Slashfood has an interview with the executive chef at Shinsei in Dallas, who shares snippets from her post-restoreality life.
What magazines do you look at? Do you ever read blogs or content on the web?
I don't read blogs. I actually read Food Arts Magazine. I'm constantly reading Santé—about food and wine—I read Food and Wine, Gourmet, I'm always picking up Asian Restaurant News, where you read about how to make Peking duck—it's a lot about technique and also written in Japanese. It's really cool. Online, if anything, I read, not bloggers, but people who have created food websites where they share experiences, like pictures from the latest restaurants they've been to. It is like they are going around dining for me, and I get to see what's going on. I also talk to chefs, share ideas, do test kitchens, look at new products.
What's the difference between "blogs" and "people who have created food websites where they share experiences, like pictures from the latest restaurants they've been to"?
Cable network Bravo is throwing out the initial casting dragnet for season five of Top Chef. If you live in San Francisco, you better grab your knives and run. The process starts in, oh, a half hour! Here are the locations for open calls:
San Francisco
Monday, April 21, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Postrio RestaurantLas Vegas
Sunday, May 4, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.b
Craftsteak, MGM Grand Hotel & CasinoNew York (Upstate)
Saturday, May 10, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Culinary Institute of America
1946 Campus Drive, Hyde Park NYNew York City (Manhattan)
Sunday, May 11, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Culinary Institute of America
399 Lafayette Street, New York NY (at East 4th street)Los Angeles
Monday, May 26, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Cicada Restaurant
Harold, your usual Top Chef recapper, is on the bench tonight, so here I am as the second-string Top Chef blogger suiting up and going in to the game.
Why the sports analogy? I'll get to that. But first, the we're going to cut to the 11 remaining cheftestants' armchair-quarterbacking of last week's show.
Spike "heard it through the grapevine" that "a lot of people thought I should have went home." Why? "People are feeling a little threatened" because "I'm a talented dude."
If your talent is wearing crazy hats, sure. [Warning: Spoilers ahead, mateys!]
Last week, Top Chef bid goodbye to Manuel and left Spike in the mix to stir up some controversy. Would that strategy pay dividends this week? Not in the QuickFire, which was a pretty sedate affair. No cook-off this time. It's a blindfolded palate test! Guest judge Ming Tsai, chef-owner of Blue Ginger in Boston, announces that each contestant will try to determine the higher quality item in 15 pairs of ingredients.
Most of the contestants seemed to do alright, especially since the fast-forward editing of this challenge didn't really amp up the drama in any meaningful way. After the blindfolds were removed and the scores tallied, a very confident Antonia had correctly chosen 12 out of 15 ingredients and was rewarded with immunity. Close seconds Jen and Ryan each got 11 answers correct, while Stephanie, who already has two Elimination challenges under her belt, brought up the rear with 6 out of 15. Oops.
[Spoilers after the jump.]
Last weekend's Saturday Night Live, with guest host Christopher Walken, skewered 'Top Chef.' The skit features "Wylie DelMario," a "weird judge-guy who we tell you owns a restaurant somewhere," faux-hawk jokes, and the contestants reinventing a deep-dish pizza using beets, couscous, frozen yogurt, medicine, a paper bag, stale Peeps, and Padma's gum.
Video after the jump.
Like any good movie director, Top Chef decided to create some drama in the very first scene of tonight's episode. They introduced the idea that Jen and Zoi have an advantage because they're not separated from their loved ones. They even set it up with a sound-bite from Jen herself, talking about keeping some distance to defuse any suggestion that she and her partner are giving each other unfair support. Spike, always good for a snide comment or two, offered his assessment that the couple have a "slight advantage" and, in the Top Chef competition, that could make all the difference. It was the laugh-out-loud line of the show, for sure. Of course, part of me hoped it was true, so we could bid adieu to Spike (and his ludicrous hats) as soon as possible.
That would have to wait, however, because back in the kitchen, Daniel Boulud came in and announced the QuickFire Challenge: Make a vegetable plate using three different culinary techniques. After a frantic 30 minutes of slicing and dicing and brunoising, the master chef offered his appaisal of the results.
[Movie spoilers after the jump.]
The ghost of Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf Astoria's maître d'hôtel in the late 1800s, rolled over in his grave this week when watching Top Chef. He definitely was not okay with judge Ted Allen's claim that the Waldorf salad originated in "Middle America" instead of Tschirky's former Park Avenue hotel kitchen. Ted electronically apologized today, so one point for the ghoul. [via Gothamist].
And then there were 14. A nice, even number. And we all know that means two teams competing against each other at some point in the episode. But first, the Quickfire Challenge.
Guest judge Rick Bayless, the mucho muchacho of Mexican fine-dining, is brought into the kitchen, and the Top Cheffers' task is explained: Take one of the most down-to-earth staples of Mexican cuisine—the taco—and redefine it as a fine-dining dish.
Seems a simple enough task, but a lot of the chefs are having a tough time of it. As Erik says, "Mexican food is about the people, it's about the street. It's a soulful kind of thing, and and to put fine dining in it, it just kinda bugs me." And Spike, too, wants to keep it street.
Um, guys? Was that the assignment?
Gals? Well, we don't hear much from the women during the Quickfire, as the producers kinda glossed over them for some reason—probably that their dishes were middle of the road, I'm guessing, and didn't make for great TV. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
This week, with 15 chefs still in the running for the Top Chef crown, the show settled into familiar rhythms and let the audience begin to appreciate the contestants' skills and personalities.
The Quickfire Challenge involved 30 minutes of shopping at the Chicago Green City Market and required a dish with no more than five ingredients, not including salt, pepper, sugar, and oil. Mark, the New Zealander, managed to harass a bunch of vendors and leave behind some of his ingredients. Silly hobbit! [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Season Four of Top Chef kicked off in fine fashion, with Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio returning to lead a motley crew of 16 executive chefs, line cooks, and culinary consultants toward $100,000 and 15 delicious minutes of fame.
At first glance, the mix of personalities and talent levels seems pretty good. Geographically, much like seasons past, San Francisco and New York are well represented. There are a few contestants from the South, and probably too few from the host city of Chicago. Also, as in past seasons, fans of fauxhawks and other dubious coiffure will not be disappointed.
[Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Top Chef sudoku: "Click a combination of nine chefs and hosts. Then fill in the game board so that each of the nine pictures occur exactly once in each row, column, and in each three-by-three box. To complete the challenge, simply fill in all the empty squares following the rules above."
Got that? No? Neither did I. [via Grub Street]
Bravo has unveiled the 16 cast members of Top Chef: Chicago. Not much geographic diverstiy here: seven contestants from New York City*, four from San Francisco, two from Atlanta, one from Los Angeles, and only two from the show's host city. (What's up with that?)
Bios and pix are available here, and it's hard to tell from them who's going to turn out to be the ornery one. Could it be Andrew, wielding a meat mallet? That would be the obvious choice at the early stage. Or maybe Lisa's playful mushroom-tossing just a feint to hide her troublemaking side.
Perhaps we'll turn to that old saw by Brillat-Savarin, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," in looking at their favorite recipes.
The third season of Top Chef came to a close last night with the second half of the Aspen, Colorado, challenge, pitting Dale, Hung, and Casey against each other in a finale that covered some familiar territory with a few new twists. The biggest adjustment was perhaps a little bit anticlimactic—a live reveal. The contestants were kept in the dark for the past month or so, in preparation for 15 minutes of live TV from a dimly lit Chicago studio, which did not compare very favorably to the scenic grandeur of Aspen.
As in previous years, the chefs were free to prepare dishes that were largely of their own design, with little in the way of constraints beyond the ingredients and equipment provided by the show. In fact, the cornucopia of fresh produce available to the trio made for some of the most visceral shots of food we've seen on Top Chef. Not the intellectual enjoyment of a a finished dish, but the powerful sweetness of incredibly fresh ingredients. It was nice start to a good final episode. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
I'll admit it. Unlike Serious Eats's Harold Check (who will shortly give you his blow-by-blow, cut-by-cut take on the finale), Anthony Bourdain, and almost everyone else I know, I've never gotten hooked on Top Chef.
But after reading Frank Bruni's piece in the New York Times yesterday, in which he compared the celebrity chef judges on the show to Charo and the other has-been show business types appearing as regulars on Hollywood Squares, I resolved to watch the Top Chef finale last night with a clear eye and a relatively clean food reality television palate (full disclosure: I do watch Iron Chef occasionally and have appeared on the show a few times as a judge). [Note: There are no spoilers after the jump. Proceed with abandon.]
As the two-part Top Chef finale opens, we learn there's been a one-month break since the New York City elimination of Sara the Cheesemaker. The remaining contestants—Hung, Casey, Dale, and Brian—reconvene in Aspen, Colorado, and head for the hills.
The introductory segment takes the chefs on a gorgeous hot-air balloon ride with some heartwarming words from Dale and Hung about what brought them to the competition. The balloon ride ends in a clearing near a mountain stream, where we find guest judge Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin brandishing some fresh trout. The Quickfire Challenge is to cook the fish over a camp stove in less than 20 minutes. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump!]
After last week's airport challenge, the remaining five chefs—Brian, Hung, Dale, Sara M., and Casey—spend a morning strolling around Manhattan, soaking up the atmosphere, and eating a few kabobs from a street vendor. The stage is set for four of them to graduate to the Season Three finale in Apsen, while one unlucky cook will wash out a single episode short.
The lead-in to the Quickfire Challenge offers some truly inspiring shots of Le Cirque's facade and dining room. Here we are introduced to the legendary restaurant's owner, Sirio Maccioni, who presents the chefs with a special dish—a fillet of halibut wrapped in a thin layer of potato on a bed of leeks and mushrooms. We're told this is a staple dish of the restaurant, but not on the menu, only for VIP diners. As the contestants are finishing their meal, they're told that their challenge is to duplicate this dish in 25 minutes in the Le Cirque kitchen. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.]
As Abraham Lincoln used to say, we're getting down to the raisins. Only six competitors are left in the fight: Sara M., C.J., Brian, Hung, Casey, and Dale. Last week we lost Howie. Wow. It felt really good to say that. This week's show opens with the remaining chefs sleeping like innocent babes until...
Padma bursts into the Fontainebleu penthouse and rousts the groggy chefs from bed, telling them they need to make her some breakfast. Yes, it's the surprise Quickfire Challenge -- prepare breakfast in 20 minutes, somehow utilizing a fancy blender. The penthouse kitchen has been stocked with ingredients and six tiny work stations and the cooks are told to roll up their pajama sleeves and get cooking. (Warning: Spoilers after the jump.)
After a one-week hiatus, Top Chef returned last night with a vengeance. Seven contestants remain, with no clear favorite now that viewer darling Tre has been sent packing.
The "Aisle Trial" Quickfire Challenge introduced the theme of the evening, which was to take limited resources and impress. Each chef was given $10 and assigned one aisle of the grocery store in which to acquire ingredients. After ten minutes of shopping and 20 minutes of cooking, they were supposed to have a dish worthy of oohs and ahs. Not easy, and the results would prove it. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
On last week's episode of Top Chef, Andrea Strong (The Strong Buzz) was brought in to give the contestants a taste of what they could expect online in the form of criticism from food bloggers. Viewers reacted strongly to her appearance in the comments on Padma Lakshi's Top Chef blog.
I just noticed that this week, Strong had a chance to respond to them.
As you'll recall, last week's Top Chef played to a draw. Due to the fact that everyone screwed up to some extent, no one got sent home. The ultimate decision was to stage a do-over of the Restaurant Wars challenge and see if things shook out a little more clearly. So, this week, we have Restaurant Wars, the sequel. In case you forgot, Team "Garage" is Sara, Hung, Howie, and Dale, while Team "April" is CJ, Tre, Casey, and Brian.
The show starts off with a team Quickfire—a mise en place relay race. The winning team will get the services of a sommelier and an extra $200 in their wine budget. Basically, it's a straight-up speed competition with four sections—shuck 15 oysters, finely dice five onions, break down four chickens, and whip a batch of egg whites. It was very close in the first round, with Howie and Brian shucking and jiving pretty much neck and neck. But round two ended the drama as Sara's impressive knife skills left Casey in the dust. It was actually painful to watch Casey plod along. It almost felt like we were watching the challenge in real time. After Hung massacred the chickens, and Dale coasted through the egg whites, the Garage crew, likening themselves to the Bad News Bears came through with the morale-boosting win. (Note to Dale: Don't forget, the Bad News Bears ended up losing. Note to readers: Spoilers after the jump.)
No, it wasn't a USO challenge, with the chefbatants Quickfiring for the troops in Iraq. It's Restaurant Wars, a challenge that happens each season, dividing the players into two competing teams that have 24 hours and about three grand to open their own simulated restaurant. This week's guest judge was Daniel Boulud, who garnered near universal squeals of joy from the chefs. Despite being awed by his appearance as their inquisitor, they were all clearly tickled to be in the same kitchen with the legendary chef and restaurateur.
After a Quickfire Challenge that centered on creating a new kind of hamburger for Red Robin, the chefs were informed that, from this point forward, the winner of the opening challenges wouldn't be getting immunity from elimination. [Warning: Spoilage after the jump.]
The news that food bloggers are going legit and entering the mainstream hit the blogosphere like a new Paris Hilton sex tape. First, Restaurant Girl (aka Danyelle Freeman) is slipping into Pascale La Draoulec's old restaurant critic spot at the New York Daily News. Forget for a moment whether Freeman is qualified for the job, or whether her breathy purple prose style is appropriate for a newspaper restaurant critic's voice, or finally whether the fact that she's known to every restaurateur and chef in town is a problem.
The real story here is that a young woman who started a New York restaurant food blog now has one of the half-dozen restaurant critic jobs at a major New York media outlet with more than a million readers. Love Freeman or hate her, her ascension signals the arrival of food bloggers into the old media mainstream. Sure, her industry-friendly statement that "I want to give chefs and restaurants their best opportunity to communicate a vision" would send editors at places like the New York Times and New York magazine into apoplexy.
Guess what, this week's Quickfire Challenge was sponsored! You really have to hand it to the Top Chef ad-sales crew. One can only imagine the high fives at the Bravo business offices as they force "synergies" on the production team week after week. Maybe next year they can spin that process off into its own reality show—Top Ad Sales Executive. I relish the thought of hearing those magical words: "Please turn off your Bluetooth headset and go..."
Ah, but I'm beating a dead horse on this one. Speaking of which, most people wouldn't want dead horse mixed into their Cold Stone Creamery ice cream. Or cauliflower espuma. Or Sriracha sauce. But, hey, that didn't stop some of the chefs from trying. The Quickfire Challenge was to prepare toppings to be folded into mall-goers' favorite high-calorie dessert. Tre, Howie, and Dale got high marks for preparing high-end fruit-based condiments for their dishes. Hung and Casey got hung out to dry for using the aforementioned cauliflower and Sriracha. In fact, Hung emptied the proverbial pantry on this challenge. That dude seriously needs to take it down a notch. He has gone from first episode front-runner to permanent disappointment. If he doesn't make some adjustments soon, methinks he will be heading back to Guy Savoy tout de suite. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
This past week, a dedicated reader of Serious Eats asked me for more Top Chef coverage. I suspect, despite appearing mostly lucid at the time of the request, he may have been working with strong kitchen cleansing products in an enclosed space. Specifically, he wanted me to wax philosophical over the relative merits of Marcel from Season Two and Hung from Season Three. While I steadfastly refuse to take requests, I'm happy to report that Entertainment Weekly has rushed in to address the issues that so many Top Chef fans desperately want to settle. Who would win an oven-mitts-off smackdown between, say Ilan and Tiffani? Or Dave and Tre? Or, yes, Hung and Marcel?
Prognosticators rejoice! EW has just unveiled the Top Chef Bracket Game. The fantasy tourney is made up of 16 chefs from entire run of the show, Seasons One through Three. You log into the site, pick the chefs that you suppose the rest of the world will similarly anoint, and whoever comes closest to predicting the exact Top Chef pecking order wins bragging rights as the, um, well, most entirely average Top Chef viewer? I'm not sure if there's a trophy. Perhaps first prize is getting to cohost Rocco DiSpirito's online cooking show, brought to you by the fine folks at Bertolli. ("It's good stuff.")
As the show opens, we're down to ten contestants. This week's guest judge is Rocco DiSpirito, he of his own culinary reality series, The Restaurant, which originally aired in 2003 and was asked to pack its knives and go after two brutal seasons. Rocco and Padma announce that the Quickfire Challenge this week will be a cooking "bee"—a quiz where the chefs are asked to identify ingredients by either sight or taste. Miss one and you're out. Get more items right than anyone else and you've won immunity. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump; click at your own risk. ]
Chicago, which is certainly a hotbed of great cuisine these days, has been tapped as the next locale to host Bravo's culinary cookoff. Unfortunately, the press release hit our inbox a couple days late to let you know about this past weekend's open casting at the Rock Bottom Brewery. Still, if you think what you've got to be a "cheftestant" and want to brave the Top Chef pressure cooker, you can still send in a tape or show up at the open casting calls in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Just remember, the weather in Chicago during taping is unlikely to resemble Miami's balmy temps. It's gonna be a whole lot chillier when you step out of the Top Chef hot tub. After the jump, audition times and locations.
Pre-empting the competition in progress, Top Chef ran a hybrid reunion/clip show last night. Bravo exec Andy Cohen presided over the confab, which included judges Colicchio, Lakshmi, Simmons, and Allen, as well as high-ranking contestants from the first two seasons and the eliminated contestants from Season Three.
Interspersed between viewer Q & A and 90-second thematic clips from the run of the show were light-hearted exchanges between judges and contestants, tending more towards understanding than recrimination. In fact, the whole hour was mostly a laugh-fest, with very little re-opening of old wounds. Although it's not like Bravo didn't try, several hot-button issues were raised, it's just that no-one in the room decided they were mad enough (or drunk enough) to get really belligerent.
First off, if you're a fan of Top Chef, casual or hard-core, it's time to visit the Bravo website and read up. There are a metric ton of blogs on that site, and, while they're not always stellar, the scales are tipping in a big way when you've got chefs like Anthony Bourdain and Season One's Harold Dieterle breaking it down. Bourdain's take on last week's episode is well worth your time, as is Dieterle's recap of this week's action. In fact, go read his and ignore the rest of mine...
Ah, well, if you insist, here's my take. [Warning: Spoilers follow after the jump.]
This week's quickfire challenge was pairing an appetizer with a gin-based cocktail, thanks to YABS (yet another bizarre sponsor). One chef, Dale, jumped at the opportunity, since he'd recently had a consulting gig to pair food with hard alcohol. Most of the other chefs, however, seemed unenthusiastic about the challenge, and, in a nice twist, the winner, Texas girl Casey, had never tasted a gin rickey and was flying completely blind. So much for master mixology.
On the elimination challenge front, since 12 divides so nicely, the chefs were grouped into teams of three and asked to create a trio of dishes based on a single ingredient of their choice. After sorting themselves using scraps of paper and a bit of negotiation, the teams all took off to plot their strategies.
The episode, if anything, seemed to lack the kind of high drama that team competitions have brought out in the past. Nemeses Howie and Joey ended up on the same team (voluntarily!), and sparks did not fly. In fact, they spent a good amount of time bonding in solidarity against their other teammate, Casey, who found the burden of immunity hard to bear gracefully. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Hot-tub-lovin' Brian follows up on last week's win with a quick-fire victory. Lucky for him, the challenge was a softball lobbed right into his wheelhouse—fresh shellfish. The chefs had 30 minutes to shuck and prepare a net-full of aquarium dwellers. Howie and C.J. also got high marks from guest judge, Alfred Portale, owner of the Gotham Bar and Grill.
The elimination challenge shifted gears to the proverbial "update classic American comfort food, give it your own twist, and make it healthier." Each chef is asked to pick a different dish from a lineup that included franks and beans, meatloaf, fried chicken, tuna casserole, etc., and they are given specific instructions about "lowering cholesterol." Besides the judges, the chefs will need to impress the members of the local Elks Club.
Long story short: Just about everyone disappointed, despite having ample funds ($75) and ample time (this was the first week that all dishes were actually plated as intended). Padma and Tom seemed surprised, shocked even, that the chefs didn't get more "creative" and deliver more appealing fare. [Warning: Spoiler after the jump.]
Ah, nothing like a episode recap to really whet your appetite for a new installment of Top Chef. We'd love to tell you that this teaser gives you something to look forward to this Wednesday, but besides watching Micah doing a few push-ups, precious little new ground is broken. Perhaps the revelations this week are so shocking that the producers don't want to give anything away.
Of course, you could just tune in to the clip in which Week 2 winner Brian talks about his daily hot-tub routine. Your choice.
Upscale barbecue. That was the theme for Week 2's elimination challenge. South Florida event planner Lee Schrager threw an afternoon party for a bunch of Miami muckety-mucks, and the chefs were pretty much left their own devices to come up with a menu that could satisfy 60 guests.
The main limitations were that the food would be served on paper plates, eaten with fingers or maybe a plastic fork, and that the dishes needed to be cooked on barbecues with charcoal provided courtesy of Brand-Name Sponsor #85. (Bravo, can we please just have companies sponsor the contestants, NASCAR-style, with large logos covering every inch of their whites? Frankly, it would be a welcome relief from the current mode of product placement.)
Long story short: Sara N. is made to look completely incompetent during both quickfire and elimination challenges, through the wonders of selective editing. "Are habaneros hot? I had no idea!" Of course, she manages to land in the top three in the elimination challenge with her Vietnamese barbecue wraps. Smart use of lettuce, the ultimate edible utensil. Way to go, Sara. Next week, remember to breathe.
[Caution: Spoiler after the jump.]
It's week two of Top Chef, Season Three, and I'm contractually obligated to watch (Bravo, Wednesday, 10 p.m. ET). If you missed last week's opener, don't be afraid to wade in. These first weeks are pretty much all the same—"Sorry to see you go, we hardly knew ya." Top Chef is very forgiving to viewers who come late to the party, or just want to drop in for an episode here or there.
On a related note: Frank Bruni of the New York Times is weighing in on the show or, more specifically, on the judging policies of the show. He even gets a response in his comments from Tom Colicchio, who defends the integrity of the process. Unfortunately, for most of us who have been through multiple seasons of Project Runway, the specter of "producer influenced" decisions is very old news. Top Chef isn't a game show, it's a television show, as Bruni rightly asserts, and anyone who can't live with that should probably stick to The Price Is Right. Unless, of course, they end up shooting a reality show to pick a new host.
One chef down. Thirteen more to go. If you missed the first installment of this summer's Top Chef, here's an edited version (Note: spoiler after the jump).
We're in Miami. There are so many damn contestants they can't squeeze in a 20-second voice-over intro for everyone. Who is the guy from San Diego? Dunno. Who is the girl from Brooklyn? Check the website.
The opening cocktail party takes place in the mansion where Gianni Versace lived and was ultimately murdered (um, creepy). The convivial kickoff cocktail party turns into the chefs' first quickfire challenge: You have ten minutes to make an amuse bouche using the leftovers from the buffet table. Surprisingly, the results looked great—almost top to bottom—and no one ran into time difficulties.
That wasn't the case for the elimination challenge, in which each chef (all 90 or so) was asked to create a "Surf 'n Turf" dish using exotic proteins like rattlesnake, kangaroo, geoduck, boar, abalone, black chicken, eel, etc. Two of the contestants got dinged by the clock and faced elimination for not getting their whole meal plated in time.
Following up on last week's on-air publicity stunt charity contest, Bravo's Top Chef has kicked off Season Three with a pair of cook-offs in New York and Miami. The latter city is the location for this year's run, but New York was were I happened to be hanging out when hosts Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio wheeled out the Top Chef party tent and set Season Two contestants Ilan and Sam quick-firing at each other. I can't tell you who won, since I had an appointment at the nearby Union Square Cafe, but I can remind you to watch the season opener tonight on Bravo, 10 p.m. ET. Note: Add 15 minutes to your recording if you're taping the show. Apparently, Bravo didn't get the memo that supersizing television episodes is bad for you.
Last night, the folks at Bravo offered a one-hour amuse bouche for the imminent third season of Top Chef. The format was one part reunion special, one part business as usual, with a dash of coming attraction.
We met the newest judge, Queer Eye's Ted Allen; we learned that the show is stopping in Miami for the upcoming series; and we saw a four-course challenge between teams of finalists from the first two seasons.
The courses were judged independently, and each featured a different main ingredient: scallops, lobster, duck, and Kobe beef. The team with the most head-to-head wins got to donate $20,000 to their favorite charity.
Here's the tale of the toques:
Dave (Season 1) vs. Elia (Season 2), preparing scallops
Stephen vs. Marcel, lobster
Harold vs. Ilan, duck
Tiffani vs. Sam, beef
I won't spoil the results, since you can still catch the show on Bravo this coming week or streaming at the Top Chef website. However, I will say this: The real winner, as always, was the relative insufferability of the contestants. Some chefs had mellowed a bit, others had clearly been toughened up by notoriety. But there's no denying that the people you love to hate are the real stars of Top Chef, and it looks like Season 3 continues on tastefully in that grand reality-show tradition.
Top Chef heartthrob and eventual winner Harold Dieterle's restaurant Perilla opened recently in New York City's West Village, and Season Two hottie Sam Talbot was supposed to follow suit on the Lower East Side in the middle of June with a gastropub called Spitzer's Corner. But according to Eater, he and his business partners have called it quits—they're still opening the restaurant, but he's no longer involved with the operation. Too bad, the place sounds great, and I was really looking forward to checking him, er, it, out.
(Dieterle is still the only contestant with a restaurant in Manhattan, but Season Two's Josie Malave opened her own place, Island Cafe Bar and Lounge, in Queens back in March.)
Related: Top Chef 3: Miami Vice
Eater just posted the press release for the upcoming third season of Top Chef, set to premiere June 13 at 10 p.m. ET. I loved the first season, most of which I saw in a marathon before the finale, and tuned out the second, but I think I might actually watch this one through!
Big changes: The show is now located in Miami and set at the beachfront Fontainebleau Hotel, which I'm guessing means we're going to be seeing fresh fruit, seafood, Latin influences, and bikinis galore. Padma fans, please shut your mouths and stop drooling all over your keyboards in anticipation—it's very unattractive. Also Ted Allen of Queer Eye fame is joining the show as a judge. Either someone at Bravo liked what they saw of his panel appearances on Iron Chef America, or they're trying desperately to keep the QEftSG flame alive somehow.
Small changes: Allen and last season's runner-up, Marcel Vigneron, will be keeping blogs on Bravo's site, joining those of Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, and Gayle Simmons. I bet Marcel's will be the most entertaining of the bunch and can't wait to read it! Less exciting: Bravo is going to start doing "mobisodes"—video interviews with the guest judges you can only watch on your web-enabled cellphones. I have a master's degree in nerd and I still wouldn't bother. I'm not typing URLs with my phone's teeny keyboard for anything less than super juicy unaired scenes, Bravo. Try harder next time.
Restaurants rarely open when they say they will for all sorts of reasons, but Top Chef heartthrob and eventual winner Harold Dieterle's first restaurant, Perilla, looks to be on course to open in the middle of this month, just like he said it would. According to our friends at Eater, the space in New York's West Village looks just about ready for primetime, and Perilla is already accepting reservations for May 14th on OpenTable. All you Top Chef fans from out of town, it's time to book your tables and plane tickets!
Is PrimeTimeTables.com a Rip Off?
The New York Times food section today was particularly toothsome and yummy: Kim Severson's piece on Prime Time Tables, the service that allows members to pay a fee (as little as $35) to get reservations at New York's hottest restaurants on short notice, reminded me that I had this same idea a couple of years ago. It was going to be called Tough Tables. The key difference was that I was going to donate 75 percent of the proceeds to the chef or restaurateur's favorite charity. First of all, what do serious eaters think of the idea of Prime Time Tables? Is it a rip off or just capitalism at its best or worst? Should we proceed with Tough Tables at Serious Eats? We could do it at restaurants all over the country.
b>Cut the Line
Also, we serious eaters decided that we were going to start a like-minded service, "Cut the Line," for the foods we love to cover on this site, things like pizza, burgers, hot dogs, Asian noodles and pork buns, pastrami, and food carts. For a buck or two you'll be able to cut the line at Di Fara in Brooklyn; the Burger Joint, Momofuku, Katz's, and Gray's Papaya in Manhattan; Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco; Pink's in Los Angeles; Johnny's in Elmwood Park, Illinois; Legal Seafoods in Boston and Washington, D.C.; Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix; Prince's Fried Chicken in Nashville; Red Mill in Seattle; and the Cheesecake Factory in hundreds of locations. Whaddaya think? Operators are standing by.
Is Top Chef Worth Watching?
Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni's piece on Top Chef is going to force me to watch my first episode of the show this evening. Is it worth watching? Has my Law & Order addiction prevented me from sampling shows like Top Chef? Who's going to win? Are the various spoilers correct in picking the winner? Serious eaters want to know.
Guest-posting on food writer Michael Ruhlman's blog, Anthony Bourdain dishes up the short order on some of this season's Top Chef contestants. Of the remaining two:
Marcel:Is there ANYTHING this guy doesn't want to foam? So slavishly devoted to what Ferran Adria was doing TEN YEARS AGO it's....scary and sad.
Ilan: So Ilan cribs his offerings shamelessly from Andy Nusser. And he's a manipulative, conspiratorial, vindictive, weasely little shit....(Hardly impediments to a career as a chef). These are classic assets.
If you need to catch up on the show, Bravo is airing all the back episodes on Wednesday, January 31, starting at 10 a.m. ET, and ending with the season finale at 10 p.m. ET.
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