Best moment of the season so far had to be tonight’s episode. Beverly’s foam can sprayed Padma and the guest judge guy. As usual Padma kept the blank expression. But, they stopped for a moment to clean her up. Heaven forbid her dress wasn’t perfect for filming. :rolleyes: She just had a few small spots of foam on her skirt. It wasn’t in her hair or on her face.
Tonight was Texas barbeque night. I really felt bad for the chefs. Up all night over a roaring fire and then the next day in the hot Texas sun. One got heat exhaustion and was sent to the hospital for awhile. After all that, it seems a bit cruel to face the judges and hear your meat is too salty. Probably all the sweat rolling off their faces while they cooked. That was a brutal challenge.
I had a major question about Chris’ Modern Quickfire pill. He gave them this pill so that sour tasted sweet. They were eating a lemon like it was an orange. But, wouldn’t that seriously upset your stomach? All that lemon and acid? I’d need Maalox for sure.
Don’t peek if you haven’t seen Last Chance Kitchen.
Nyesha is kicking butt in Last Chance Kitchen. Three wins in a row. She’s the one that got sent home in a double elimination because another team member (Dakota) screwed up.
Maybe if you overdo it. But you could eat a whole lemon or lime and be perfectly fine. Some gimlet or margarita recipes call for half a lime, and it’s not hard at all to drink two. Further reading here.
OK, seriously, is this the sleep-deprivation series? Did the military subsidize this series as a test because their psychologists considered it too cruel to perform in the lab? Are all Texas chefs insomniacs?
Ed’s jaw was completely out of control in this one. Coudl just be TMJ though, he defintiely clenches it more when he’s angry.
I couldn’t believe that Bev didn’t go home for bad beans. I mean seriously, she couldn’t get the beans cooked in, what, 17 hours? I like Bev, but that’s sad. Lucky for her that the oversalting reached the “inedible” level.
Chris C is not fooling me with all that bimbo artwork; he’s gay, I’m sure of it. Nothing wrong with it, and it’s none of my business, but dang he really . . . OK whatever.
Colicchio really looked doubtful when he first heard the winning team was doing Asian flavors on their BBQ. I’m glad the team stuck by their plan and didn’t let themselves be fazed by it. We didn’t get much feedback as to whether the locals liked it, would have liked to have heard more from them.
Last Chance kitchen seems like the way to go. No sleep-dep, just the chance to cook against the exhausted and heartbroken chef coming off the loss. What could be better?
Ed came across as a bit of a jerk, but I think given the exhaustion and frustration I’ll cut him a bit of slack.
I love love love The Salt Lick! That place really rocks.
I felt sorry for everybody involved though. I’m sure it was over 100° every single day, and probably 90° at night. This was the worst Texas summer I can remember.
Had to roll my eyes a little at Chris J telling the author of Modernist Cuisine what “miracle berries” are. I guess they’re encouraged to do that for the camera presentation, but still.
Chris C’s artwork in his apartment wasn’t BIMBO artwork! It was BOOB artwork! The painting on the wall was a nude female silhouette, but the ones stacked up on the floor against the baseboard were almost all studies of “Tits Galore.”
I can see a chef pushing on if there’s a knife cut. Wind a big hunk of tape over the injury and slap on a glove. But if you’ve got someone with heat stroke, you really shouldn’t make snarky remarks about “work through it,” like Ed said about Sarah. Yeah, their brisket took a hit from the judges, but if Sarah passed out in the middle of the steam table, they could have lost the whole dish.
Sleep deprivation makes most people really mean.
~VOW
I definitely agree that that’s enough with the sleep deprivation challenges. This is Top Chef, not Top Person-who-functions-well-without-sleep-for-40-hours. Sure, real Chefs are under lots of pressure and need to function well when tired, but there’s a big difference between that and pulling all-nighters.
(This was particularly frustrating on All Stars when Jenn Carroll, presumably one of the favorites, went home super-early basically because she did a bad job and was bitchy after staying up all night. Did we feel that we really saw how good she was as a chef under those circumstances?)
One general comment about this season… you never have any idea who’s going to be on the top or the bottom. Are there any favorites or bottom-dwellers left? Maybe Paul is a favorite? I feel like the wins and tops and bottoms have been VERY evenly distributed between the competitors… which means there’s more suspense, but also means there’s not so much of a narrative flow.
But the teams didn’t need all three chefs up all night to man the cookers. Most 'que is low and slow, with someone checking the temps now and again. The teams should’ve scheduled sleep times in there. One person takes a shift (and even then I’d think they could catnap and get up and check their meats periodically), while the others sleep. If there was a place to get out of the heat, and maybe take showers, it would make a world of difference.
The preview for next week’s Restaurant Wars makes it look like everyone is at each other’s throats. It’s going to be an all-out free for all brawl.
And Paul is definitely the favorite now. He’s been in the top of a lot of challenges and the flavors of his team’s BBQ were almost all his idea. Kudos still to Lindsay and Grayson for executing well.
Exactly. Every chef on each team could have easily had two hours of uninterrupted sleep.
I saw an awful lot of grilling and only some smoking. I’m glad beer can chicken :rolleyes: got called out for being not BBQ. Idiots.
And who takes all night to fuck up beans?
It’s probably not a coincidence that the chef who overheated is overweight. Nobody wants to address it, but in his latest book, Anthony Bourdain opined about some of the fat chefs trotted out on Hell’s Kitchen who have similar break downs. He points out the hard, hot, fast-paced reality of a working kitchen and drives home the point that fat chefs aren’t a joke, it just doesn’t work.
I gotta say, I find this season incredibly boring. The chefs, they’re interesting people, fun to watch their interaction. But Texas as though it were a cuisine? I mean, really. Ooooh, oooh, they did steaks. And they did chili. And then last night they did steaks – oh, no, it was different because it was steaks AND chicken and ribs.
I could understand doing a cuisine like Chinese, where there’s lots of variety. But Texas? Sheeeesh.
They did NOT do steaks last night. They did brisket, and chicken and ribs. BBQ is definitely a regional cuisine, and Texas is known for their version of it, just like many other regions in this country. Chili is also a regional cuisine. Southwestern/Mexican has many versions, of which Tex-Mex is one.
I’m not sure if this has been discussed here or elsewhere, but I’m pretty sure that the Last Chance Kitchen is not actually filmed immediately after the contestant was eliminated. My arguments:
-They are not going to keep all the eliminated chefs in Texas for week after week to film these short segments.
-There was a LCK where the contestants had to repurpose Thanksgiving leftovers. Tom had said “we recently had Thanksgiving”, whereas the main Top Chef show was filmed during the summer (June-July).
-Tom looks a lot more spry and happy in LCK, which would indicate (to me) that it is after his back surgery.
There has to be some deception one way or the other. Either they pretended Thanksgiving just took place (for an episode slated to air immediately after thanksgiving), and no matter what they’re pretending that the next one will be “next week” when that doesn’t make any sense, logistically.
I think it’s more likely that they had the eliminated chefs convene together a few months later (like in November-Dec) and film a bunch of these in a row. Since Top Chef usually has a break between the main show and the finale (last year, the contestants went to the Bahamas a month or two later, IIRC), there would be a time gap for the LCK winner to make the filming of the finale.
I agree. Especially since no other season has focused on challenges related to “local” cuisine to the extent that this one has.
Enough with Texas as inspiration, already; just give them some interesting challenges. As i said earlier, i really liked last week’s challenge because it had a good theme, and it gave each chef an opportunity to really show of his or her abilities and cook something that inspired them.
There’s always been a losers house for the eliminated chefs. Previous seasons had weekly bonus web videos of the eliminated chef entering the losers house and getting greeted. They even showed stuff they were doing to kill time.
Keeping the chefs together avoids any news leaks. If an eliminated chef went home early then the news would quickly hit the web.
You may be right that last chance kitchen was filmed later. It seems like they’d be too busy during regular filming.
I can’t recall a press blackout like this season. Usually the eliminated chefs give a lot of interviews. So far, I haven’t seen any this time.
The “loser’s house” makes sense since filming of the main run of the show only takes about 30 days. But the airing of the show takes months; there’s no way everyone would be in the same place for that long (or would continually fly in and out, for that matter).
It’s possible the LCK was filmed right after the end of the main run of the show, one episode after another, and they fibbed about Thanksgiving and such, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. It really seems like months have gone by.
As usual Padma kept the blank expression. But, they stopped for a moment to clean her up. Heaven forbid her dress wasn’t perfect for filming. :rolleyes: She just had a few small spots of foam on her skirt. It wasn’t in her hair or on her face.
That was a brutal challenge.
I guess they’re encouraged to do that for the camera presentation, but still.