I thought Tre’s quickfire dish looked and sounded amazing. It was the first ever Top Chef dish that if I had the recipe for it I’d make it, it seemed simple and awesome. I was happy he won.
I was also happy Carla won- I think I like her the best of all the chefs. She seems like a genuinely good person, and quirky and fun. I also don’t think Angelo is intentionally sabotaging. I think he’s just controlling and likes to get into other people’s stuff. I don’t like him, but I’ve never got a real bad guy vibe from him, despite the producers best efforts. He’s irritating and I wouldn’t want to be around him, but I don’t think he’s intentionally sabotaging.
BTW, here is Carla’s soup recipe (link goes to pdf) for anyone else who thinks that sounded really good. It looks kind of time-consuming but not technically difficult, so I think I’m gonna give it a shot sometime.
Just watched, and thought the format was really stupid. Jamie wasn’t up for elimination because she refused to serve her dish, although her teammates said she was up? They needed to insist. The whole notion of people escaping risk by NOT serving their dish seems counter to the whole point of the show, n’est-ce pas?
In Tom’s blog, he says they wanted Jamie to go, but couldn’t convince her, and then Casey volunteered. He said if when he asked who was next, they could’ve just said “Jamie is going,” and she would have to go.
After a break for Christmas, the show was back tonight. The best part was watching Tom cook in the EC. He can still kick ass.
The EC was a massive clusterfu*k. The saddest thing was the chefs were unable to put their heads down and bust out the food. The judges blogs mention how uncomfortable it was in that restaurant with all those hungry people and no food. Even the cheftestants were ashamed. For a chef, having people walk out hungry is inexcusable. I wish they hadn’t awarded a winning prize. The guy that won looked pretty uncomfortable. When the entire teams fails, how can one guys success matter?
I’m baffled why Casey attempted Chicken feet when she wasn’t even in the kitchen to cook them. That was not wise. I’m not surprised they sent her home.
As an old line cook, it was very frustrating to me to watch them lollygag around fussing with their precious little plating compositions when they needed to be busting out food in volume. You would think that none of them had ever worked in a high volume kitchen before. I wanted to take over the kitchen myself and start kicking their asses to knock shit out.
I have to agree with you Dio, someone really needed to kick some butt in that kitchen and make them get the food out. None of them had any sense of urgency even after Tom came down. What a mess.
Does Jaime have pictures of one of the judges in a compromising position? Her continued presence on the show is a mystery.
I didn’t like either of the challenges. Tom’s 8:37 isn’t a fair comparison - first, he knew what he was going to make (and didn’t have to scour the kitchen, see what was there, and decide) and second, he wasn’t climbing over 8 other people when he was working. Both of those add to the cheftestants’ timeline.
As far as the elimination, Casey’s dish was a mess, but she also didn’t get a chance to correct it because she was upstairs. Jaime did not one, but two failed dishes (after two weeks of not doing anything at all) and she still hasn’t packed her knives? What’s with that?
What’s the advantage of working the front of the house and not cooking your food? No, really.
The judging is *always *based on the dishes. Sure, they’ll rake you over the coals a bit about the overall performance as it relates to the challenge, but you only win if your food is good, and you only go home if your food sucks. For any episode that is not the finale, the chefs can flat out ignore the theme, bang out a stellar dish they know, and be assured they’ll survive another week. Gnocchi, anyone?
Ugh, as much as I love this show they really are pissing every ounce of respect out of me with each week they let Jamie skate by. I’m not usually the “she should’ve gone” person but Jamie is on life 17 and this is getting ridiculous.
I hate these challenges where someone else has to “take over” another chef’s dish. If they do it well (which I don’t think I’ve ever seen), they get kudos for cooking it properly and handling their dish as well as someone else’s. If they focus on their dish and screw up the other chef’s, the other chef gets sent home. I don’t see the downside.
But Tom did say that Casey’s pancake was a bit dense, and she didn’t seem to agree. That probably didn’t help her.
And Jaime dodges another bullet. When she said she wasn’t happy with her dumplings, I really thought it was going to be another instance where she doesn’t put up her food. Or that she was going to renege on her promise to put up two dishes. But I’m a bit tired of getting the impression that cooking certain foods is beneath her. I really used to root for her until I saw the episode from her season where she was underwhelmed by Eric Ripert’s food. Ever since then I’ve seen her as a pretentious jerk.
The funny thing about Casey’s dish was that Antonia wanted to deep fry the chicken feet and when Casey went back to the kitchen she told them no- wok cook them. The criticism at the table was that they should have been deep fried. So, it’s possible if she had left it to Antonia, the dish would have been better.
The customers’ comment “Caucasin dim sum:rolleyes:” pretty much summed up the entire challenge. Most of those dishes didn’t even look appetizing, even some of the top 5 dishes looked like shit and I’m not surprised at all that almost all of the chefs fell flat on their faces. I doubt that even if the chefs weren’t lazily trickling out food that crowd would have been satisfied with the food being served.
Reading his blog, it sounds like he didn’t know what he was going to make. He had a short walk-through of the kitchen to see where everything was (since he knows less about this kitchen than the chefs do), but he didn’t know what ingredients were going to be available.
I didn’t know they could be made a way other than slow braised.
Also does anyone know the language? Do you know if he actually said something as polite as “Caucasian Dim Sum” because from the look on his face I would guess it would have been closer to “Honkey Dim Sum”, or at least “Gringo Dim Sum” which would be much funnier
