I fell asleep during the first half of this episode. Then, on the rerun, I fell asleep during the second. There are still too many of them for me to keep track of
I had that CYA-More-Important-Than-Food thought too. Considering that the cheftestants who have gone to LCK did so because of minute errors, I can’t say I blame them. It’s why, for instance, Beverly took so long shelling/deveining all those shrimp. I still cannot figure out why those potatoes weren’t at least partially cooked beforehand. As for the steaks…I’m sorry, you may be a grillmaster god, but even a grillmaster god cannot keep track of 200 steaks at once…
Another thing: There’s something about this season I’m not liking, and I’m quite sure what it is. No doubt why I’m not jumping into any TC threads as often as I used to :shrug:
I’ve gotten kinda burned out on Top Chef lately, but I’m really pissed off about them leaving Houston out. That’s ridiculous. I’m not watching it any more unless Padma starts hosting it nekkid.
It seems to me that they have way more commercials than they used to, which cuts into the actual stuff that is interesting to me, like how exactly they do the cooking.
I love Tom Colicchio (sp?) when he gets all Disappointed Dad on the chefs. They deserved it this time. Seriously, you can’t make a decent steak dinner and you call yourselves chefs?
I really don’t like the Texas theme of this season. It’s not that I have anything against Texas or its food; I would just like to see their actual cooking techniques tested instead of how well they can adapt food to Texas culture.
I gotta hand it to Ty-Lor, for accepting complete responsibility for the steaks. He was injured yet waited until prep was completed before going to the ER. He stuck it out in the ER–and also put his own injury in perspective saying a cut was much less serious than the guy who came in with a heart attack. He had almost no sleep, worked with a bum hand (which had to be hurting like Hell!) yet didn’t piss and moan about his disadvantages and said the responsibility for the steaks rested completely with him.
It seems damn near everybody else is more interested in throwing his or her competitors under the bus. That bus ride is bumpy from running over all the bodies.
I don’t have any patience for ANY competition show where the people talk smack about their opponents. The chefs I’ve enjoyed the most in the past were the ones who were NICE to everyone, gave a helping hand when they were able, and encouraged others to do their best.
~VOW
I agree that after last night I have a lot more respect for Ty-Lor, even though he has the stupidest spelling of a name EVAH! But he really acted honorably, which is more than I can say for most of the chefs.
First 2 courses: Let’s play it as safe as possible. I got no respect for those chefs even though Mrs. Cad want me to make a Tomato-Watermelon soup now.
Course 3: As soon as Miss Cheezy Potato told everyone the day before that she was going to cook the huge pans of potato gratin (with no seasoning as far as I could see) in 3 hours, I looked over at Mrs. Cad and said, “She’s gone.”
Ty-Lor’s huge error was not taking charge of the steaks. He marked them but he needed to tell someone to flash them with 6 minutes left. Just bringing it in and hoping someone will finish them correctly (especially with this group) is just begging for Padme to tell you to piss off with you knives.
As for Ty’s injury, yes he needed stiching but to me there was a little bit of playing to the camera and trying to outdo Fabio’s “it’s Top Chef, not Top Pussy”. Dude, he broke his freekin’ finger and you just cut the webbing on your hand.
Course 4: Wasn’t someone bitching that the (winning) cake was his recipe and the same one as the Quincenera? I thought the Q cake was a tres leche and this was a peach cake and both of them were Heather’s own recipe.
Grayson FTW or maybe Ed because he is self-taught. I really don’t care about anyone else.
I always dislike the “you’re one big team” challenges, because of course they are NOT one big team. There’s zero incentive for them to help each other out. It just doesn’t work on a game theoretical level.
Also, I don’t feel like the challenges have been very creative so far this season. I know some people dislike them, but I really enjoy crazy gimmicks like tag-team cooking, one-hand-tied-behind-back, etc., at least in the quickfires.
Compare the elimination challenge here to the most recent episode of Next Iron Chefs: Superchefs, with the auction. That’s WAY more creative…
It’s the same base cake recipe, and she got the recipe from Edward.
And yeah, the whole potato gratin thing was a disaster waiting to happen. Even if she cooked them properly I think she would have been in the bottom 3 for such a boring dish.
I think the cake itself was Ed’s sponge recipe, and then she added first the leche and then the peach elements. I doubt the cake by itself would have won or lost the competition for anyone, but I can understand his rancor.
Personally I am more bothered by the fact that Lindsay has received no attention whatsoever for being the one who pushed the early firing of the steaks. I am wondering whether the judges shouldn’t be viewing the kitchen footage between the tasting and the final decision. that would probably preclude a same-night decision, but the viewers would be a lot less frustrated by the results.
I am enormously relieved by the total lack of any cheating in this group. That’s a huge plus for the current season, and making the whole thing more enjoyable again.
Ty-Lor - what a true gentleman. His stand-up attitude was inspiring throughout the episode.
What is that strange thing Ed does with his mouth? I am constantly distracted by that with him.
Heather is coming off as a bully to me. She may be a good cook, but I’m not liking her. Ty-Lor is earning points for his great attitude.
I’m not enjoying the show as much this season and I can’t quite figure out why. Tom seems bored, so that may be part of it. Grayson is probably my favorite right now. That will probably doom her, unfortunately.
I think that there are two reasons we’re sorta bored with the show:
(1) The opening two sequences, where we had, what 40 chefs to watch elimination; that’s too many for me to get a handle on.
(2) Texas cooking. I mean, c’mon. When the show is focused on only one cuisine, it’s bound to get boring. And especially Texas cuisine, which is way more limited than (say) Chinese or Indian cuisines.
Some have said that Ed’s jaw could be coke jaw. Hopefully it isn’t but coke jaw can look like that.
I think there are a lot of factors at work here that are hurting the season. One is that it was filmed in the Texas heat wave last summer so any outdoor cooking is going to be miserable. Tom is cranky because his back was killing him - he got surgery in October. It was especially bad during the dinner party. And the other factor is that too many of the contestants seem to be focused more on covering their asses instead of making good, exciting food. This seemed especially evident during the dinner party and the steak dinner last episode.
Apparently, Tom really was serious about having them “individually grill” 300 steaks medium rare for an all at once, deadline, seated banquet. It probably could have been done but, only with at least three more grill cooks. That was simply too much to expect one person to do effectively as a grill chef in a banquet setting with its progression. I think I saw 6 of those large kettle grills available, but it looked like Ty-loer was only using two. The teams could have utilized their labor more effectively.
Or maybe that classless Bitch that won the Venza could have finished her stolen cake and got her ass out on a grill in 112 F Heat and helped out Ty-loer, instead of acting like an executive chef.
Yes, and those Webers are HUGE. They are not the standard 22" kettle, but a whopping 37.75" with over 1100 square inches of grilling surface. They’re called Ranch Kettle, appropriately.
These chefs really did drop the ball on the main steak course. That event could have been properly handled with just one chef and a dozen cooks – and it likely is year in and year out. With so many chefs, they should have rocked that thing.
I think that should have been the point, too. They give you all this grilling equipment, the right tools, at a freakin’ CattleMen’s Ball and you use whole foods Strip steaks and flash finish them? First for this challenge… instead of pandering to hole foods as their sponsor… they should have gotten a few sides of award winning beef from those very Cattlemen. The whole challenge premise was flawed.
