Man, I have never come away from a viewing of a cooking show with a litany of "fuck you"s as much as I did at the latest episode. I can’t be arsed enough to look up the name of the booted chef, but “lecture on a plate” certainly summed him up perfectly. What a sanctimonious asshole. I think I’ll go eat a piece of red meat right now just to spite him, and I’m not even hungry.
I do want to check out some of the winning recipes, tho. That was some awesome calorie cutting!
I can’t wait to try the meatball sandwich. They really liked that one. The booted chef seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor, but he got on his soap box and that may have helped with his send off. I’ll watch another week. I’m starting to kind of like Pomeroy.
I’ll tell you what I think is wrong with this season’s Top Chef. But first, a little background.
I live in KC and I’m a foodie so I’ve gone to Chef Tio’s restaurant several times. It’s good food. Not spectacular. Just good. As far as fine dining goes, I’ve never really been wowed by her creations. She got her start like half the chefs in KC did: working at The American Restaurant. Debbie Gold, the current executive Chef at the American was on last run’s TC masters. She didn’t make it past round one. Having eaten at two of Gold’s restaurants I can say she’d cook rings around Chef Tio.
Tio’s a James Beard award winner, which is no small feat. And she made it really far in the Next Iron Chef so kudos to her. But she’s still really young and I honestly don’t see what in her career or her food or her accomplishments rates her to be a Top Chef “Master.”
So here’s the problem with the format change. The last two seasons they could get chefs to commit to a single afternoon with the potential of another maybe 4 day stint. Lots of chefs can do that.
But what “Master” chef can really afford to take a month off from their successful, yet hectic, career to play for charity? Could anyone?
So the Chefs they got were the chefs that could commit. These aren’t Masters, but I don’t think “Top Chef: a level above cheftestant but not really a gastropub icon” has quite the same ring to it.
But that’s who we have and that’s part of the reason this season has been so lackluster.
The new format also poses a much greater risk to the reputation of any established chefs. When a chef competed in the old format, he knew one of two things would happen.
- You get eliminated from your group, which means a very short filming period, and you get to go back to your restaurants quickly. You’ve only really failed once, so you can claim that you weren’t really prepared for the harsh time limits and other things, and not really suited for this kind of competition.
- You pass from your group, and get a somewhat longer filming period, but still not as long as the regular Top Chef format. This also means that you’ve cooked some really impressive food to beat many other chefs, so it’s probably going to be good for your reputation, and good exposure for your restaurants.
Either way it was win-win for the chefs competing. You could still lose by making an ass out of yourself of course.
The same is not true of the new format. It’s perfectly possible for a chef to suck on most weeks, and not be eliminated for half the season or more. This format poses a serious risk to the chefs reputation, and that might scare away some of the better known chefs too.
I’m not digging this format either. They don’t seem at all like masters. The quality of chef is lower, they aren’t the ‘rock stars of the culinary world’ like they had before.
And the challenges aren’t there to highlight their skills. If anything, it’s the opposite. The challenges are to make it as hard as possible for them to cook well. This week’s fast food challenge and next week they are cook on a BUS AS IT DRIVES? This is just to mess with them.
Finally, a real challange. I liked both the Quickfire and the elimination challange. No gimmicks, no insane budget, just cook for your client.
StG
Me too. I think it was the best show of the season. I hope the rest of the shows are like this one. I do not need to see these talented chefs cook with bugs or on a moving motorhome. Just let them do what they do. Cook great food.