'Top Chef': Cooking with the Beasts
Spent yesterday in bed recovering from the flu, and discovered a Bravo marathon of the first season of Top Chef, when the evilness was named Tiffani and bland Harold took the win and crying Dave somehow miraculously made it to the final three. Which led to this thought: really, has there been any better hostess firing/replacement than the dumping of Katie Lee Joel (Season 1) for Padma Lakshmi? And is Tom Colicchio at all cranky by the way he's totally overshadowed on the show by his hottie-hot hostess? Truly, she's not "Top Chef's" Heidi Klum (as in, the hostess on Bravo's "Project Runway"), she's "Top Chef's" Tim Gunn. In other words, she owns this show.
Okay, delirium over. We hope.
Next, apologies to contestant Erik, whose name is spelled with that pesky K and not a C. We shall do better from here on out. Or just continue to call him the guy with the tattoos, which makes things easier all around.
On to the Quickfire challenge, when the cheftestants have to make a dish using only five ingredients from the local Farmer's Market. Mark, the raised-on-a-sheep-farm boy from New Zealand, takes the prize with his steak with turnip and peaches, despite being so crazed he forgot to take home his lettuce from the market. In the interim, we get a bizarre interlude during which Chef couple Jennifer and Zoi can't figure out whose shoes are whose. All four of them are boring black clogs. We say, um, get some taste and it'll make life easier. Also, what set designer decided that the Chicago house needed to be furnished with bean-bag chairs? Have I just been transported back to some 1980s Rob Lowe-and-Demi Moore (pre-breast implants) movie?
But, wait, there's Whole Foods! Whew. A sign of the times. Also convenient, because now when some chef buys freaky ingredients I've never heard of, I can actually go find them myself. This week, the Elimination Challenge required the Chefs to draw knives and team up in groups of three, each group assigned to a specific animal. Given that the animals are penguins, gorillas and the like, it is a major relief to know that they don't have to cook said animal, but instead cook off a list of what said animal eats. Lucky for the Lion boys (Richard, Ryan and Erik) and the Vulture team (Mark, Manuel and Zoi), that means mountains of meat options. Not so lucky for the Gorilla team (Stephanie, Valerie, Antonia), who seem convinced they must use bananas -- hence they make banana bread -- and also indulge in black olive blinis. (Gorillas like black olives? Really? Who knew?)
The worst of it, though, comes from do-it-my-or-the-highway Nikki, whose mushrooms (which are apparently Bear food) turn out so evil Gail Simmons compares them to, well, bear waste.
Guest chef is Wylie Dufresne, the molecular gastronomist who sent foam-happy Marcel into spasms of joy two seasons ago. This season, Richard with the ridiculous mohawk is the Wylie disciple, but Wylie seems much more into Mark's sideburns. And the win goes to Andrew, on the Penguin team, which makes a yuzu "glacier" and a squid ceviche and some Thai salad.
In the end, it's the Bad Mushroom Bears and the Gorilla Girls on the hot seat. Stephanie gets saved by the banana bread (mommy's recipe!) and somehow (pretty hair, perhaps?) Nikki doesn't get dispatched despite the 'shroom disaster. Instead, it's Valerie who goes home for making the blinis ahead of time, which is like serving dead pancakes, no matter how much marscapone cheese and black olives and whatnot she can top it with.
Anyway, there are still too many cheftestants to keep them all straight, but that's one more down, and one less blini to survive. Already, though, we sense a pattern -- two chicks out in the first two weeks; and nothing but chicks in serious trouble this time around (yeah, Nikki's teammates were in the bottom two teams, but, really, was anyone but Nikki gonna get whacked for their disaster?). No woman has won the Top Chef title yet, and, in this early early going, once again it isn't looking good.
-- JENNIFER FREY
By Jennifer Frey |
March 20, 2008; 9:17 AM ET
Top Chef
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Posted by: CJB | March 20, 2008 12:09 PM
Oh my gosh, I was home sick on Wednesday and watched the season 1 marathon too. Still has one of the greatest reality TV lines of all time -- "I'm not your b*tch, b*tch."
Posted by: maclean6914 | March 21, 2008 11:56 AM
Nikki is a major league cutie .... and a major league Biatch !!!
Posted by: tommydee | March 22, 2008 2:27 AM
what I can't understand is why they judged them on the mushrooms when the team pulled them?! They didn't serve them to people, the judges insisted on trying them, they were awful, and then they punish them for it when the team didn't serve it. why is that fair?!
I thought this was a really clever new idea for a challenge otherwise, though.
Posted by: jane | March 23, 2008 7:47 PM
the judges didn't insist on eating the mushrooms, Nikki insisted that she had to give them one when asked about them rather than just say, they did not maintain their heat and flavor to our standards so we're not serving them (I believe another team did that, or at least someone did on some TC episode). Gail asked what happened to them, she didn't say "you have to serve them".
Posted by: actually... | March 24, 2008 5:31 PM
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Padma is like watching paint dry, b-o-r-i-n-g!