This is a little late but check out the stylings on Rep. Schock (that turquoise belt!): http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/im ... ocking.jpg

Insert South Park Joke ___________________ here....

I just re-watched the episode, and as a professional cook, only have one comment. As much as I like Kelly, what a crying shame for her to have chosen canned pasteurized crab from Indonesia/Thailand while cooking on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But I do understand that many, if not most of these contestants have never even tasted fresh Atlantic blue crabmeat.

Raise your hand if you've had enough of Alex and Amanda.

Bravo continued to (try to) manufacture drama this week by having the judges make a point on camera that each chef would be responsible for his or her own dish then not sending Alex home, even though it was clear (from the way the episode was edited) that he didn't make anything himself.

Amanda played dumb (again) in front of the judges about the flaws in her dish, which she pretended she didn't notice, even though she'd already admitted to them in front of the camera.

I lost what little respect I had left for Kenny when he chose to focus on what Alex did or didn't do instead of focusing on his own fairly criticized work. I think he had himself genuinely convinced that Alex was the reason he got sent home, even though neither of the dishes he made were well received at all.

Even within the admittedly limited ambitions of Top Chef, Restaurant Wars has been almost completely dumbed down. Basically, the contestants now go into someone else's restaurant and plan a small menu. It used to entail so much more. I think the spirit of this challenge -- as it was initially presented -- has been completely abandonned.

Not even close to feeling it this season.

=R=

This episode had exactly one redeeming feature: the nose-crinkling of distaste any time Tom or Frank Bruni had to say that Rachael Ray-ism, "Evoo."

These are the types you're dealing with this season, Bravo.

ronnie_suburban wrote:Raise your hand if you've had enough of Alex and Amanda.

Ooh, right here.

From her extended "I'm so cute, lemme stretch for the camera for 5 minutes" wake up to her incessant whining & excuse-making ("I've never used a wood-fired grill"..."I've never cooked grass-fed beef, it's totally weird"), I spent yet another episode hoping Amanda gets kicked off (and wishing someone would punch her in the face).

I thought Amanda was going to go; it's at that point in the season where they sometimes let a high performer like Kenny skate through. I would have even eaten that goat cheese puck if it meant getting rid of Amanda. She has a very passive-aggressive way of setting up negative expectations for herself.

I just re-watched the episode, and as a professional cook, only have one comment. As much as I like Kelly, what a crying shame for her to have chosen canned pasteurized crab from Indonesia/Thailand while cooking on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But I do understand that many, if not most of these contestants have never even tasted fresh Atlantic blue crabmeat.

It's never exactly clear on this show, but they're often limited to what Whole Foods carries. So if there are no fresh blue crabs there, you're not going to see them on the show.

I think the best thing about this season is watching the looks of pure scorn and hate that Colicchio shoots at the cheftestants.

Kenny had really been over-promising and under-delivering for weeks. He never took seriously the comments by the judges to scale back his efforts. I will not miss his ego (though to judge by the number of comments at the Bravo blogs -- just under 500 right now and while I won't read them all, skimming quickly shows many are sharpening pitchforks and preparing torches for Colicchio himself). I wonder who will be the ALPHA MALE now, though?

As far as Alex, his team won so he's safe. It has always been that way with team challenges as best I can recall. I thought, too, that the idea of his dish was his even if the others on the team actually executed it. Did the show clearly explain what "being responsible" for a dish meant? I don't know - and besides, it happened months ago and it's not like Alex will be in the final (or Amanda, for that matter).

I will agree that this has been a total lackluster season. It's telling that my favorite part of this most recent episode was the flashback to last year's version of the tag team quickfire. Jen, Kevin, the Voltaggio brothers and the rest... oh well!

I know it shouldn't be required reading at all (so stop reading right now, Ronnie!), but Tom did bring up a decent point about the pea dispute in his blog from last week. After asking the producers point blank, he said that there wasn't footage proving one thing or another. There were only two cameras in the kitchen back there and they just can't film everything. In an interview with TV Guide, Stephen seemed to blame himself, explaining that he shared a cooler with Ed and may have moved things around to make space for his stuff, removing Ed's peas in the process. Having said that, it was stupid of Bravo to edit this mess to suggest something bad happened when there was no way to know one way or another.

As far as the changes to Restaurant Wars, Tom apparently wants to go further. Again, from his blog:

Tom Colicchio wrote:And for the record, I’ve always thought it odd that the show puts two chefs out in the front of the house and have long begged the producers to change that aspect of Restaurant Wars. One quarter of the chefs are responsible for dishes but forced to spend the evening out in the front of the house. I would much prefer to get two well-known front-of-house folks in that position and have them then comment on how the chefs’ preparation of the food affected service. This wasn’t a year in which anyone went home for his or her front-of-house skills, but I just wanted to say that.

rickster wrote:

I just re-watched the episode, and as a professional cook, only have one comment. As much as I like Kelly, what a crying shame for her to have chosen canned pasteurized crab from Indonesia/Thailand while cooking on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But I do understand that many, if not most of these contestants have never even tasted fresh Atlantic blue crabmeat.

It's never exactly clear on this show, but they're often limited to what Whole Foods carries. So if there are no fresh blue crabs there, you're not going to see them on the show.

Exactly!!! And that would be the best reason not to try and show off with crabmeat packed six months ago halfway across the globe as well as out of season corn!!!

Khaopaat wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:Raise your hand if you've had enough of Alex and Amanda.

Ooh, right here.

From her extended "I'm so cute, lemme stretch for the camera for 5 minutes" wake up to her incessant whining & excuse-making ("I've never used a wood-fired grill"..."I've never cooked grass-fed beef, it's totally weird"), I spent yet another episode hoping Amanda gets kicked off (and wishing someone would punch her in the face).

Nobody mentioned that the show would include her stretching for five minutes.
Well, I guess there is one reason to watch the show.

DML wrote:Nobody mentioned that the show would include her stretching for five minutes.
Well, I guess there is one reason to watch the show.

If Amanda floats your boat, then yeah, you might have appreciated the beginning of the most recent episode.

There has been one satisfying restaurant wars in Top Chef history. The rest has been trying to limit damage and overcome looming catastrophes. It's on because train wrecks are great television. I'd be very happy to never see it again.

That being said, I agree with Tom's comments above. If you are going to have this as a staple, let the chefs do what they're there to do rather than greeting and checking in on people.

And I agree that calling out Alex is loser talk. The lesson has always been: make better food and you'll live to see another day.

I did find it funny that among all the other manufactured drama this season, "Alex's" dish featured pea puree. I also found this week's edit of Alex a little odd. Up until now, he's been portrayed as a sloppy, up and down performer, capable of tasty dishes and also totally missing the mark. Tonight's episode showed him as a feckless hack who can't butcher meat, prep fish, or basically do anything. Just weird.

Because of the discussion, I actually watched it last night.
A few thoughts --
1. Like most things in the show, the stretching was not of high enough quality to keep me interested
2. I was amazed at how boring the menu seemed. Corn soup? Beet salad? Unless they knock it out of the ballpark, it just wasn't interesting.
3. Rules really don't seem to matter. The idea is that there is a team with strengths and weaknesses. However, as it stood, if the team had one outstanding chef, that chef literally could do all the work and the team could prevail despite the rules. Playing by the rules gets you nowhere.
4. I suspect that people go on the show to promote their own restaurants. This season should be a lesson that there is a risk. After seeing the show, people should steer away from Alex's place. It definitely won't open any new doors for him.
I will probably tune in next Wednesday, in part because this season seems like watching a car wreck but more importantly, because Chef WD will be on. He's always interesting.

Something that I noted big time from this week's episode, and maybe the Tom blog readers have additional background, but the big result this week was that the "system failed." What does Tom Colicchio love more than anything? Good chef-ing. Professionalism. The hidden, well not so hidden message all these years is that good chefs, Top Chef's, are the ones that act in a certain way. It's Ratatouille, right. The Line. Not just think like a chef, but act like a chef.

This week, one team ran things beautifully. Man were they organized. The front of the house inter-wove with the back of the house. The mis-en-place was gorgeous. Order's cranked. Execution. That Kenny was a Chef. And they lost.

You know, I almost think if Tom had his druthers, the blue team would have won. It was Gayle, however, who piped in, "the diner only cares about the food on the plate" (quote not guaranteed to be exact). That's not what Top Chef has been teaching all these years. Maybe we did get something special with this season.

Vital Information wrote:You know, I almost think if Tom had his druthers, the blue team would have won. It was Gayle, however, who piped in, "the diner only cares about the food on the plate" (quote not guaranteed to be exact). That's not what Top Chef has been teaching all these years. Maybe we did get something special with this season.

This is a very common sentiment, VI, but I think it's incorrect. Of course those other aspects of being a chef are frequently discussed, and the judges will sometimes take them under consideration as secondary criteria when they have a very tough call to make, but quite the contrary, when it comes to the actual judging, they've always been very consistent with the idea that first and foremost (and almost exclusively), you must cook delicious food. Cook good food, and you'll survive no matter how much of a miscreant you may be. Cook lousy food, and no amount of professionalism will save you.

The notion that the judges judge other criteria is, I think, mostly an invention of the audience based on the ancillary discussions that take place (for many, it's still a holdover from the season one finale). But the actual decisions have always been made based on the food, and little else. The process makes for interesting discussion and television, but the results are what have always mattered.

Dom, I know that the food is always paramount. What I guess I'm saying is that last week's episode was a failiure of the system. Do things the Blue team's way, and how can you lose. You're supposed to win when you act like a Top Chef. Of course the food has always mattered, but there's always been a way to get to the food. That awful sloppiness of the Red team should not produce good food, regardless of whether it produced good food. That's always been the message too.

Vital Information wrote:Dom, I know that the food is always paramount. What I guess I'm saying is that last week's episode was a failiure of the system. Do things the Blue team's way, and how can you lose. You're supposed to win when you act like a Top Chef. Of course the food has always mattered, but there's always been a way to get to the food. That awful sloppiness of the Red team should not produce good food, regardless of whether it produced good food. That's always been the message too.

I understand this feeling. It sure looks like the blue team did everything right (except cook better food), and ended up on the block for it.

But there was a very good take by a commenter that suggests appearances are deceiving, and the "dysfunctional" team was actually the functional one. I could paraphrase, but I'll just cut and paste:

Now, barring F.O.T.H. performance, at judges' table, it turned out that things were exactly the opposite. The functional team was dysfunctional, the dysfunctional team functional.

Part of the reason for this apparent 'switch' was the editing, of course - we were led to believe that one team was doing great while the other was doing poorly...but I think it goes deeper than that, and in ways that we've seen before. Kenny's team looked functional because they weren't arguing, and they seemed organized - and yes, those can both be important attributes of a well-functioning team.

And yet...no one told Kenny his beets were overworked or that his cheese dish was disgusting - and I find it very difficult to believe that none of his teammates felt that way; No one advised Amanda on how to properly cut her beef; No one criticized Kelly on the flavors of her soup - the team might have gotten along, but that doesn't mean they were functioning well, or functioning as a team.

Angelo's team might have been disorganized, they might have been unpleasant, but they were also checking each others' work: Alex's butchering was fixed. Alex's dish was completed, and completed with care; And while Tiffany might have messed up her crudo, she couldn't have messed it up very much since the judges didn't mention it to her. The team dynamic might have been horrific, but based on their output, they did, in fact, function well as a team.

We've seen this in prior seasons as well, and it certainly isn't limited to the show. One of the greatest potential advantages to a team exercise is the ability to get timely and incisive criticism...yet this advantage is often lost when team members are more concerned with a pleasant process than a proper outcome.

I'm not sold on the Tiffany bit, but the rest is insightful, I think. We certainly have an image in our heads of what a professional kitchen operating at the highest level looks like, and we got that from the blue team. But what's more important? Harmony and organization, or a team that's willing to call out and correct each other's mistakes to ensure the food is as good as it can be?

It's hard to know whether the blue team was more focused on process than results, or if they didn't want to rock the boat by criticizing each other, or if they simply didn't have the palates to know that what they were sending out wasn't good. But I think there's something to be said for the fact that the red team wasn't afraid to step on each other's toes and accept a little chaos to ensure that they sent out the best food possible while the blue team, no matter how smoothly they got along, let bad food go out the door.

While I was disappointed to see Kenny go, he has been on the brink of elimination previously. The biggest disadvantage we armchair judges have is the inability to taste the food - which is the most important factor, right? It seems throughout the season that Kenny had a very high opinion of his ability. Yet, the judges often felt otherwise. Prior to elimination, the judges were making some critical comments about Kenny - which leads me to believe they simply didn't care for his attitude or ability much. Did this influence their decision? Most likely - even if it was subconscious. You are only as good as your last meal and anyone, no matter how great, can have a bad day. I think Alex would have clearly been sent home had his team lost. I think it's clear Amanda is out of her league at this point but she manages to perform just well enough to avoid elimination. I agree with the general consensus this season is kind of a dud. The level of talent and personality of the contestants is really lacking compared to previous seasons - particularly the last.

This was easily the worst episode on the worst season of Top Chef. While the elimination challenge concept wasn't particularly bad, putting it in the CIA headquarters was really stupid. I felt for everyone in the room except for Leon Panetta, who at least got to run out and extraordinarily rendetion someone halfway through Judge's Table. I can't imagine who at Bravo thought this would be a good idea for an episode. And who at the CIA would green light something like this? They bring in what are basically boring, lifeless Administrative Staff to do the tasting, and add that horrible dramatic music to make it seem like Panetta was rushing to put out a fire! The only bright spot is that Alex finally gets the boot and Amanda gets another week to show off how cute she is. Tiffany seems to be hitting her stride, but against this group of misfits, that may not be saying much. Also it was edited to make it look like Angelo couldn't be Superman without Kenny to be his Lex Luthor. Hopefully only three or four more episodes left so the Producers can go back to the drawing board and re-work the concept. They should bring back Katie Lee Joel, to finish off this soon to be lost season, and let Padma bond with the baby!

radiator wrote:They should bring back Katie Lee Joel, to finish off this soon to be lost season...

Whoa, whoa whoa... let's not start saying things we don't really mean out of a place of hurt, here

Incidentally, there was so much missed potential for awesome in this episode. I can't believe none of the contestants thought to disguise their dish as one of the other contestants' designated dishes.

I do think that one of the problems with this TC season is that Washington is not that great of a food city with a unique food culture. So a lot of challenges have involved a political or media twist (or now the CIA) that doesn't really fit the show. I'm assuming the producers thought this would attract a broader range of viewers. Plus, they're probably running out of ideas for new locations.

rickster wrote:I do think that one of the problems with this TC season is that Washington is not that great of a food city with a unique food culture. So a lot of challenges have involved a political or media twist (or now the CIA) that doesn't really fit the show. I'm assuming the producers thought this would attract a broader range of viewers. Plus, they're probably running out of ideas for new locations.

I'll beg to differ here. Washington and it's suburban towns have a vibrant food culture with arguably the most varied restaurant scene in the country. Ethiopian, Indian, and Mediterranean cafes abound, Chinese and Thai storefronts are everywhere, seafood trucks park by the side of the road and serve up steamed crabs, micro-breweries stand next to packed burger joints. And you can still go to a venerable American classic like the Old Ebbits Grille.

In addition there is a thriving organic farming community surrounding the metro area, along with small winemaking operations and cheesemakers. Apple orchards and berry farms dot the nearby mountains. Farmers markets do a landoffice business.

There are lots of reasons for foodies to like Washington.

little500 wrote:Washington and it's suburban towns have...arguably the most varied restaurant scene in the country.

This is an argument I've never heard anyone make anywhere before now. I'd love to hear you make a case that DC ranks higher than New York, Chicago, LA, and SF. Actually, I'd love to hear an argument that DC even belongs in the discussion.

MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:

little500 wrote:Washington and it's suburban towns have...arguably the most varied restaurant scene in the country.

This is an argument I've never heard anyone make anywhere before now. I'd love to hear you make a case that DC ranks higher than New York, Chicago, LA, and SF. Actually, I'd love to hear an argument that DC even belongs in the discussion.

DC has the greatest number of restaurants per capita of any city in the U.S. (0.4/100 according to the National Restaurant Ass'n). It has neighborhoods like Little Ethiopia. I have run across Afghani cafes there. Nearly every country in the world has some sort of outpost in DC, and all those folks like to eat food from their own cultures. The closeness of Baltimore and the coastal seafood processors means it has access to excellent seafodd of all types. It flies in the face of common sense to say there is not a great variety of restaurants there.

NY, Chicago, LA, and SF have great restaurant scenes, and food styles from around the world are well represented. No argument. But to say that DC doesn't belong in that group is disingenuous.

BTW, DC also has representation in the fine dining ranks with establishments like Cityzen, Michel Richard Citronelle, The Inn at Little Washington, and Bistro Lepic. Or maybe try Ben's Chili Bowl.

I don't have enough experience with it to make a comparison to the big guns (NYC, LA, SF, Chi), but I got down there a bit while living in Baltimore and I was very surprised by both the breadth and depth of the DC scene. Do not dismiss it lightly.

Dmnkly wrote:I don't have enough experience with it to make a comparison to the big guns (NYC, LA, SF, Chi), but I got down there a bit while living in Baltimore and I was very surprised by both the breadth and depth of the DC scene. Do not dismiss it lightly.

I've lived in DC on two occasions for about a year each time, most recently in 2005, and don't mean to imply that it's a food dessert. But unless things have changed drastically in the last 5 years, it's just not in the top echelon of food cities. And while there is some breadth there, I disagree strongly on the depth, especially within city limits.

That said, these intercity pissing matches about largely unquantifiable issues are more than a little silly and I shouldn't have made the original comment.

little500, I'm glad you have such enthusiasm for the area's cuisine. I'd love to see you post some of your favorites in the Beyond Chicagoland section.

I can't say that I have paid tremendously close attention to this season, but if the scene is so vibrant, they haven't done much to showcase it. In my recollection, the only nod they have made to the DC food scene was to have an Ethiopian challenge - for which they flew in Marcus Samuelsson. They also had Jose Andres as a judge in one show.

The Inn at Little Washington is almost 70 miles from DC, so I think it's hard to call that a DC restaurant.

rickster wrote:I can't say that I have paid tremendously close attention to this season, but if the scene is so vibrant, they haven't done much to showcase it. In my recollection, the only nod they have made to the DC food scene was to have an Ethiopian challenge - for which they flew in Marcus Samuelsson. They also had Jose Andres as a judge in one show.

This has been the trend, but I think it has less to do with the cities than it has to do with the show's popularity. In season one, they could send everybody out into The Mission in SF with a pushcart. Can you imagine the mobscene if they tried something public and uncontrolled like that now? I mean, they barely used New York.