Top Chef: We Left Our Knives In San Francisco
Man, we loved last season of Top Chef. So much so, that we're gonna keep writing about it, even though it's made the move to Los Angeles. Top Chef, for those who don't know, is a show on Bravo that's basically The Apprentice with less jargon, more food, and a lot less suckage. And it used to be based here in our fair city. Alas . . . In any case, it airs every Wednesday night; due to our inability to write quickly, we've committed to posting reviews of the prior week on the day that the new episodes are set to appear, to hype lovers of food-based TV for that night.
Top Chef was great in its inaugural season, but it seems the producers wanted to rebuild it . . . make it better, faster, stronger (or whatever). So, goodbye to stiff puppet Katie Lee Joel, hello to another married-to-a-celeb hostess in the form of smoking hot Padma Lakshmi (wife of Salman Rushdie). Unlike Katie Lee, Padma's a legit celeb in her own right, though, having been a supermodel, movie actress, established cookbook writer, and hostess of some other TV shows.
They also amped up the number of contestants to 15. Dude, doesn't that seem like kind of a lot? We hope you, the readers, don't expect the laundry list of contestants from us. If you want that, go to Bravo's site for the show. We're just gonna come hard at you with the opinions and highlights as we saw them.
We were psyched to see (swoon) Gail back, as well as Chef Tom who, though he made some sort of "I'm not your friend" speech, still can't shake his "nice guy" image and is one of the shining lights of the show. Much respect. And Harold, winner from season one, returned as a guest judge this episode -- we're glad he's spent some of his $100,000 on something other than a v-neck t-shirt. He was actually wearing a button-down shirt, though it was unbuttoned uncomfortably low.
Is the show still good? Heck yeah. Would it be better up here in San Francisco? We dunno. We'd like to think so. Are there any Bay Area hooks? Well, of course. Can it be a culinary show without a few local entrants?
Michael, for instance, is either from Lodi or Stockton; episode one displayed the former once and the latter another time. Oops. Editing, people. His quote about himself is that he's "got balls." Hmph. So, yet another non-eunuch contestant.
Mia is from Oakdale, which is almost kinda ours (northern Central Valley; closer to us than any other of the "-ist" sites). Marisa, a pastry chef, is a local and works at Ame. She cut herself in episode one. We're expecting great things.
We must note: an awful lot of contestants are from Las Vegas.
So who to root for? So far, aside from Mia, we like Ilan and Elia. But who cares who we like? Reality TV is all about the HATE, right?
Well, already we know who we love to hate. This season's Stephen must have been chosen from the resemblance. In fact, let us lay a little pict-o-math on you:
Okay, that was mean. Sorry. But, man, Marcel does not make a good first impression.
The Quickfire Challenge -- flambé! It goes well for some, not so well for others. Poor Elia must not be much of a boozer. Can't flambé in wine, kiddo. We knew Betty would get high marks with her Thai-inspired soup, because Harold was a judge and he made stuff like that all last season. Sam, an executive chef from NY, wins, thus gaining "immunity." His dish looked awesome, actually; it appealed to our inner trimethyldioxypurist: it involved shrimp, sambuca, and espresso. What's not to like?
And herein is one of our problems -- with 15 contestants, why bother with immunity, at least at first? Can't we have two eliminations? Can't everyone be subject to dismissal? Can't we be a little merciless? Thin the herd, people!
The big challenge: Five crappy ingredients, merge them, and be judged by your peers. Oh, Judge Gail is back, tanned and more lovely than ever. Double swoon. The first shift of chefs had to combine American cheese (singles!), escargot, artichokes, potatoes, and peanuts. The second group had to cook using chicken liver (oh, for a bit of our grandmother's chopped chicken liver . . . ), frogs' legs, eggplant, peanut butter, and cornflakes. Top four: Mia, Betty, Ilan, Elia. Ilan wins; his recipe was baked escargot in the shell. Losers: Marcel (who's sure that he's in the bottom four because his peers are scared of the competition), Otto, Suyai, Carlos.
Suyai, who seemed to give up before she even started, goes home.
Yawn. Forget her outgoing words, we don't care about her; we weren't given enough time to get to know her.
Bye, bye Ms. contestant Suyai.
So far, so good -- hopefully we'll see more of the contestants' personalities starting tonight at 10 p.m.!
Note: The Bravo official site has a lot of good extras, including a blog and cooking demos from our Rita's favorite from last season, Lee Ann Wong.