I am not real happy with this season because it lacked a focus on the food and included way too many nasty group dynamics. I plan to watch the Designer’s show next because it will be a first season and likely be fun.
HGTV did the same designer show but the problem was that a clear winner emerged too soon and made the second half of the show kinda moot. I think the ‘Runway’ producers will do a better job and as a more visual competition we’ll have a better idea of what’s good and what’s not. You have to admit, food was a real risk since the audience can’t know what is being judged.
Wonder if they’ll branch out for graphic designers, account executives, summer stock directors, typesetters, sculptors, industrial designers, glass artists, scrapbookers…
I think Colicchio would know if the chicken was sufficiently cooked or not, don’t you?
He said it had a “soft, undercooked texture and appearance,” because of the confit technique Marcel was trying for, but not that it was actually raw or undercooked.
Incidentally, a lot of successful chefs are screaming, belligerant assholes. Working well with others is not a prerequisite for being a good chef. Professional kitchens tend to be high-testerone, profanity-soaked, yell fests. I’ve been there.
Way to blame the victim for the bullying, by the way.
Also, this is not a show to see who is the best capable to run a kitchen, the winner does not get a restaurant. It simply isn’t that at all. That show is Hell’s Kitchen where there is far less emphasis on the actual chef skills. This show is about cooking, using your imagination to make dishes, combining flavors with presentation, it is not about how well you work with other chefs and in fact it goes completely against that all the time. That is why there aren’t judges in the kitchen, they aren’t judging the kitchen, they are judging the food.
You’ve apparently never worked in a restaurant around well-known chefs. I can count on one hand the number of chefs I’ve dealt with that are weren’t difficult to some extent. A kitchen is a high pressure environment. I’ve worked with chefs that can be hell on wheels to deal with in the kitchen but turn it off like a lightswitch when the walk into a diningroom as well they should. I’ve yet to see a vendor refuse to deal with a demanding chef. They usually kiss ass because they’re selling something. A chef has a right to be demanding if they’re purchasing something and need it fresh and on time.
You’d be in for a rude awakening if you took a stroll through one of the finer restaurant kitchens. My experience has been a couple of dueling Franks, a few snarky Emily types and a couple nice line cooks like Sam. No kitchen is drama free.
I don’t know about that. His food never looked like any food I’d want to serve. Even his cheesesteak looked like crap. He might be a nice guy and easy to work with but his presentation was crap.
hahah! I read on Harold’s blog that he was rooting for Michael to win. This was pretty early on and don’t know if he changed his mind. That sort of took my opinion of Michael up a notch because Harold was a good chef. His food just looked a little sloppy to me, like he’d be a wiz at putting out 200 chicken dinners at a wedding but not so great at fine dining.
You’d like to think so, but I had his blog quoted to me and I quoted it back, and apparently Tom’s choice of words indicate some doubt on his part. So instead of more little word games why don’t you email him and find out what the deal was with that chicken wing for us? It’s on the show, dude. Two competent chefs eating his chicken were under the impression it was insufficiently cooked, they said it, we heard it, what the christ are you going on about it for? Just admit the future Top Chef can’t cook a chicken wing and thinks tempura veggies belong in a diner setting, we’ll let it go.
He’s not a six-year old on the playground. He’s a grown man who hasn’t acquired the social skills to deal with his peers in a constructive or profitable manner; in the words of Chef Tom, a social maladroit. Marcel’s hasn’t been a kicked puppy in a long time. He’s a full-grown ankle-biting mange mutt who skulks in corners. In his childhood he was no doubt different and plucky and warranted defending. Today, he’s a loser with a shitty haircut and no friends. Climb on his cross all you want, but it looks sad making excuses for a man of that age who won’t stand up for himself.
It goes back and forth. Cliff got reamed a couple episodes back for doing a crap job in the front of the play restaurant. Elia flirted with elimination because she couldn’t coordinate her team. Other leaders have gotten props for leadership since the beginning of the season. I just got done reading one of Padma’s blogs where she said she looks for leaders in the kitchen, not followers. The show is pretty psychotic though, one episode will have Tom whining because no one takes risks, next episode someone gets yelled at for doing precisely that.
I think social interaction and how well they work together is a huge part of the show.
Both Top Chef and Project Runway send mixed messages to the participants.
They tell them over and over not to play it safe and when they do something different get criticized. I think they run out of things to say.
Plus, according to Tom each challenge stands on it’s own. So what difference does it make if you did something different if supposedly the previous challenges don’t factor in.
Several of the contestants have made it clear in their post-show interviews that Padma is NOT a judge. She seems to be pretending to it both on the show and on her blog, but she is not.
Wow, i can’t believe how late to this thread i am.
Like many others, i was disappointed to see Sam go. I think that he was consistently the best performer throughout the series. Even in challenges where he didn’t win, he was usually right up there near the top. The main problem with this franchise (Top Chef and Project Runway) is that there’s no carry-over reward for consistently good performance; one bad day, and you’re out.
I also think that the judging this week was all over the place. I don’t necessarily think that they made the wrong decision in the end, but on some of the dishes they seemed to change their minds three or four times about whether it was good or not. As someone has pointed out already, it was hard to know what the hell they thought of the pineapple poi—first it was great, then it was mediocre, then it was great again.
Dio, i have to disagree with you about Marcel. For the first five or six weeks, i thought he was a complete dick, and was rooting for him to be booted off every time. He’s just such a self-obsessed little tool, and his snarky little passive-aggressive comments really got under my skin.
But…
By the end of the show i was pretty much rooting for him. Not because i liked him any better, but because the level of hostility towards and collusion against him by the other contestants really pissed me off. Sure, he acted badly, but those assholes were like a bunch of 12-year-olds trying to push the fat kid out their group. And the denouement this week, with Ilan and Elia, was just fucking pathetic. I lost all respect for both of them with that little bitch-fest performance. I liked the way that Tom heaped the scorn on them, although Ilan didn’t cop enough of it, IMO.
Anyway, i guess i’m cheering for Marcel in the final, if only because him winning would piss of so many people.
Seriously, though, when is calling out a man’s sexual proclivity, when is faking outrage over a barked commad or over a calm request to keep the freezer door shut, when a jackass makes snarky comments about your food, requiring one to stand up for oneself. Certainly late he has been the better man, turning the other cheek and offering to let the food do the talking. I loved when Ilan started the judges table with something like, “Some of us have been talking and we think some people here don’t respect…” Marcel called the weasel right out, “Why don’t you say wholyou are talking about? You are talking about me.” I applaud him for not going to their level.
Again, I think it’s how he made his “calm request” to close the freezer door. IIRC, it was something like, “Does anybody else think that we might need to like keep this freezer door closed?” (not an actual quote, but that’s how I’m basically remembering it).
Just like how he made the observation about the discounts in the checkout line, he could have just a) closed the door himself without comment, or b) said, “Hey, keep the freezer door shut, guys.”
The way he says stuff is what would drive me crazy, I imagine it’s had the same effect on the other contestants.
He’s not a six-year old on the playground. He’s a grown man who hasn’t acquired the social skills to deal with his peers in a constructive or profitable manner; in the words of Chef Tom, a social maladroit. Marcel’s hasn’t been a kicked puppy in a long time. He’s a full-grown ankle-biting mange mutt who skulks in corners. In his childhood he was no doubt different and plucky and warranted defending. Today, he’s a loser with a shitty haircut and no friends. Climb on his cross all you want, but it looks sad making excuses for a man of that age who won’t stand up for himself.
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I don’t get this at all. You mean he’s a dick for saying things politely? I think he was just walking on egg shells because he knew they were going to stuff him in a locker every time he tried make any reasonable request or observation they might not like.
Grossbottom, seems you fancy yourself the cool kid, huh? Trying to get in the clique with Ilan and Sam?
You got the right tack – find the kid who’s been designated the wierdo or the fat kid or the loser, then join the pack in making up shit, exaggerating every indiscretion, twisting everything he says so it sounds bad, and calling him names. When he actually acts far more mature than you and won’t take the bait you keep dangling, then you call him a weak little loser with no friends who won’t stand up for himself. Keep calling him weak because he doesn’t resort to the same grade school crap that you’re dishing out to him, when you know full well that if he did that you’d jump all over him for being childish and defensive.
Remember when Cliff was holding Marcel down and calling for someone to come shave his head? I suspect you would have been the one running into the room, skipping merrily, holding the trimmer over your head and shouting, “Let’s shave the little loser!”
