That was dumb, but I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Eli making 30 minutes of inappropriate comments about what he’d like to do to Natalie Portman while she’s wearing her Padme costume - and how the editors would have looked while skimming through that part of his interview.
Look, I don’t like vegetables or cook them for myself, but I make vegan minestrone for friends and I’ll keep making it because they ask me to bring it to potlucks and things. If I can do it with no palate, no formal training, and little idea of how flavors and textures work together, why can’t seasoned professionals?
Everyone has things they love to work with and flavors they love to incorporate, but if I’m having dinner with someone who’s a vegetarian, I want her to be able to enjoy good food, too, and I would expect a good restaurant to be able to accommodate her. We’ve seen so many risottos; why not a good vegetarian one?
I feel like there are three reasons they were so upset:
(1) the editing was done such as to play up their upsetness
(2) they had been lured by the lovely stacks of enormous tasty steaks
(3) there seemed to be a fair number of vegetarian things that were NOT there for them to cook with… rice and pasta being the two most obvious.
Making it seem like simply the idea of cooking any vegetarian dish offended them greatly is a bit unfair.
One thing I really want to see in future quickfires is some sort of motivation for the themed pieces, such as “Yeah, I got ‘the Sopranos’, so I made an Italian-style family dinner.” instead of just “Here, eat it.”.
Regarding curveballs, it was almost a religious experience in the finale of Top Chef Masters, where there were no obstacles at all. They had three dishes to create the story of their lives. I don’t mind curveballs once in a while, but I don’t mind seeing the chefs show their full potential either.
Vegetarianism is a very sensitive issue for a lot of chefs, including Jennifer, apparently. If you read Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential”, you might remember the part where he basically says that vegetarians are ignorant, bumbling fools and Satan’s hellspawn and enemies of good taste. They appear to take it very personally, like it’s an offense to their craft and profession. Jamie Oliver is pretty cool with it though.
I agree that it’s something you should be prepared for, as a modern chef. It’s not the 1950’s, vegetarians are pretty common-place. There’s still a lot of room for meaty recipies, it’s not like beef is going away anytime soon, so I don’t really see all the big fuss.
Isn’t that how the finales always are? “Cook the best meal of your life” is usually the only instructions they get.
For the last two episodes of Top Chef Masters, I thought they (the producers) did a good job of first having a tons-of-twists episode, followed by the last episode in which the only twist was a positive one (having their own sous chefs as helpers).
But I think in general twists and gimmicks are good. A show which was just “here are 20 good chefs, they can all cook whatever they like” might be GREAT for people who are actually knowledgeable enough to really get something from that format, but it would have much less wide appeal that Top Chef.
The twist was perfectly reasonable too. If you’re an up and coming young chef with a steakhouse and a famous actress + entourage come in and say they want an all vegetarian meal, you’re not going to turn them away. (Or you might and have the owner chew you out later).
Alice Watters has said that cooking vegetarian food is boring. The massive horrid tool that is Gordon Ramsay has intentionally served meat broth to a vegetarian customer who annoyed him by insisting specifically that they did not want any meat and has said that if his children were to take up vegetarianism he’d suggest that they kill themselves. The issue is near religious with some of these people, like the world will end if people don’t eat their pigs and cows. (That the absolute reverse is actually more true, and that current omnivorous practices are contributing to our environmental woes in unsustainable ways doesn’t seem to penetrate their skulls at all.)
Ah, but see, that is an important challenge, because, as any vegetarian can tell you, most “vegetarian entrees” in restaurants aren’t. They’re rice or pasta dishes without meat. There’s a difference. A meal that’s 70 or 70% starch with a few vegetables, like pasta with vegetables and a sauce, or a risotto, is not a vegetarian meal, it’s a meal without meat. (And usually lacking significantly in protein, as well.) It’s lazy. It’s cheap. (Literally, I can’t tell you how many restaurants want me to pay $12 for a plate that has 25¢ worth of pasta, a carrot, a zucchini and 1/4 each of a plain yellow onion and ooooh, a red pepper.) It’s not innovative. And it’s not vegetarian. Vegetarian ≠ Absence of Meat.
This week’s challenge on “The Next Iron Chef” competition on Food Network was Surprise!Indian! And some very good, previously highly competitive chefs fell completely apart in rather schaudenfreudelicious ways. And the initial judge (for the equivalent of the Top Chef Quickfire) was harsher than any Top Chef judge I’ve seen to date, including that Toby guy.
The thing that was refreshing about it was that even though one of the chefs in that competition is Indian (and therefore had a major knowledge advantage) and several of the remaining competitors cook only in one cultural milieu that’s pretty far divorced from Indian, there was not one bit of whining in the sit-down interviews about how shocking the twist was, how hard it was to change flavor profiles, how impossible it was to know what ingredients to use, etc.
Comparatively speaking, and yes, I know the Top Chef contestants are much younger and up and coming than the Iron Chef contestants, but the amount of whining that the Top Chefs do? Completely over the top. Cooking, especially at the level of this season’s TC crop, is extraordinarily competitive and requires some steely nerves to succeed. How are these people working for Eric Ripert and alumni of the kitchens of people like Hubert Keller and already holding Michelin Stars and yet still so childish and bitter and overemotional? I really don’t get it.
Well in fairness I think the fact that they’re being filmed 16 hours a day for three weeks straight while getting little sleep has something to do with it.
And they are being edited down to about 5 minutes each for each episode, with forced “confession” time by producers pushing them to say something interesting for the camera.
I went back and watched the episode again last night after reading through this thread with all the complaints about the complaining. I just don’t get it. There wasn’t an unusual amount of whining in this episode. Jen made a comment about hating vegetarian, but other than that there were few complaints. Some even expressed overt excitement over it. Even after being told they were going to cook in Tom’s steakhouse, and being given time to create a menu based around steak, and being allowed to put their paws all over Tom’s meat locker, they all pretty much took the challenge in stride when the twist was revealed. I’m just not getting the vibe from this thread, it seems out of touch with the reality of the episode.
Slight hijack…
Previous winner **Stephanie Izard **is opening her restaurant “The Drunken Goat” here in Chicago in a few months. In the meantime, she’s been hosting “Wandering Goat” dinners and just announced that the third one would be this coming Thursday night.
The last two dinners each sold out in less than 10-minutes. My fiancee and I kept our ears open, and when she announced tickets were going on sale for dinner #3, we jumped at the chance and were able to score a pair before they sold out. I believe they sold no more than 100 tickets.
The first two dinners were pretty incredible, or so we’ve heard, and so we’re pretty stoked about getting to go to this one. She’s going to be pairing the courses with wine from Walla Walla, WA, which is the area I’m from originally so that’s cool.
Oh, and one of the coolest details about this dinner is that it will be hosted at the home of a “well known and local chef.” No idea who it is yet, we’re supposed to get an email in the next day or two with details, but our fingers are crossed that it’s at Rick Bayless’ home. He hosts a lot of big parties there so it makes sense. Also, the Top Chef connection. Other well-known Chicago chefs that could be possibilities are Charlie Trotter, Art Smith, Grant Achatz, and Rick Tramanto. That’s all I could think of anyway.
Will post here once we know more about where the dinner will be, and I’ll be sure to post a full recap after Thursday night.
Although, I did see an episode of his show “The F Word” in which he saw the conditions under which (IIRC) veal calves are raised, and he appeared honestly, legitimately horrified, and said he really understood the feelings of people who are vegetarian. I don’t know whether that understanding would persist at all, but he at least appears to have a conscience about animals up to the point of wanting good living conditions before being slaughtered. And the episode where he went to the slaughterhouse for the first time also moved him deeply.
Doesn’t mean that wasn’t a jerk move on his part, but I’ll note that I am very quick to emphasize that I will be totally understanding if a particular restaurant dish has meat broth in it, and will happily pick something else, before the server heads off to the kitchen to ask. :eek:
I totally get this. My related complaint is the standard fallback, the vegetable wrap/sandwich or the portobello burger. Far too many cooks give you a bun or wrap stuffed with dripping wet vegetables that make the bread into a soggy, cold mess. The typical portobello mushroom used like a burger patty and not prepared properly will constantly drip a brown puddle onto the plate, splashing the customer’s shirt and generally being annoying. It got to the point where I am thrilled about vegetable sandwiches that don’t do this because of proper cooking methods and vegetable choices, and will let the waitstaff know that I appreciate it. I’ve also done this when veggie burgers are made in-house (not a pre-purchased patty) and are good; those are details that I really appreciate.
I agree that the “surprise, she’s a vegetarian” twist is a fairly realistic one. It may not happen that Natalie Portman walks into everyone’s restaurant, but these chefs are competing at a very high level, so it could well be. More often it could be someone more important on a local level, like the mayor, a socialite, a relative of a restaurant reviewer.
HelloNinja, I am soooo jealous! I’ve been eagerly awaiting something from Stephanie Izard since she won, and was looking forward to going to the Drunken Goat. Please do ‘dish!’
Oh wow.
That sounds delightful.
Please update us and try to take some pics if you possible can.
I ate in Top Chef season 1 winner Harold Deiterle’s restaurant a few years ago in NYC for my birthday. It was just fabulous. I had the beef cheeks, the duck, the farro and the donuts. My husband had the salad and the steak. We had home made in house soda as well.
I’m taking my camera and will try and take lots of pics.
I think that Michael desperately wants to feel like Bryan’s equal. He’s definitely got an inferiority complex that stems from his relationship to his brother. Bryan is already successful and living the dream, Michael wants what Bryan has.
At the end they showed Eli getting all pouyty and kicking something. Was that because Mike was sent home and not RObin? Eli is still a child, althought the comment about natalie and Satr Wars I don’t htink was as bad as some are making it out to be, because I think the statement was something like, “The only important thing she has done is Star Wars, becaus it is the only important thing you can do.” I cannot remember but I thought it was more of a geeky comment about how big Starw Wars is.
Still he is a whiny baby, imo. Didn’t he also say something like vegetarins are “Lower than humans”?
He said something like “if I was with my friends, I might say something like ‘oh, they’re lower than humans,’ but actually, they get the shit end of the stick with restaurants, with places serving them a vegetable medley as an entree.” It was a sympathetic comment and I had zero problem with it.
I know I’m late here, I watched in On Demand. Mike I got sent because of his flip attitude and acting (at least, apparently) like he didn’t quite get why his dish was so bad. He thought the components besides the leeks worked, but Tom absolutely did Not. The judges really don’t like it when a contestant doesn’t even know why their dish is bad. He got cocky and he blew it. He ought to have known he needed a protein in there.
Kevin was adorable when he found out he was getting all those appliances, he actually blushed.
Jen seems like she’s pms or something. I hope she gets it together, because she does know how to cook.
The brothers, yeah, I’m starting to like Bryan and Michael is just a jerk. His arrogance will get him sent home, if he doesn’t knock it off.
Just got an email from Stephanie Izard regarding Thursday night’s dinner. Looks like we were very lucky to get tickets as she says there were a lot fewer tickets than before - and she didn’t use BCC, so I’m able to see that she sent the note to 18 people total. My guess is that the dinner is for 40-50 people tops.
Still don’t know the location of the dinner but she is asking us keep it under “Area 51 type security”, so I won’t spill that info until after the dinner. Stay tuned!
How exciting! I’m sooo jealous… Take notes so you don’t forget anything! 