Jen absolutely deserved to go. That pork belly looked and sounded awful.

Katie Lee ("There's a lot of flavor going on in there") was on to remind everyone why they should never complain about Padma.

another winner episode. I'm loving this all-stars incarnation.

I thought the challenges were both pretty fun, and agree that Tiffani erred in not fully understanding what would be available for the T-Rex team, but still plenty that they could've done with it.

Jamie wimped out by leaving to get two stitches, but then, she was a master of hovering around the middle of the pack in her season as well. she'll be out soon. all she can cook is soup and fish.

I really enjoyed Jen and was sorry to see her go. I didn't see the season that she was on and found her attitude awesome and bad-ass. she's clearly a woman who has done well in the industry by being better, stronger, more gung-ho, and more bad-ass than most men she's worked with.

That said, it appeared that her dish sucked and she probably deserved to go. I kind of understand what she was going for, but thought that she should've crisped up the bacon after she sliced it, rather than just serving a pale, limp, wet thick slice of bacon, which just seems crazy to me.

One thing I really liked was seeing how the chefs reacted when they were told they'd have to essentially pull an all-nighter and do breakfast in the morning. first of all, did any of them really believe that the show would have them go with and re-creatre the quick-fire challenge *just* to determine who won the quickfire? they should've all known what was coming.

second, I loved seeing some of the chefs get excited about the prospect of pulling an all-nighter and others whine and groan about it. I would've been psyched. let's get some coffee on and start balling, people!

third, I wondered why they didn't' just all report to the kitchen immediately, even if just to scope out the set-up and see what foods were available. I suppose the show told them they weren't allowed to start until X:00, but this was unclear and seemed strange.


overall, a pretty damn good episode. basically what makes this show is that they've managed to get tons of people who are really fun and entertaining to watch. most of whom also have the capacity to make really good food on any given day. I love the attitude brought by Blais, Spike, Marcel, Tiffani, Stephen, and the two Dales, and I enjoy the "nice" characters of Tre, Casey, Carla, and Tiffany. There are a few 'blah' chef-testants personality-wise, but even they can mostly bring it in the cooking department (Angelo).

Predictions:

Dale Levitski, while fun to watch (I especially like his interview comments), will be gone within the next couple weeks.

Carla will be gone soon as well.

Dale Talde is my sleeper pick to make the finals.

My final four are Angelo, Blais, Dale Talde, and Tiffani Faison. I pick Blais to win the whole thing.


I'm excited for this show. That, in and of itself, is something, because I found myself completely losing interest during the most recent season and wondered if I was just bored with the format.

Great blog post from Bourdain about the last episode of All Stars:

http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/season- ... e?page=0,0

Oh Noes! good episode but not the result I was hoping for.

Still love the places we got to see them cook in!

Strategery works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't, as the "Tennis" episode shows.

tcdup wrote:Strategery works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't, as the "Tennis" episode shows.

Of course, to find out for sure you have to stick to your strategy, which the losing team didn't even try when push came to shove.

There's a Greek version of Top Chef! My TV choices at my folks' home in Cleveland are limited as they only get the two Greek satellite stations and basic TV. Imagine my delight when, sitting down to watch the Antenna channel with my parents, I see young chefs standing in front of judges defending their dishes, only in Greek! Clip below:

Top Chef Greece clip

Hellodali wrote:There's a Greek version of Top Chef! My TV choices at my folks' home in Cleveland are limited as they only get the two Greek satellite stations and basic TV. Imagine my delight when, sitting down to watch the Antenna channel with my parents, I see young chefs standing in front of judges defending their dishes, only in Greek! Clip below:

Top Chef Greece clip

Wow! Clearly the same show, including music and of course the logo. I liked hearing the English words "Top Chef" with a Greek accent. Does she say, "Please pack your knives and go" to the losing chef?

Will someone please tell me how Jamie has not been eliminated?? She hasn't cooked/served in 3 weeks!

Unbelieveable

The Lovely Donna wrote:Will someone please tell me how Jamie has not been eliminated?? She hasn't cooked/served in 3 weeks!

Unbelieveable

Two out of three. She did the tomato soup at Townhouse.

I finally got around to watching the most recent episode and for whatever reason, I had a sense that it would be an especially annoying one. Turns out I was prescient enough that I wish I'd been wrong about it. I really don't like Jamie at all, based on how she's been depicted in this series. She comes off as limited in ability, extremely selfish and socially dysfunctional. I don't know that she should have been sent home this week but any challenge in which a contestant's dish isn't even tasted by the judges is conceptually flawed. She was certainly the beneficiary of a major loophole in how the challenge was structured.

Sadly, I've gotten to the point where watching this show has become a bit of a grind. I understand that there are some loose parameters of competition which are actually followed but watching this show has become like herding cats for me. Sit in front of the tv, trust that the producers/editors are doing a fair job of representing what really happened and then react to events that may or may not have even happened the way they were conveyed. It seems that almost every bit of drama on Top Chef is generated by loopholes in the rules or incidents in which enough footage was recorded to reveal an incident but not enough to actually resolve it.

In spectating a sporting event -- another passive activity in which a viewer has no control over the outcome -- at least the entire game is played in the open, with real rules, officials, etc. Sure, mistakes are still made but there's no editorial subjectivity between the actual competition and the viewer. For me, Top Chef manipulation is beginning to overshadow everything else. Artificially-created dramas and villains have gone from interesting -- right past boring -- and directly to frustrating and unappealing. The pleasure in watching is all but gone.

I've been a big fan of this series up to now but my patience is running thin. Top Chef, I'm not sure if a break-up is imminent but if it does happen, "it's me, not you...I swear"

=R=

Ronnie,

LOL! Didn't know you were really George Constanza! ("It's me, not you, I swear")

Ronnie, you forgot the part about where you have to go read the "blogs" to get the real story.

And what did the blogs say about how the hell Jamie got to stay?

Despite all the manipulation, I'm still compelled by this season. You realize how strong a crop of Chefs they have when you see Jen and Casey gone in the first five episodes. While Jamie seems to be roundly criticized for her lack of effort, the chefs with the absolute worst dishes seem to be the ones that are packing their knives. Preparing Dim Sum in New York's Chinatown was definitely a trap episode and it looked like the smart people didn't get overly ambitious (Richard Blais knows when to aim for the middle) and the ambitious people got eliminated. Casey taking on Chicken Feet was a really bad idea, especially having to rely on the other chefs to cook and execute the dish.

With the elimination of two female chefs this past week, my wife is upset, feeling that there is a gender bias. I believe that this is nonsense, that it's all about the food. Besides, I feel that the women have the last laugh with Chef Izard being the most sucessful of the past winners. We wonder if this is true. How sucessful are past winners or even some of the contestants? I just don't get around to other places like I used to with my 007 license being revoked and all. What say you, fellow globetrotting LTH'ers?

Many of the TC contestants have gone on to open their own restaurants. Spike and Blais have their own operations, Ilan has opened a location. Kevin Gillespie continues as owner/chef in Atlanta, Fabio runs two restaurants. Stephanie is following a path trodden by many.

hoppy2468 wrote:With the elimination of two female chefs this past week, my wife is upset, feeling that there is a gender bias.

This more or less happens every season. I can't remember a year where the gender ratio didn't similarly get out of whack.

A quick Google search showed that several past winners of Top Chef have opened their own restaurants, which seem to be doing quite well. Harold Dieterle has two restaurants in New York, Illan Hall has a restaurant in LA and there's Stephanie's success in Chicago. Hung is cooking at The Buddha Bar in NY, Hosea is supposedly traveling to support sustainable agriculture (although it doesn't say in what capacity -- i mean...he is roaming from farmer's market to farmer's market, buying up seasonal produce?) and Michael Voltaggio was incredibly successful before the show -- but apparently left his post at The Dining Room and is going to open his own restaurant.

And I would guess that most of these guys have Bravo after them to do Top Chef fringe stuff all the time.

Will there be Top Chef conventions like Star Trek conventions?????

"Why foam ? Why now ?"

Like last week, I could tell who got eliminated from the interview inserts. Tiffani was way too dolled up and Marcel's eyes were all red and puffy. Something just seemed 'off' about both of them.

Good riddance to Marcel, however. The Antonia Curse continues.

It was also interesting and a nice change to not drag the whole thing out showing the shopping and having to put together the restaurant and it eliminated some of the useless drama of 'OMG ... they didn't get the pork belly at the Whole Foods !!' and other stuff like them wandering around Restaurant Depot looking for amuse bouche spoons.

gastro gnome wrote:

hoppy2468 wrote:With the elimination of two female chefs this past week, my wife is upset, feeling that there is a gender bias.

This more or less happens every season. I can't remember a year where the gender ratio didn't similarly get out of whack.

It happens less than you think. By season, the number of episodes that featured an even (or one off, if there were an odd number of contestants) gender split:

Season 1: 9/10 (50/50 split at start)
Season 2: 1/13 (women started -1)
Season 3: 2/13 (women started -1)
Season 4: 12/14 (50/50)
Season 5: 12/14 (women started -1)
Season 6: 1/14 (women started -1)
Season 7: 7/14 (women started -1)

So with the caveat that gender disparity has almost always favored the men when it happens, it has only happened about half of the time. Three out of the previous seven seasons have maintained a perfect gender split for almost the entire duration of the season.

I thought it was genius strategy by Dale to make Marcel captain of the other team.

1. he doesn't have to work with him.
2. it's usually the losing team captain who goes home in restaurant wars

genius-
I don't like Marcel one iota better this season
methinks he doth protest too much....

I think Mike Isabella got it right about Marcel; maybe his relatively young age has something to do with the fact that he doesn't seem to interact well with the other chefs. Or maybe he's just someone who'll never really possess that skill. As much as we're always subjected to the editing, there were quite a few comments about Marcel from a variety of other contestants, which all pointed out the same issues. This leads me to believe that he may not be an adept manager of relationships. Sometimes that comes with age. Sometimes it doesn't. In in last night's episode, he seemed to be especially inarticulate and underskilled in that particular area. It's frustrating watching someone struggle so angrily and so unnecessarily. At least we won't have to endure it anymore this season.

I'm not sure if Dale's choice to make Marcel the captain of the opposing team was anything more than a personal preference but it certainly worked out well as a strategy, even if by default.

=R=

Fabio has a few words you all, my friends . . . .
Anyway…. Marcel stop foaming and pureeing everything and start to make some foods that will require a knife please to be eaten, thanks.

tem wrote:"Why foam ? Why now ?"

Great stuff from Bourdain over at Bravo.

Anthony Bourdain wrote:I tell you, it's a mystery to me what goes on in that talented young man's head. I can only guess that in Marcel World, it's always 1998, the sky is filled with magical ponies who shit foam -- and appreciate Marcel's rap stylings -- and everybody does exactly what Marcel thinks they should do -- perfectly. And if things go wrong, everybody agrees instantly that it's certainly not Marcel's fault. In Marcel Land, Ferran Adria never existed. Nor did Wylie Dufresne, or Heston Blumethal, or Grant Achatz. He thought all of that stuff up himself. In Marcel Land, what everybody wants is more foam -- they can't get enough! And liquid nitrogen. And gels and powders. Restaurant dining rooms are packed with beautiful women, shuddering with desire and anticipation for foam, foam, and more foam and hardened Crips shrink from his approach.

I finally watched the "Restaurant Wars" episode. Where did they find those diners? Some major fooshbag action going on...yikes.

Of course Marcel is a douche, and should have gone home probably for sure, but Mike Isabella is just as douchey, and really gets away with it. He clearly sabotaged the team's efforts in all sorts of ways, and it's one thing to say Marcel could not lead, it's another to lead when someone won't follow and tries to undermine your leadership. Angelo saw it right away, and said if it was his place, he'd send Isabella home. Thing is, could Marcel do that? Thing also is, that at the end of the day, Angelo and Antonia were not going to step up and tell the judges what really happened, which is why between the two Marcel deserved to go.

I'm really hoping Fabio wins (loved his line last week about the winning dish..."it's French!"), despite that he is obviously not as talented some others. Is it a two-man race between Blais and Angelo?

This has been the best season of Top Chef so far...

I surprised myself by actually liking Angelo's crocodile concept (minus his misspelling!). I thought Mizrahi's comments were kind of snippy and snooty.

P. Channon wrote:Is it a two-man race between Blais and Angelo?

This has been the best season of Top Chef so far...

I might put Dale T above Angelo, notwithstanding his bottom on this last round. But I think this competition is Blais' to lose (just like Season 4).

In terms of best season, this one is definitely up there as a result of the quality of the chefs and the general lack of annoying subplots, plus relatively few really inane challenges (although the Quickfire this week was a bit lame -- more on that below). Certainly in the running with the Las Vegas (Voltaggio bros) season for tops for me.

On the Quickfire this week, I actually did not have a problem with the food not being tasted. While it obviously was not judged on whose food tasted best, there have been other challenges in seasons past that have tested other skills than straight up cooking a good dish -- e.g., the blindfold taste tests, the mise en place relays, and other challenges. Plating/presentation are skills that are important for many restaurants. However, I did have an issue with the fact that this was just subjectively judged by someone with no connection to the food industry, and the comments/critiques came across as super subjective and potentially subject to whim (as opposed to the informed personal preference of a professional in the industry). Would have worked better for me if it was an Eric Ripert or someone judging the plating/presentation. I guess Bravo's going to do what Bravo's going to do in terms of cross-promotion and product placement, but that was disappointing (if unsurprising).

i<3pizza wrote:I thought Mizrahi's comments were kind of snippy and snooty.

I never take food advice from a fashion designer and urge you to do the same.

=R=