Dmnkly wrote:Given how busy Tom has been as of late outside of Top Chef, does anybody else wonder if this is a prelude to replacing him as head judge?

That would be great! I don't dislike Colicchio but Bourdain is more interesting to watch. I also get the feeling that, though the cheftestents respect Colicchio, they don't fear him like they fear the wrath of Bourdain. They also seem really excited at the possibilty of impressing Bourdain.

However, one thing Bourdain lacks, is the pedigree of being a "top chef" like Colicchio has.

Dmnkly wrote:Given how busy Tom has been as of late outside of Top Chef, does anybody else wonder if this is a prelude to replacing him as head judge?

From what I know of Tony, I cannot imagine him taking on a gig like this full-time but things do change. I'd certainly enjoy it.

=R=

viaChgo wrote:

Dmnkly wrote:However, one thing Bourdain lacks, is the pedigree of being a "top chef" like Colicchio has.

Agreed but as much as he's traveled -- and eaten while traveling -- that may not be as big a strike against him as it once may have been.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:

Dmnkly wrote:Given how busy Tom has been as of late outside of Top Chef, does anybody else wonder if this is a prelude to replacing him as head judge?

From what I know of Tony, I cannot imagine him taking on a gig like this full-time but things do change. I'd certainly enjoy it.

=R=

He does have a toddler at home now. Maybe he plans to stay in the country more? Is it the end of No Reservations? Speculation run wild!

OK, finally watched this week's ep:

Spike: really dodged a bullet by taking the front of the house, but he seemed very much a changed man without Andrew around for goofy feedback. Very professional -- brought his A game.

Lisa vs Dale: from the moment the teams were chosen, I was thinking "Two chef entahh - one chef leave" -- they can't work within 50 feet of each other, and neither of them is a leader, nor will they follow anyone. I don't think I'd want to go to a restaurant run by either of them, because you'd never know if you're getting the Jekkyl or Hyde days.

Richard: Almost disappeared today. It's probably editing, I'm sure he contributed, but he just wasn't photogenic this ep. On the other hand, the editors could be foreshadowing his downfall?

Antonia: Looking stronger and stronger, although I've never seen the sort of imagination from her that makes a show like this cool -- it means fewer pratfalls, but fewer arias.

Stephanie: Aside from being the home-town favorite, she just beams every time she gets praise; you want to give it to her.

Next week? I didn't pay much attention to the preview. But if both Spike and Lisa make it to the final four, it will be a big upset.

Did anyone here see the episode of Iron Chef America last year w/Richard? There was this interview posted on egullet. Seems kind of strange to me that someone would go from Iron Chef America to Top Chef. I don't watch Iron Chef America, but aren't the challengers usually pretty established? I have no idea.

I wish Lisa would get eliminated already. Her bad attitude is getting so old. I feel bad that Dale was eliminated. Bourdain pointed out that exec chef, Dale should've put Lisa in line. However, she is so strong headed, I don't think that would've gone well since she already hated Dale. Spike got lucky again - I'm glad that the judges called him out on playing it safe

Yes, I thought Bourdain was really good in this episode--much better than some of his previous appearances. A lot of times, his critiques seem contrived. While they're usually valid, he seems to go out of his way to find a "clever" way to say them that grates on me from time to time.

It's funny, because I actually do like him a lot--his writing and his television shows. I just get irritated with the way he says things for effect.

GardenofEatin wrote:Yes, I thought Bourdain was really good in this episode--much better than some of his previous appearances. A lot of times, his critiques seem contrived. While they're usually valid, he seems to go out of his way to find a "clever" way to say them that grates on me from time to time.

I noted he changed Ted Allen's "baby food with wood chips" to "baby food with potpourri" -- it's possible that Allen changed his description and it was left on the editing floor (I can see him saying, "no, 'wood chips' isn't right, maybe potpourri?"

But on the baby food: What kind of idiots would say, "we can't get sticky rice, let's see if we can fake it?"
They could have also handled it better with the judges if Lisa and Dale could support each other:
L: "We could not find the rice we wanted, but tried to accomplish the dish with what we did find."
D: "I had several suggestions for thickening the rice -- with the time to develop a menu a restaurant normally has, we could probably have fixed it, even without sticky rice. Unfortunately, we did not accomplish what we set out to do."

Would it have saved Dale? Possibly -- it would have given him points for leadership and effort.

I don't know why peope are sorry to see Dale go.
Even if he could cook, he was a consistent cry-baby.
Sure Lisa is a jerk with bad body-piercings, but so what?
If she is doing something wrong, correct her at the time, or move on.
Watching the show, I often wanted to slap him and say "Toughen up! You are pouting a like a four year old!"

On a somewhat related note -- I wonder if being on this show actually hurts the career prospects of some people on it. Would you want to eat at a place run by Lisa -- bad food with an obnoxious chef? Would you expect that a place run by Dale would be run competently?

DML wrote:Would you want to eat at a place run by Lisa -- bad food with an obnoxious chef? Would you expect that a place run by Dale would be run competently?

Well, I don't think it will ever get to that point. Both Dale and Lisa can cook, but they are not "management" material. I see them working as line cooks somewhere or even sous chefs, but a restaurant headed up by either one of them is doomed to fail, unless they found a good "front-man" to be the face and voice of the restaurant to the public (somewhat unlikely, given their personalities).

stevez wrote:

DML wrote:Would you want to eat at a place run by Lisa -- bad food with an obnoxious chef? Would you expect that a place run by Dale would be run competently?

Well, I don't think it will ever get to that point. Both Dale and Lisa can cook, but they are not "management" material. I see them working as line cooks somewhere or even sous chefs, but a restaurant headed up by either one of them is doomed to fail, unless they found a good "front-man" to be the face and voice of the restaurant to the public (somewhat unlikely, given their personalities).

That's my point.
This show is "Top Chef", and not "Top Cook."
I suspect that people go on this show hoping that at worst, they will get some pub that will help them get funding to open their own place.

From what we've seen on this show, neither of these two appear to have the talent to do that.

JoelF wrote:I noted he changed Ted Allen's "baby food with wood chips" to "baby food with potpourri" -- it's possible that Allen changed his description and it was left on the editing floor (I can see him saying, "no, 'wood chips' isn't right, maybe potpourri?"
.

I think the "potpourri" description was attributed to a customer at JT.

Seems kind of strange to me that someone would go from Iron Chef America to Top Chef. I don't watch Iron Chef America, but aren't the challengers usually pretty established? I have no idea.

The first and even second seasons had many unknown competitors, but as the show has gotten more popular it has attracted more well known chefs. Many of the cheftestants have appeared in the pages of Food & Wine or are recommended to the show by very well established chefs. They usually pick a couple chefs out of left field (but then everyone questions how they got there). It is somewhat disappointing (if only because figjustin has auditioned a few times and I'd think he'd make a great contestant), but in the world of celebrity chefs that are backed by PR not surprising.

Although the level of skill this season has made the show really fun to watch, I agree with figmolly that it's a bit frustrating to see so many already-established chefs on the show. I suppose it's all about publicity, and it doesn't say anywhere that it's supposed to be for up and coming chefs, but it takes away a certain angle of the fun, IMO.

I agree with those who said that the outcome of this episode was forecast early on. With all that tape, can't editors try to make it a little less of a foregone conclusion? Anyone else hear Dale's death knells as soon as he won the coin toss with Lisa for exec chef? And when he told Bourdain he was captain of his ship I thought "and you're going down with it too." With the flip of a coin, the leader of that team seemed destined to go.

Has any potential finalist produced fewer wins than Spike and Lisa combined? I was shocked to find that either of them had won at all. Lisa's dish seemed pretty forgettable. I seem to remember the judges liked the miso-marinated bacon portion of her grilled shrimp dish. If so, that would make sense as she apparently undercooked her shrimp for the cops. And I also remember being pretty unimpressed with Spike's winning grilled beef salad - about as unimpressed as I was with Sam being the guest judge for that episode. To recap the guest judges this season:

Rocco DiSpirto, Bourdain
Wylie Dufresne
Rick Bayless
Daniel Boulud
Ming Tsai
Koren Grievson/Paul Kahan
Johnny Luzinni (exec Pastry Chef at Jean-Georges judging desserts)
Art Smith
Gale Gand ostensibly there to judge wedding cakes
Sam Talbot
Bourdain (serving as head judge) and Jose Andres

I like Sam and all, but he sticks out like a sore thumb. Goes some way to invalidating Spike's only win.

Anyway, things I don't like about Restaurant Wars: front of house responsibilities. It's essentially a hideaway, a bye week, a get-out-of-elimination-free-pass from cooking. It seems that people either perform competently or perform poorly, but you're not going to get a win or eliminated for your performance there. So what's the point?! Stephanie won because she conceptualized and executed(?) two of the juddges' favorite dishes on top of performing FOH duties. Cooking wins and loses so why let them do anything else?

And I hate that they let it happen this late in the series (two episodes from the finals) because it lets someone like Spike - who has been a big nobody - hide and smirk on the sidelines while his teammates go Balkan on each other.

Not my favorite episode by a long shot.

Edited to add: Come to think of it, that's two - quack quack - ducks in a row for Spike who played defense with his ingredient choices for the cops and who almost had his tactic backfire. This. Is. Not. A. Top. Chef. Finals? He doesn't get within spitting distance of the finals. Unless everyone else's limbs fall off.

In my opinion - Antonia, Stephanie, and Richard will make it to the finale. Dale won more elimination challenges than Lisa or Spike up until Restaurant Wars. He fell apart while being criticized by Bourdain. He's annoying and as Antonia said, he's basically just an Asian food expert and that was his downfall. Spike has just been lucky, even Lisa hasn't been in trouble as many times as he has been during the season. Like her or hate her, Lisa is the producers' favorite chef - her commentary is central to many of the episodes. Nevertheless, she barely escaped the last two episodes and it appears that Lisa and Spike aint gonna get much further into the competition.

DML wrote:On a somewhat related note -- I wonder if being on this show actually hurts the career prospects of some people on it. Would you want to eat at a place run by Lisa -- bad food with an obnoxious chef? Would you expect that a place run by Dale would be run competently?

Personally, I don't read into it that much. I remember in an interview last year, Hung said that he intentionally made himself a distraction in the TC kitchens, with the intention of throwing off his competitors, and would never run around or spazz out if he were in the kitchen of Guy Savoy. Stephen from Season 1 had his share of problems during Restaurant Wars, but still has managed to open a place in West Palm Beach to positive reviews. I think the Top Chef kitchen and an actual restaurant kitchen are two completely different animals. Dale was the acting Chef De Cuisine at Morimoto NYC for a while, and he's currently a sous chef at Buddakan. I'm sure he'll get more opportunities in the future (and Lisa, apparently, already has. I believe she just recently replaced Spike at Mai House).

Nice work Stephanie !! It's almost as though I don't feel quite as guilty for never making it to Scylla because who knows, if it were still open, she probably wouldn't have gone out for TC. She and Blaise were totally predictable as finalists. Both are BY FAR the best two. Antonia has been good at a lot of things, but may not have enough *wow* to win. It is nice, however, that 3 of the four are "normal" people -- calm, professional, nice, likeable and excellent cooks (well, two excellent, one very good).

Of the other two, in keeping w/ the theme for this season, who gives a <bleep>. again, Spike blows his QF win. The asshat just made some bad, bad choices (scallops, canned hearts of palm), but I still would have taken him over Lisa and her <bleeping> sourpuss.

I can't wait for the finale !!

The preview makes Lisa look totally insane. What is she wearing, a Geri curl? Shame on Spike for preparing those Scallops and for calling out Rick Tramonto for having them in his freezer. What was he thinking?!?!? Stephanie remains my favorite, but I'd like to hear Richard do his Seinfeld imitation again. He should stay in that character for the rest of the show.

Go Steph!!!!!!

Shame on him for preparing them, but I'm glad SOMEONE said something about Rick Tramonto having shitty frozen scallops in his restaurant.

I wish Lisa had gone, if only because I think she's more of a threat to make it to the final three than Spike was.

gleam wrote:Shame on him for preparing them, but I'm glad SOMEONE said something about Rick Tramonto having shitty frozen scallops in his restaurant.

He claims in the Q&A blog that he didn't know they were in there. Maybe LeeAnne planted them

Never been to Tramonto's but if they are sourcing frozen scallops for a NATIONAL TV SHOW I doubt I'll
be heading there anytime soon. What a PR disaster for Tramonto's! What were they thinking?????

tem wrote:

gleam wrote:Shame on him for preparing them, but I'm glad SOMEONE said something about Rick Tramonto having shitty frozen scallops in his restaurant.

He claims in the Q&A blog that he didn't know they were in there. Maybe LeeAnne planted them

Wow, Rick make excuses just like the contestants!

mhill95149 wrote:Never been to Tramonto's but if they are sourcing frozen scallops for a NATIONAL TV SHOW I doubt I'll
be heading there anytime soon. What a PR disaster for Tramonto's! What were they thinking?????

Bravotv.com: Spike won the Quickfire and got to choose his proteins ... the big scallop question: Did you know there were frozen scallops in the pantry? Could you tell right away they were frozen when you ate his dish? Is there any way to salvage frozen scallops?

No, didn’t know there were frozen scallops in there. We never ever purchase frozen seafood, so it isn’t anything that’s kept in my coolers normally. In the real world, when you’re a chef, you may get something you didn’t order from the purveyor, or there are other people there accepting your product and it does make it into your cooler, but you as a chef need to know when there is an inferior product, and you need to be able to say no. As a top chef, your quality conscience needs to be at a top level. Spike failed that test.

gleam wrote:Shame on him for preparing them, but I'm glad SOMEONE said something about Rick Tramonto having shitty frozen scallops in his restaurant.

Me too. I loved that Spike called him out on that but as the old saying goes, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

And can anyone enlighten on exactly which awards Tramonto's Steak & Seafood has won?

It was great to see Stephanie come up with a stellar effort when she needed it most. I really cannot believe that Lisa is in the final but nothing I saw tonight made me feel that Spike was more worthy of it. However, in light of tonight's outcome, last week's elimination of Dale really gnaws. Still, 3 very worthy contestants are in the finals and that makes the likelihood of a satisfying outcome fairly substantial. And based on what we've seen so far, if Lisa wins, the judges will essentially be annointing themselves as morons.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:

gleam wrote:And can anyone enlighten on exactly which awards Tramonto's Steak & Seafood has won?

I'm pretty sure they recently won the "Frosty Puck" award
From the National Association of Frozen Scallop Purveyors

Maybe the same awards the yet-to-open Ajasteak has already won?

I'm not happy that Lisa made the finals. I just cannot stand watching her on the tv, but as others have stated, Spike didn't do anything to merit keeping him around. When Tom mentioned that each of them had been on the bottom 5 and 7 times, respectively, all I could think was "HOW ARE THEY STILL HERE?!?!?!"

Richard and Stephanie both put out some great looking food. I think Antonia's salad seemed pretty uninspired but I guess she really made up for it with her main course. It also seems kind of obvious this season that most of the judges do not like deconstructed food/plating at all and judge kind of harshly on it.

They really made that butchering scene from next weeks episode look like it's going to be dramatic.

Not that I would drive out to Wheeling for steak anyway, but after seeing that show I sure don't want to eat any place run by Tramonto. Tru was very good a long time ago (2000?) but it basically has had the same menu ever since. There was absolutely nothing in the show that would make it worth the effort to travel to eat his food [edited to add: How long will it take the first customer to walk in and ask the waiter "I'm really in the mood for some frozen scallops. Any chance you can ask the chef if he can locate some?"].

On a somewhat related note -- now I can see why more Chicago chefs were not interested in being judges. Maybe it is the editing, but both Rick and Gale came off pretty poorly. Rick appeared to be an arrogant boss who blames others for his failures, and Gale seemed to think that she has a duty to tell everybody about Her Greatness. I wonder why those two split?

On the other hand, if Stephanie opens a new spot in Chicago, I want to be first in line for reservations. Her food looked (and you can only judge it by the way it looked) outstanding.

Shame on Spike for preparing those Scallops and for calling out Rick Tramonto for having them in his freezer. What was he thinking?!?!?

The last desperate act of someone whose strategic cunning had carried him far beyond the limits of his culinary expertise.

hey this is slightly off-topic, but I couldn't resist posting:

my husband and I were in Montreal for the weekend, had a fantastic meal at Au Pied du Cochon*, and guess who was there? Gail Simmons!! wow! in person, she is very lovely and really tiny. The camera is a little unkind to her, because she is much slimmer in person than she appears on the small screen.

anyway, back on-topic....

yay stephanie! I love how her smile just fills up the screen when she wins. loved her comparison of sweetbreads with chicken mcnuggets. Blais' app looked amazing, too, though.

when is Lisa's sneering mug going to stop polluting my TV??

I'm a week late on the Dale controversy, but I think he should have stayed. I also think that criticism of Dale along the lines of "he only does Asian food" strike me as pretty ignorant. As Bourdain pointed out, Asia's a big place. In my opinion, some of the most elegant and sophisticated forms of cuisine are asian. Nobody gets criticized when they specialize in classic french cuisine or italian, so let's can the patronizing anti-asia stuff.



*ok here's what we had:
started with raw clams on the half shell - 2 varieties: littleneck and some smaller brown clams, forgot the name. They have some magnificent fresh shellfish at APdC. these were a bit gritty.
followed by cod fritters with house made mayo and some simple dressed salad greens
Poutine topped with seared foie-gras - yowza!! almost trashy in its decadance, but damn! There's almost nothing I can say... Probably the most perfect piece of foie I've ever been served (middle very soft jiggly and pink, exterior perfectly seared), luscious peppery gravy, and of course a mess of fries and cheese curds... You've got to try this if you ever go there, but not if you have an appointment with your cardiologist in the morning
Boudin tart - not the white boudin, but the blood sausage variety. A buttery puff pastry tart shell containing some kind of creamy white cheese or creme fraiche, caramelized onions in a red wine sauce and chunks of boudin. This was fabulous, but I almost could have done without the boudin - the onions had an amazing savory-winey flavor which was lovely with the cheese and pastry.
for dessert, churros accompanied by a custardy maple cream and a coffee served with a shot of Bailey's and a shot of cognac.
I must admit it was about a day and a half before I felt recovered from this crazy indulgent meal, but no regrets!!