on Mar 13th, 2008I liked it
Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here. I just watched Episode 1 of Top Chef Chicago, Season 4, and I think we might be in store for a good season.
The days of caterers and culinary students competing seem to be over; nearly all the 16 contestants have some serious experience and some are working at marquee restaurants. But they are a cast, after all, a cast of characters.
There’s a guy who seems to have Hung’s attitude, another who’s into molecular gastonomy like the Season 2 guy with the circa 1960 Phil Everly hair, there’s one who gets bleeped more often Gordon Ramsay and another who mentioned he’d been sweating like a beast but, thankfully, not like last season’s Howie. At least not that we saw.
And there are two lesbians who happen to be a couple. When they announced this to their fellow competitors, just to get it out there, the others were all “Oh, really,” with a minimum of politeness and even a stone face or two. The food world is full of gays and lesbians so the reaction baffled me.
Their elimination challenge was to make a classic dish. One was chicken piccata and when a contestant was shopping for the dish and talking about tomatoes and potatoes, I nearly choked on my Dasani. Even I know how to make it without a recipe; dredge some chicken breasts (I like the thin-sliced ones) in flour that’s been seasoned with kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper, saute them in butter with a touch of olive oil to raise the smoke point, deglaze the pan with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and some white wine and toss in some capers if you like them. I don’t. Serve with the pan sauce.
Another classic in the challenge was souffle and I must say, that struck me as a bit unfair and not because one of the first things I ever made was a souffle that was such a monumental failure the family dog, whose favorite snack was toilet paper, turned her snout up at it. No, it’s because the rule of thumb with souffle is: we wait for it, it does not wait for us. We can’t know how much time elapsed between the making and the judging, but if any dish can make the heart sink in a competition, that’s a prime candidate.
Anthony Bourdain was more tactful than usual as a guest judge and Rocco DiSpirito still had that Botox look. Padma was her usual vacuous self and Chef Colicchio was on his game, especially with the piccata. And the product placements were more blatant than ever; honest, Bravo, we get it. Really we do.
The judges’ blogs, except for Bourdain, are already up at Bravo.
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