top chef

A few words about Top Chef 3

maki — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:11:08 +0200

As long time readers of Just Hungry may know, I used to recap every single episode of the Bravo TV reality show Top Chef. The first season had me glued to my…er, computer screen. However for various reasons I did not do so for the third season that just concluded. I did watch it though, and have just a few thoughts.

First some general comments:

Season 3 was better than season 2 mostly, because there wasn’t as much silly behind-the-scenes shenanigans. In other words no one tried to force-shave someone’s head. It was also nice to see more professional women chefs in the mix - if you recall in previous seasons half the women there seemed to be glorified short order cooks or just there for self-PR/eye candy purposes.
However, overall the food cooked was not that memorable or innovative. The main things I remember are that Hung sous vide-ed everything (well, he used that method a lot), and that Casey had an interesting Japanese twist to a several of her dishes. I think there was less chi-chi going on in the dishes this year though (less foam, less gastrique-something).
Ted Allen sucks as a judge. Sorry Queer Eye fans or Ted Allen fans. He seemed so naive or something, even more than Padma. And his mouth bothered me every time he spoke. On Queer Eye the fabulousness of the other guys covered up for him, but here he’s exposed.
Padma is highly annoying, and I don’t know why people seem to like her (by people, I mean the interweb commenters.)
The prizes for winning each elimination challenge were hilariously uneven. Anyone want a signed copy of Padma’s book over a trip to Italy? Anyone?
I missed Gail when she wasn’t there. I liked Bourdain though I wouldn’t say I loved him. As for Tom Colicchio…I don’t know, at times I found him quite (that word again) annoying. Maybe it’s the editing.
What’s with the hot tub boobie shots? Geez.
After a while I grew numb to the persistent product placement. This is not good news for the product placers if a lot of people had the same reaction, since I barely remember which products were pushed in the viewers’ faces, and the couple of names I do remember I have a strong negative reaction to. There was one particular product placement that was so laughably obnoxious that the editors cut out most of it and put it on the Bravo TV web site instead (it was the breakfast-for-Padma in their suite challenge, and the product was a blender.) I am going to seek alternatives to the Glad family of products consciously whenever I have the chance.

About the contestants:

Even though he screwed up royally in the restaurant challenge, I loved Tre and stopped being bothered either way about the results after he was eliminated.
Howie of course was Villain No. 1 of the season, and he was quite obnoxious quite often, but I did like his passion and commitment. And he seems to be have mastered the art of cooking meat, which is pretty hard to do. (I really screwed up some spare ribs last night. It made me so sad.)
I barely even noticed Dale until the final two or three episodes. Despite the hair.
When I see how gorgeous Casey is, and how she is also an awesome chef with a great palate too, plus she has a great haircut, I think how unbalanced the universe is. I think the competition was hers to lose, and it’s too bad she collapsed in the final challenge. On the other hand if the first female winner had been a model-gorgeous girl like her, I think it would not necessarily have been good, in the artificial and superficial world of TV. (Notice how the sole female Iron Chef is the equally gorgeous Cat Cora, who doesn’t even own one restaurant?)
I’m glad the attempts to make Hung Villain no. 2 didn’t drag him down enough to prevent him from winning. Hung is a very familiar type to me - a lot of the Japanese chefs I know are sort of like him in terms of energy (not that they all go running at full speed around the kitchen with a knife in one hand). The snarky comments made against him by other, more laid-back contestants, were amusing - it showed how they saw him as competition I think. And all the ‘lack of team spirit’ comments by people like talentless and colorless CJ were pretty silly - except for team challenges, what reason at all do any of the chefs have to help another competitor?
Speaking of Hung, the judges frequently complained that he didn’t show ‘soul’ and ‘didn’t see Hung in his dishes’. Subtext: he didn’t make everything Asian/Vietnamese-ish. I wish that at some point Hung would have said ‘I’m trained in classic French cuisine, but I’m Vietnamese so I have to make everything Vietnamese? Since your last name is Italian you should only be running Italian joints, Chef Colicchio!’ Or something, you know. Hung is a multicultural American, like most Americans - or indeed, most people - are, with lots of food influences in his life, and should be allowed to use that in his cooking. (It seems fine when non-Asians like Casey use Asian influences in thier cooking though. Shouldn’t she be sticking to her ‘roots’, whatever they are, too? How dare she use things like mirin, that’s not in her ethnic-socioecononic background! (Just in case, I’m being sarcastic.)) [Update: Tom Colicchio explains himself on the ‘soul’ issue.]

As for future seasons of this show, it seems that since Bravo is owned by NBC-Universal, I won’t be able to legally download it anymore from the iTunes store, without going through a lot of annoying hoops. (The NBC site blocks non-US IPs, and I’ve no doubt something like that will happen with Bravo shows.) Oh well. I don’t really think I’ll miss it too much.

I will be watching Top Chef but...

maki — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:50:25 +0200

I am gradually catching up on the Daily Grind, which includes some recorded or downloaded TV shows (yay Lee won Joseph! OMG Katie really got her just desserts, the biatch! (only UK readers will know what I’m talking about)). I’ve watched the first two episodes of Top Chef 3 (aka Top Chef: Miami), plus the Season 1 vs. Season 2 smackdown. I enjoyed the smackdown episode a lot - it was fun to see old favorites again. Wasn’t Stephen’s new maturity impressive? Dave hasn’t changed at all! Tiffani looks sort of like a female version of Mario Batali. And god, Ilan was awful. Etc. etc.

It’s fun and all that still, and the season 3 contestants look varied and interesting, but I just can’t bring myself to recap and analyze each episode of this show any more as I did with seasons 1 and 2. (Judging from the email, I guess a few people will be disappointed…sorry!) It’s a bit of work to assemble screen shots and things, and analyzing TV cooking shows isn’t really a focus of this blog after all. And to be honest, Top Chef is nowhere near being the best or most interesting food-related TV show any more. Plus, the constant, in your face product placement that I complained about during last season is even worse now! It’s really hard to bear. (I also got an email from some PR person wanting to ‘work with me’ on ‘promoting Top Chef’, and well, I’m really not interested.)

When I started doing recaps and reviews of each episode back in season 1, I was one of the few doing it - I thought the show had a lot of potential, coming as it did from the producers of Project Runway. Now there are a zillion blogs and forums doing this - Bravo TV’s site alone has about a thousand of them. The best, by far, in my opinion is from Season 1 favorite Lee Anne Wong, who also cooks the winning recipe for each ep in The Wong Way To Cook, still a horrible title but the video itself is nice. So there are plenty of places to get your Top Chef fixes.

Top Chef Season 3 starts June 6 with an all-star competition

maki — Wed, 09 May 2007 08:39:36 +0200

It only seems like yesterday (actually it was in January) that season 2 of Top Chef ended, leaving many of us baffled and rather disillusioned at the Ilan over Marcel decision. Nevertheless, season 3 is already looming on the horizon. It’s set to kick off on June 6, with a season 1 vs. season 2 All-Star Clash. It’ll be the final four of season 2 vs. the final four, minus LeeAnne Wong (who is presumably not included since she’s on the show’s staff, so to speak) but with everyone’s love-to-hate-him target Stephen Asprinio. Marcel vs. Stephen! I have to admit I am looking forward to that at least.

Some more highlights according to the press release after the fold:

There will be 15 contestants.
The venue will be Miami Beach. Actually the show is called “Top Chef 3: Miami” apparently. This seems appropriate since Miami Beach is now supposed to be the ‘hot new food spot’ in the US, and Bravo and Top Chef are about being superficially Trendy if nothing else. I look for a contestant who prints out his food a la Homaru Cantu or makes his own cutlery a la Grant Achatz this season.
Queer Eye Ted Allen will be a regular judge. Not sure if this is good or bad. I’d have rather seen Bourdain, but I guess he’s too dangerous. Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons are back too.
Padma Lakshmi is back as the mostly irrelevant host. Given the new subtropical venue, she will have plenty of chances to wear Daisy Dukes and low cut frilly tops.
LeeAnne is back with her “Wong Way To Cook”web videos - now that’s good news.
Everyone and their brother, sister and therapist will have a blog about the show on the Bravo TV website.

Read the full press release on the futon critic.

I’m not sure if I will be doing recaps again for the new season. When I (rather inadvertently) started my episode recaps in season 1, there weren’t many people blogging about the show. Last season there were tons, and there’s bound to be way more this season. And, season 2 really disappointed me. I’ll reserve my judgement until after the first couple of episodes, but at this point it’s more likely that I won’t be recapping every single episode. (Besides, I’ll be offline for the first 3-4 episodes.) In the meantime though the best official blog last season was LeeAnne’s, and I’m sort of looking forward to what Marcel has to say. If you’re a Top Chef junkie there will be plenty to occupy your time.

Top Chef Season 2, Episode 13: Finale

maki — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:59:29 +0100

I don't have much to say about the finale of Top Chef. Just this:

WTH???

Didn't all the comments and all the edits in the show lead you to believe that Marcel was a shoo-in? Didn't the guest judges seem to prefer Marcel's dishes much more than Ilan's? The only knocks against Marcel was the usual thing of his sous-chefs Mike and (to a lesser extent) Sam not respecting him much and all the usual "Marcel can't get along with other chefs" bla bla that we have been hearing and seeing all season; plus the fact that he misplaced his fish and messed up some sort of fancy droplet thing. The judges still loved his food and thought it was innovative, light, and all of that. They seemed to like, not love, Ilan's food, no?

But Ilan still wins! Especially after last week's thing about 'this is a show about the food not how the chef is in the kitchen' I just don't get it. I felt really bad for Marcel. His food looked miles better.

A very confusing and unsatisfying end to a confusing and unsatisfying season. I will need a very long break before I can even think about getting enthusiastic about this show again, if ever.

Top Chef Season 2 Episode 12 (Finale part 1)

maki — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 08:56:45 +0100

I am mildly surprised that Marcel and Ilan won this round, to go through to the final head to head. Though I must admit that at this point I don't really care much about the outcome since I don't care much about any of the four semi-finalists. The whole Elia accusing Marcel of 'cheating' sequence (with zero shown support from Ilan or Sam) was so awkward I'd rather forget it.

The food was quite interesting, but I've never been to Hawaii. It's definitely on my list of must-go-to-someday places, especially since there are strong ties to Japanese culture there. (Besides, I often get mistaken for being from Hawaii...not sure why!) But I've never really had Hawaiian food, so I don't know what poi or any of the other foods that the contestants were supposed to emulate, or evoke, in their dishes are like. So I felt like a blind person trying to appreciate colors when looking at the dishes for the challenge. Once again, this points out the disadvantages of a food or cooking show contest. We can only trust what the judges say about what they are eating.

Cooking = applying heat?

One thing I really objected to was the comment/view expressed, especially by Tom Colicchio, that Sam didn't do much because he didn't 'cook' anything. Does cooking mean you have to heat food in some way? That's ridiculous. "Cooking" with acid is a valid process. Putting ingredients together is a valid process. It shows a bias against cuisines that do not heat all of their food. It may have been a nitpicking detail they used as an excuse to differentiate the contestants, but it was frankly silly. Is foaming up xanthum gum and pineapple juice 'cooking'? I guess the judges thought so, since Marcel passed.

A chemical un-romance

The number people that actually care about what is going on in the higher echelons of haute cuisine are probably just a tiny fraction of the population. And the number of those who have actually gone to a 'molecular gastronomy' restaurant are a small fraction of that (mainly because they are mostly located in a few cities, and they are all prohibitively expensive). It's safe to assume that way, way more people watch the Top Chef show from the comfort of their sofas.

So it's likely that Marcel has, for better or worse, introduced this 'molecular gastronomy' (which I put in quotes since the practitioners of this say we aren't to call it that anymore) stuff to more Americans than all the 'real' chefs who are proponents of this kind of cooking combined. Because his interpersonal skills (at least in front of a camera) and presentational skills (ditto) are so horrible, this is probably a bad thing for the movement. He's not a master of the methods, his judgement is not always right, and the foam has become a running joke. The methodology of 'molecular gastronomy' seems weird, sci-fi-ish and eccentric in any case to the casual viewer. It would have done the movement a ton of good if well-liked Sam for instance had been the resident MGist of the season. I'm not a wholehearted fan of the movement myself (I've noted before the similarities with the methods used and the industrial food manufacturing methods employed by big corporations, and wondered what the big deal really is) but it's a shame if one rather immature young man can do this. (In contrast, the recent BBC series starring Heston Blumenthal was a much better intro to the movement, from an acknowledged master. I hope it makes it over to BBC America someday so people in the U.S. can compare.) Not that the producers of Top Chef care anything about educating the public, I'm sure.

So...who's going to win? The logical choice might be Ilan, who despite some weak moments has mostly survived unscathed by too much controversy. But then, not-liked Jeffrey did win the last season of Project Runway...

links for 2007-01-21

maki — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 01:24:45 +0100

News For Curious Cooks: Keeping olive oil cool

Extra virgin olive oil goes rancid just as fast in the fridge as at room temperature, so storing all those bottles in the fridge is pretty meaningless. Another great report on Harold McGee's blog.

(tags: oliveoil refrigerators foodstorage)
The New York Times > Kyotofu Restaurant Review

A new NYC restaurant that serves nouveau Japanese-ish desserts based on tofu and such. Must try next time I'm there.

(tags: newyork restaurants tofu vegetarian japanese)
The Feisty Foodie: kyotofu

A nice dining (or is that dessert-ing?) report on Kyotofu.

(tags: restaurants newyork japanese)
Editing of Marcel's head-shaving attempt may have understated Elia's role

Interesting speculation...could the producers have manipulated the editing to set up Elia as the winner? Could it be a Marcel-Elia final two?

(tags: topchef bravotv)
Big belly may be matter of stress / Experts test if relaxation techniques aid in trimming abdominal fat

Cortisol, insulin, and potato chips - a lethal combo!

(tags: weightloss snacking stress foodscience)
Get Rich Slowly » Making the Most of Cheap Cuts of Beef

Useful if you tend to eat big hunks o' beef...which we don't anymore. Using meat sort of as a flavoring as in Chinese and Japanese cooking really helps you save on meat costs.

(tags: beef meat budget)

Top Chef Season 2 Episode 11...should we care?

maki — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:52:21 +0100

The recap of this episode is brief, because I want to discuss something else about the show itself. But the recap and review first.

Cliff was probably going to get booted anyway. Lentils and beef sounds good as combo, but he didn't execute it right. He was playing it too safe.
I did feel really bad for Marcel, and Cliff and the others were incredibly stupid in what they did - especially Cliff, obviously, and he deserved to get kicked off the show. Still...seeing him with a shaved head would have been funny...
Why was it up to Padma to yell "you idiots" to the contestant? She has that much authority? If it came from Tom Colicchio fine...but from..Mrs. Rushdie? (I have admitted already that I dislike her more and more, which is why I probably noticed it.)
Elia looks great with a shaved head! So does Ilan. They should both keep the look - there's a precedent for sexy bald top chefs.

I think Chef was bald...

Ilan's chocolate truffle with a chicken liver center is a close second to last week's watermelon and 'gnocchi' with gorgonzola sauce by Sam for the "what were you thinking" wacky food award. I do dimly see his logic though, because of the texture of the liver when cooked...but still. Liver. Chocolate.
Geez, how did they get Eric Ripert (of a Super Serious New York Restaurant (Le Bernadin) on this mess show? 15 minutes of fame blabla...
I always wonder in these situations - did the Romantic Dinner couples have to pay for their dinners? I wonder if I'd pay for a Top Chef dinner myself...there's always the risk of Chocolate Covered Livers...
Apparently (though it was sort of lost in the confusion) Ilan's dish was the winner...demonstrated here by Lee Anne. Looks nice!

So anyway, after the totally unnecessary and condescending tease about which chefs would be eliminated (which was obviously going to be 'none' since Cliff was disqualified for manhandling Marcel), all four remaining chefs jet off to Hawaii for the final rounds.

But there's a bigger question to be asked...

Does Top Chef work as a show?

I don't talk about it here since this is a food blog, but I love Project Runway, on which Top Chef is modelled. Even when I disagree with the choice of winner, as I did this past season, it's still a great show. There are many elements that make Project Runway successful, but the question we discussed while wotching the latest episode of Top Chef. 'We' who watch Top Chef and Project Runway together are die hard food lovers, who have varying degrees of interest in fashion (one of us has zero interest), but we unanimously love Project Runway and have very mixed feelings about Top Chef.

Some of the elements that make Project Runway successful include:

Fashion is a visual art, so we the viewing audience can see the results of each challenge. While there are things like wearability and comfort to consider real life garment construction, for high fashion which is what the show is mostly about it's all visual.
The final reward, a runway show at New York Fashion Week, is a real, valuable goal for most designers in the U.S.
The setting, New York City, is the unquestioned center of the garment industry, and Parsons is one of the top design schools.
Some of us have problems with Heidi Klum as host (like her rather whiny delivery...incidentally, she's much less whiny in German), but there's no question that she has real fashion creds as a top model. Besides she doesn't really have that much to do except announce the challenges and participate in the final judging - and, since she is a top model you sort of take what she has to say seriously.
Of course - Tim Gunn! A real teacher and mentor, he makes the show come alive.

Comparing these points to Top Chef:

Food is only partly visual, and the visual part is definitely secondary to the taste and smell. So the audience can't really judge along - we can only take what the judges say to be true.
The value of final reward, besides the money and the Sponsored Appliances, is nebulous. Is participating in a food festival at some resort, which we never get to see anything of anyway, really that valuable to a chef's career? Most of the chefs seem to be on that show because of the publicity they might get just for being on TV. This makes for some unsatisfactory contestants (this season's Betty comes to mind here, as does last season's Andrea).
The setting...well it 's neutral I guess (in my opinion they should have kept it in San Francisco, since no other U.S. city is as totally obsessed about food.)
The host, this season and last, has been less than satisfactory. I guess we are supposed to buy Padma Lakshmi as a food expert, as we were supposed to buy Katie Lee Joel as such. I don't, for either of them. PLUS they are boring.
Tom Colicchio is a great chef and insightful judge but he's not Tim Gunn - and I know he's said on his blog that's not his role, and so on.

So, the show lacks these things. Add to that the extremely noticeable Product Placement for every single episode, and it adds up to a much less enjoyable show than its big brother, for us anyway. Sure it has something to do with the contestants, but I find that I have to almost force myself to continue watching...mainly because I commmited to these recaps. I'm really not sure if I'll care enough to do the same for next season.

It will be interesting to see how the upcoming interior design show Top Design fares in comparison.

So, what do you think...is Top Chef good enough to keep watching? It is worth taking at all seriously? Is it just reality show fluff?

Top Chef Season 2 Episode 10

maki — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:01:14 +0100

Oh, Mikey, we feel bad for you. After your triumphs last week, you are judged to be the worst of the remaining six, all of whom did a mediocre to bad job, and you are jettisoned. We hope that you will open your own gastropub some day. Or at least run your own TGIFriday's.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To be honest, this season of Top Chef is wearing thin on me. I no longer look forward eagerly to next week's episode. There is no single cause for this, there are several.

First there is the relentless, relentless, product placement. It's more noticeable on this show than just about any other. It's even worse than Survivor. If those poor mosquito-bitten souls get a barrelfull of Mountain Dew as a reward or whatever, fine, they drink it, it's done and over with. But on Top Chef they center a whole challenge around Product Placement. The Kraft Product Quickfire Challenge™ with the labels of those Products in constant view was just way too much.

So for this reason I am skipping the Quickfire Challenge. Besides, it was boring. Plus, they didn't tell us exactly what 'special gift' the winners Sam and Marcel got. And also, the guest judge-chef's hairdo was just annoying.

And, now I can say for sure - the season two host is about as boring as the season 1 judge, except that her wardrobe is way, way worse. I would shut her out completely except they seem to insist on pushing the image of her as a 'food expert' and thus making her utterances audible. (Do I dare hope for Lee Anne as the host for season 3? Though I wonder also if this would be good for Ms. Wong's career path. Or, if I would still care enough to pay for a season pass and watch the show.)

I did say that the show was wearing thin on me.

Nevertheless, a little about the episode itself...

The Let's Run Half A Restaurant elimination challenge, like last season, was influenced greatly by the quality of the front-of-service person. Last season, David handled this brilliantly, while Stephen annoyed his customers by lecturing to them about the food. In this episode, Cliff got a lot of flack for being a rather cold (and even scary-looking) floor manager, and Ilan also got criticism for his ineffective manner in that role. I am not quite sure how fair this is, since I really don't know of any great chefs who are also great front-of-house people. Imagine, like, Gordon Ramsay as a maitre'd.

The concepts conceived by each team were okay I think. I would have gone for the High-End Diner since mediocre Italian restaurants are a dime a dozen. I would have made the Italian concept team the losers just for the fact that they forgot to budget for wine! How on earth can you have a Italian restaurant with no wine? Geez. I think the judges put too much emphasis on the fact that Mike didn't get any olive-pit bowls or whatever, versus the fact that the other two didn't get a few bottles of wine.

That dessert on the Italian side, while criticized, is the only dish from either side that stood out for me, for a couple of reasons. First, gorgonzola cheese with watermelon is enough to make you gag just thinking about it. Second, Sam uttered the snidest remark ever with his "if Wylie Dufresne made this everyone would be talking about it" comment. (Wylie Dufresne is the chef-owner of wd-50, a New York restaurant, and a leading proponent of the molecular gastronomy school of cooking. In other words he is über-trendy.) With this comment Sam lowered himself to the same level as Marcel. Third, there is a similar Japanese dessert that combines gnocchi like dumplings (made with rice flour) called shiratama with fruit and sometimes vanilla ice cream. I see so many things about molecular-gastromy that remind me of things that have been around in Japanese cooking for ages, but interpreted in weird ways. But I digress.

Anyway, it was quite clear that of the bottom three of Cliff, Sam and Michael, Michael was going to be the one to go. Cliff wouldn't be kicked for being bad at front-of-house as long as Chef Tom was around, and Sam is probably still regarded as a frontrunner even if he thinks watermelon + gorgonzola is edible. I never got the feeling that Chef Tom thought much of Mike's abilities.

With Mike's easygoing and well-liked personality gone, things should get uglier than ever.

Top Chef Season 2, episode 9: Love and Hate

maki — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:16:56 +0100

After a two week hiatus, the show returns to our screens big and small, with an extra-longish episode. The theme of the show can be summed up in two sentences:

Everyone loves Michael - even, this week, the judges.

Everyone hates Marcel.

I have been quite down on Michael, thinking he didn't even belong on the show, but this week he really did himself proud, winning both challenges! And with a painfully swollen face due to having a tooth pulled! (They did give away the fact that he won the main challenge didn't they, when the judges finished deliberating and chef Tom said "wow".) We'll see how long Michael can keep up his winning ways.

On the other hand, the main theme for this episode is how everyone absolutely hates Marcel. I know that he brings a lot of it on himself, but I thought that the others were acting very childishly, with the exception of Elia who is his friend. But, he is a little brat (or so he seems), and yes, he puts foam on everything, so I'll pick on him too in this recap. I just loved one of the guest's comments about the pinky foam on his tart for the main challenge, that it 'was like cat spit'.) It does look a bit, well, odd.

Marcel is really an example of someone who tries to think he's doing 'molecular gastronomy' without a clue, and I guess it's chefs like him who give the whole movement a bad name and make the prominent chefs known for that genre of food to distance themselves from it.

I loved the themes for both challenges this week. The Quickfire challenge of doing a dish based on one color was a lot of fun. Sam's and Michael's stood out for me, at least visually. And the one item from this episode that made me go "I want to try that" was Mike's carrot chips. Special kudos though to Cliff, who did quite nicely despite being color blind.

As for Marcel - what was he thinking? A sludge-like pool of coffee with grinds under the dish? Again...molecular gastronomy ideas gone all wrong.

Betty, who may have had the easiest color of all, green, was deemed by guest judge Ted Allen as being the worst. It was basically a dish of vegetables. Not too inventive there.

Michael won as previously mentioned, swollen face and more-than-usual slurred speech and all. Unfortunately for him, there's no more immunity for winning the Quickfire.

The theme of the Elimination challenge, to do a dish as part of a 7-course menu based on one of the 7 Deadly Sins, was inspired, but somehow none of the dishes seemed to really exlempify the given sin that well to me. Sloth is three narrow wine glasses of soup? The two closest ones I thought were Sam's spicy appetizer with the popcorn and Elia's roast chicken, though if she had done something like whole quails or something with tail feathers that would have been even prouder. And...anger = spicy, seems a bit pat. Yes, I am nitpicking. I would have loved to have had a seat at this dinner.

Michael's winning dish had a clever concept for sure - the trout wanting to be a salmon, and "green with envy", covered in a green basil sauce. The recipe as demonstrated by Lee Anne is surprisingly sophisticated. Who knew that he had it in him?

The most awkward yet hilarious moment in the episode was the sight of Marcel feeding one of the female guests chocolate syrup from a spoon.

Michael wins but doesn't seem to get anything for winning..not even a box of Ginsu knives. (Maybe they edited something out...) And, despite Ilan's nastiness towards Marcel and "flaccid" (to quote Mrs. Rushdie) funnel cake, and Marcel's foam and the waves of hate directed towards him, Betty was the one to go, for her chunky soup (beetroot and red pepper??) served in wine glasses. And boy am I glad, because she was just way way too annoying.

Next week: the run-a-fake-restaurant challenge!

Top Chef Season 2, Episode 8: Let's party under fake snow

maki — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:42:08 +0100

All stressed out Mia

I must reluctantly admit that this season is just not living up to last season. This has a lot to do with the contestants. Last season there were the ones that we loved to cheer for (Lee Anne, Harold, David, even Miguel), the ones we loved to hate (Tiffani, Stephen) and so on. This season I don't see anyone anywhere near as cute and fiesty as Lee Anne, or as cool as Harold, or even over-the-top emotional and sincere as Dave. And despite all the attempts to make Marcel hateable, he just isn't that much of a personality compared to the determined-as-grit Tiffani and the theatrical Stephen.

Actually there is someone I really can't stand any more and that is Baddabing Betty. She is just annoying. Annoying, annoying, annoying. Such chirpiness in someone 20 years younger than her would be grating, but coming from a 40-something woman...it's just too much to bear.

I guess I still like Ilan a lot (I loved the Channukah cocktail comment) and Sam is cool. Cliff is okay but he has shown about as much personality as a rock. Elia is growing on me a little bit but she is rather fragile. I hate seeing people cry on TV at the drop of a hat - it makes me squirm.

What about the quitter, Mia? Her uncalled-for outburst at Cliff clearly showed that she was way stressed out, and she was probably out of her depth anyway. It's too bad that she didn't act with more grace because I'm sure doing so would have enhanced her business (which seems to have been her main objective for participating on the show in the first placed) rather more. As we know Mia 'sacrificed' herself for Elia by saying she was going instead of her, making herself look noble and all. But Padma did not actually announce that Elia was going home so...we don't know for sure if she was the one going home or if Mia was the one going anyway. I have a feeling Mia was the one going in any case...but we'll never know. (edit: as Shannon points out in the comments Tom Colicchio does say in his blog that they were ready to send Elia home, but there was no indication of this in the show itself. They even cut it so that you see Padma open her mouth about to say something, then Mia cuts in to say she's quitting.) That whole sequence at the end was dramatic but not in a good way - the bleep-bleep was quite unexpected, and while I have no objections against those bleeped words, in that context (edited that way I'm sure) it made Mia look very bad. I felt sorry for her.

There's another thing I hated about this episode, and that's that fake snow. I've seen this at parties and other venues in southern California and Florida (Disneyworld does this kind of thing a lot around this time of the year) and it's just...so...fake! You're in a sub-tropical climate, and you're filling the air with soap bubbles or dandruff or whatever to make it look like snow. There's the Eat Local challenge, what about a Embrace Your Local Climate one?

Now onto the challenges themselves - they were pretty interesting actually. I don't have that much to say about the Quickfire challenge, because in the end I think the choice of winner came down to the personal preference of the guest judge mixologist woman. All the cocktails, except for Betty's coagulated mess, looked pretty good to me...though I am not a big fan of Bailey's. But hey, mini-burgers are very trendy so Cliff was as good a winner as any.

The cocktail party challenge was interesting because there were two very different approaches taken. Do you try to serve a big variety of nibbles at such a party, or go for a few 'great' items? I would tend to go for the variety option, since that way everyone gets to eat something they like. I think that for this particular challenge, something like 7 or 8 really great items would have surely won it without any question - 13 seems a bit too much (and there were a couple of 'filler' items there), while 4 is too few. But the big sin committed by the losing team was that they kept running out of nibbles, so that guests were faced with empty trays. Given that they only had to concentrate on four items, this was quite unforgivable. However, the one dish that make me sit up and say "hmm...must try it" was the strawberry thing by the losing Black team. (One of my favorite guilty snacks is a strawberry jam and bacon sandwich. Just spread good strawberry jam on soft white bread, and cover with crispy bacon. Yummy, yummy.)

Strawberry, cheese and bacon!

So on we go to week 9 - and the previews show Marcel acting like a spoiled brat. Oh well.