I see no new thread for this season. Too many chefs to make a judgement yet. Last Chance Kitchen is in play. I foresee a bunch gumbos,shrimp, crawfish etc etc.
I was very happy to see that they didn’t start with a million contestants and they went straight in to the real cooking. I have such a hard time getting in to it for the first 4-5 episodes because there are just too many faces.
I was glad to see turtle curry meatballs win- it just seemed fun. I also liked the Betty Page looking girl making things super spicy and the judges still liking her dish - I like things pretty hot and I get really annoyed at the whining you get (I’m looking at you Gordon Ramsey) if anything has a little too much heat in it.
I hope they do things other than just cook New Orleans-themed stuff. If nothing else, that gives the native New Orleans chefs a huge advantage.
Not much to say aside from that, other than the typical early-season struggle to learn who all the contestants are, at least in descriptive nickname fashion.
There is a ton of variety in NO outside of your typical Creole/Cajun fair. For example, New Orleans has a very large thriving Vietnamese population (probably because of the “French Connection”) and many excellent pho restaurants.
Right, but this challenge at least had two chefs who were super-right-at-home with the proteins, and a bunch who’d never cooked with them before, which seems like a bit of an unlevel playing field.
On the other hand, neither of the two NO natives were on the top. On the third hand, neither of them were on the bottom. So hopefully my concerns are groundless.
If it’s like any other season of TC, they’ll forget where they’re filming pretty quickly.
Though in the promos I did see Leah Chase (Dooky Chase’s) and John Besh (August), two very different New Orleans legends.
My guess is this first challenge will be the only one with weird NO area proteins just to get the alligator and turtle out of the way early. I expect we’ll see plenty of oyster and shrimp used at some point still.
Heh, I didn’t even realize Top Chef had already started!
I too have a hard time with the first few episodes being invested because there are just too many people. It was ok enough and not too gimmicky.
Bonus: no horrible distracting douche-staches this time, although one of the cheftestants is giving me a major creeper vibe.
Boo to the Aussie girl who seems to be using her sex appeal… she cooked well this time, but let your cooking do the talking. There is no reason to cook in short shorts. Another boo to the dude who was voted sexiest chef. He was the same guy making obnoxious comments like, “I thought this was supposed to be hard!” Bleh.
And watering down the dashi was a grave error, especially since he didn’t really try to reduce it the next day.
Well, the Gumbo came into play. There were some weird combinations on the quick fire. Like the feeding of the Habitat Volunteers. Looked like some great food. I think the right guy had to pack his knives.
No love for Top Chef New Orleans:(.
eenerms - I just watched my recording last night, then wen t right to bed.
I couldn’t believe the team thought it was good that the other teams ran out of food, but they didn’t. They were patting themselves on the back for their planning, not realizing it simply meant their food wasn’t good enough to come back for seconds.
At this point there are still too many contestants for me to have an idea who might win.
StG
I am enjoying the fact that most of the men (except the creeper… Michael?) are very attractive. That’s a plus while I try to figure out who is who.
That Gumbo quickfire turned out badly for the two New Orleans chefs. The older lady judge didn’t seem to like either of them. Ouch.
So many faces. I have no real favorites yet.
Glad to see Jason go… he was arrogant and self centered. More concerned with how good he looks than his cooking.
But I was more disappointed with the guy who knew he was going on the New Orleans version of Top Chef and didn’t even think to look up how to make a gumbo, “What kind of base do you use?”
That was kind of funny actually 
Agreed. I had him pegged for this season’s oblivious douchebag and was SO pleased to see him get kicked early.
Commander’s Palace… I’ve eaten there before and it was amazing.
It seemed like a disappointing challenge in all, lots of dishes that weren’t up to scratch. Any of the folks in the bottom could have reasonably gone home, and several others who were in the middle had bland food.
Anyone else noticed that the women are doing much better than the men this season? All 3 people in the top of the Quickfire were women and all in the bottom were men.
My money for the win is on Nina right now, as she does well in every challenge they’ve had.
Hugh pointed out that the time given for the challenge was a bit unreasonable. The number of bad dishes confirms that the challenge was poorly planned.
I wish Tom had taken Hugh up on his suggestion and they’d tried to do cook that dish themselves.