Top Chef Just Deserts Season 2 starts tonight, Aug 24 in the regular TC time slot.
Preview
Bios
http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef-just-desserts/season-2/bios
Looks like they got better & more professional chefs cast this time. I noticed they cast a lot of female chefs for S2. I’ve heard they can use recipes as a starting point. I’m not sure exactly how that will work in the EC’s.
Johnny, Hubert Keller & Gail are back 
I’m hoping season 2 will be a lot better than S1.
I really like Top Chef, Masters, Iron Chef as well as many other cooking shows. I just don’t have a sweet tooth and so I can’t watch this show. I’ve wondered how broad an appeal this show would have - virtually every chef on Top Chef is inept at deserts. There must be a reason why so many chefs avoid desert and I doubt it has anything to do with skill.
I think season 2’s cast will be a lot better. I was very impressed with several of them in the first episode. They jumped right in with this fancy showpiece desert inspired by fairy tales. Way more complicated than you’d expect this early.
I’m already liking this cast. They have some real pros this season. I admit that I skipped a lot of the S1 episodes. I had such a strong and intense dislike of that cast. It was all a soap opera with screaming meltdowns instead of cooking.
recap of the first episode. spoilers
http://culturemob.com/top-chef-just-desserts-recap-showpiece
Probably not very much to eat or cook there.
Last night was the first episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts II. Am I the only one who watched it? It sure seems like it’s going to be bigger and harder than last year, but at least there should be fewer psychotic break downs.
What did you think?
Merged threads.
I’m glad that one woman got sent home. I hate it how when someone acts so pushy and bull-headed towards their partners in the kitchen, usually it’s the partner who goes home because they “let” their teammate push them around, even though the pushy person is the one who made all the wrong decisions.
The pedigree of some of the competitors seems sufficient for them to be in Top Chef: Just Desserts: Masters, if there were such a thing. So presumably the first few weeks will be winnowing off the chaff.
Perhaps the cream rising to the top?
I’ve just got to say that the most tasty looking thing in the ep was Hubert Keller in that Fairytale jacket. :swoon:
StG
I was so pleased to see them let people make really great stuff without any of the stupid roadblocks thrown in their way for a change. I got so frustrated with the show last year when they would set up a challenge, and then come in with ridiculous constraints, such as “Stop what you’re doing, and now make your dessert a cupcake,” etc.
I think there’s a tradeoff. Particularly for those of us who aren’t really knowledgeable about cooking, if it was just “ok, make a really good dish” every week, it might get kind of boring. I like variety and creativity, which comes out of adversity and limitations.
Desserts are whole different thing and the skills are surprinsignly different from “regular cooking”. Dessert are incredibly unforgiving, time has to be perfect and measuring is to the gram; there’s less “I’ll sprinkle a bit of this and that for flavour”.
It has all to do with skill.
Lots of fancy cakes tonight. It’s such a weird thing seeing them work so hard assembling the cake and making it look perfect. Then, they remove the layers and spread them out to cup and serve. All that decorating work gone in a few minutes.
It bugs me seeing the judges waste so much. They each got a slice of every layer. Took one bite and set it down. There was this large pile of plates of perfectly good food waiting for the trash. Why not cut one slice? Let each judge cut off a bite? I hate waste of any kind of food. It is true that there are people going hungry right here in the U.S. They could have cake. 
Those two losing cakes looked like crap. I’m no designer but even I could see those layers had no business being stacked together. I was surprised at who they eliminated. I would have gotten rid of the guy that made the ugly chocolate drum layer.
No kidding, there were 2 decent cakes and 2 really, really ugly cakes. As far as I’m concerned, those musical instruments made out of modeling chocolate look like they were made by a grade school kid in art class.
There is something about the drum guy (I still don’t know anyone’s name!) that I find really “off” and I would not be sad to see him go.
Orlando (look, I remembered someone’s name!) talks big but I’m not convinced that he has the skills to back it up… so far everything he’s produced has been pretty lackluster.
That cake with the musical instruments was the FUGLIEST cake I’ve ever seen. All three should have been dumped.
IIRC, last season they weren’t even allowed to have recipes, so I’m glad to see the notebooks come out this season. Pastry is an exact science, and there would be far too much waste and a lot of inedible crap if recipes cannot be allowed.
That being said, I’ll be glad when they dump the space cadet that looks like a chipmunk. My grandmother would have described him as a fart in a skillet.
~VOW