So Far, so Tasty

Yay more Top Chef! Granted, I don’t think Top Chef: Masters is as palatable (or some other lame food-related quip) as a regular installment of the show, but it is enough to satiate some of my cravings (ok, I’ll stop). Mainly, Masters falls short because it doesn’t follow the same group of people week by week – rather, it features four different, already established “master” cheftestants who face off head to head with one winning and going on to the Champions Round – thus making it more difficult to root for anyone in particular. Also, as a result of their “master” statuses, none of these chefs takes the competition too seriously – why should they? – so the whole thing feels a bit half-assed at times. Furthermore, because of the high caliber of chefs, the judges’ criticism is pretty bland (sorry, last food related adjective, I promise) and scathing reviews are one of the things that make normal Top Chef so fun. Also, I miss Tom and Gail (though apparently she’ll be on later this season) and yes, even Padma. This new host, Kelly Choi, is pretty but a bit lackluster (I avoided a food word there). And, notably missing from the lineup of competing chefs are the dreamy Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain both of whom I would love to see compete. But really, I should stop complaining; the show is still fun, and it is pretty impressive to see how talented these people are and how much passion they have for food.

So I think I’ll give you a week-by-week rundown and just share a few of my thoughts.

Week One – I was glad Hubert Keller won. He’s obviously incredibly talented and also has a good personality – I won’t mind seeing him again come the Champions Round. The best part of this episode though was seeing all the chefs confused by Whole Foods as they don’t do their own shopping and mystified by microwaves.

Week Two – My big problem here was that the woman who won – Suzanne Tracht – was by far the least interesting of the four contestants and I don’t care to see her compete again. Both Wylie Dufresne and Graham Elliot Bowles were fascinating to watch, had interesting personalities and a great bromance/rivalry. It’s a shame one of them didn’t win.

Week Three – I had a similar problem with this one as I did with episode two. I liked Rick Bayless least out of all the cheftestants – he reminds me of someone’s possibly gay overbearing father and just gives me the creeps – and yet he is the one who I will have to see compete again.

I also think it’s amusing to note that at the end of every episode when they add the picture of that week’s winner to the Champions Round in which six slots represent the six winning chefs, the unfilled slots all show Hubert’s silhouette. Weird, right? Anyways, I’ll report more next week. So far, I’m rooting for Hubert.

Apologies, Teasers, Rewards and MORE!

This is my "I'm so sorry" face.

So basically this week has just slipped away from me. I'd love to blame my lack of posts on some legit excuse, but that would mean lying to your face, and I think you know that I have too much respect for you to do that. So I'll fess up. I've basically just been partying too much. When you don't have a job it's hard to convince yourself to stay in and sleep when you could be ripping it up and painting the town red, blue, yellow and every shade in between. And given my predilections for rash, spontaneous behavior the latter option is evermore lustrous than the gimpy former.

But as a result of my debaucheries, I have little entertainment opinions, critiques or even rant seshes to unfold onto your computer screens. Apologies. I do instead have many scintillating stories from some of my more rowdy activities this week, but I figure for the sake of preserving the posterity of this blog, I will save these rampantly hedonistic tales of glory for my close personal acquaintances, not for the prying eyes of every Tom and Judy that frequents this blog with their prying eyes.

What I do hope to accomplish in writing this woefully unstructured post is to let you know that, audience, I have not forgotten thee. Here are some teasers of posts that will very shortly be up on Film Noix:

• Deconstructing Nevan - A op-ed piece in which I tear apart and ultimately exalt the man, the myth, the legend that is The City's Nevan Donahue. This will be full of juicy behind the scenes tidbits and is sure to be a crowd pleaser.
• Humboldt County - Yes, that's right, I actually saw a film. Surprising, I know. I have already written the bulk of it before I got distracted and never finished it. But it will be up soon, promise.
• I've also seen some other flicks if you can believe it, many of which coincidentally (?) star Seth Rogin so maybe I'll review one or all of these, and I also watched How To Lose Friends and Alienate People which is the "true story" about none other than our relentless little Top Chef troll, Toby Young, so I'll probably write that up.

And finally, as promised, some rewards for bothering to read this again ill-structured and self-aggrandizing post. You deserve it, you've been such good, good loyal readers:

First, I offer you my sacred photo with Chef Harold, the winner of Top Chef season 1. This photo serves to remind all you Top Chef fans of the laud, respect and glory that once accompanied the show's winners before the entire Top Chef empire fell from grace by crowning Hosea Top Chef and putting poor Padma in those horrid get ups! Behold: bask in the wonder of Chef Harold:

Next up, I give you my recipe for Hot Buttered Rum, a drink so magnificent, so delightfully dreamy and warm it almost makes you forget you're still six inches deep in an apparently unending winter. After repeated trips to Little Branch - an underground speakeasy in Tribeca - with Nora or Jonathan, I finally realized a) that Hot Buttered Rum is incredible, and b) that I couldn't justify paying or having someone else pay $13 for it. I had to look elsewhere. So I assembled many ingredients in my apartment and became experimenting. And now, presto, the product of my hard work is finished and has earned high praise like: "Better than Little Branch" - Nora Schaffer.

• 2 shots of spiced rum
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 ounce butter (preferably salted)
• nutmeg (preferably freshly ground)
• hot water
• (You could also add cinnamon, which the above photo which I did not take imples)
  

Put your water on to boil. Now just throw the rum, brown sugar and butter into a large mug while you wait for the water to heat. When the water boils, pour it in. Stir the contents together while adding your nutmeg. Sip, enjoy, bliss out.

And lastly, I was going to post a Fleetwood Mac video, but though I love the music, the videos were whack, so instead I'm going with the old tried and true. Here's an amazing excerpt from 30 Rock. Enjoy!

Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire

Does this person look like a winner?

Pools of outrage, disgust and blind fury are flooding my eyes. I just watched the Top Chef finale and I am irate. As I’ve stated and probably overstated, this season has been – to use yet another bad food metaphor – a bit less than delicious albeit still somewhat watchable. Now, with last night’s finale, what was a stale season has curdled and become putrid with the appointment of “douche boy” Hosea as Top Chef. Honestly, his entirely unmerited victory makes a complete mockery out of the establishment that is Top Chef and is an injustice to past winners whose titles actually stood for something. I’m so mad I can barely see straight enough to type this.

I wasn’t even paying attention to most of the episode because I was so confident that Stefan – the only remaining deserving cheftestant – was a cinch to win. One of the only things I remember about the show was how stupid and even more Neanderthal-esque Hosea looked with that ridiculous, asymmetrical soul patch growing on his hideously receding jawline. It adds insult to injury when an already offensive looking person goes and does something like growing a soul patch. No good can come of it, so please boys, shave them off. The look works on no one, but especially not on appropriately nicknamed “douche boy”.

The only other minutely interesting snippet that I can recall from the episode was that for once Toby Young wasn’t the biggest fool in the room, because inexplicably “jazz legend” Branford Marsalis was present and had only two things to say, both of which made Toby’s comments seem like divinely received words of wisdom: “It’s really cool sitting around listening to chefs talk cause they talk just like musicians,” and “I agree with just about everything everyone’s said.” What a complete and utter dolt. If one has nothing interesting to say, say nothing at all, especially if one is being filmed.

Only did I spring up and actually pay attention when Padma delivered the unbelievable verdict that it was Hosea, not Stefan who had received the lofty title. My partially digested food made a move to escape from whence it entered my body and I uttered a cry of stupefied horror. The show has now lost all credibility and I am seriously considering not watching the next installment. I feel like the producers owe Stefan as well as all the previous seasons’ winners a giant apology for so harshly tarnishing the meaning of what it is to be Top Chef.

And now, I’m not only outraged, but perplexed – did other people actually like Hosea? Though I’m normally an astute viewer, maybe he had at least one redemptive quality that in my Jeff-induced trance I somehow missed? Seriously, if you can think of even one reason why this backwoods Cro-Magnon is deserving, send it my way. Until then, I shall remain in my outraged, nauseous state, so please hurry.

Really?

This is our final four? So many words flood into my mind when I ponder the way this season of Top Chef has panned out, including but not strictly limited to: disappointing, regrettable, lamentable and perplexing.

I just don't get it. I'm not sure what went wrong with Bravo's carefully oiled culinary machine, but a wrench of indiscernible shape, size or origin seems to have been thrown into its wiring. I don’t know if it’s because of Padma's déclassé outfits, or because Gail Simmons and Anthony Bourdain are gone, or the fact that the obscure-movie-referencing, woefully unknowledgeable troll known as Toby Young has replaced them, but this season is just not as sumptuous as those of an earlier vintage.

I think it was when we lost our last shining hope of a happy outcome at the end of the season (Cheftestant Jamie) that I truly gave up. It's hard for me to even work up the zeal to write anything at all about these mundane remaining four aspiring chefs. But I guess - for lack of having anything better to do that this hour of the night - I will write a brief summary of our remaining four. From crappiest to least crappy:

Hosea - I don't get this guy. I mean, he's strictly mediocre yet because someone else has always screwed up worse than he has, he's still in the game. With his weirdly oblong head and back-woods hick appearance and am disinclined to trust him. I mean, he would be fine - he wouln't even cross my field of vision - if he left somewhere in the middle, but because he's in the finale, I simply can't stand for this.
Chance of Winning: 0%

Fabio - I don't hate him. I guess he has a winning personality as the judges keep attesting over and over again ("I wanted to spend the whole day with him" - Gail Simmons), but his Italian stallion charms just don't work on me. His food seems solid though lacking the innovation of say a Jamie or a Stefan.
Chance of Winning: 30%

Carla - The same case that was made for Hosea can be made for Carla. She's been pretty mediocre throughout the show (albeit she has impressively come on strong recently!) and has only survived because of others' misfortunes. I like her, though. She's quirky with those bizarre bug eyes (a former model? Seriously?) and the way she keeps comparing herself to a turtle is oddly fitting. Also she's tall, and I have a soft spot for tall women.
Chance of Winning: 0%

Stefan - I don't really care for Stefan; the villanous status that Bravo shamlessly tried to adhere to him never really held as well as the one with which Hung (Season 3) was branded. He's not really all that evil or conniving, nor for that matter is he loveable or endearing. Again, he's pretty mediocre, though I do like the fact that he has a crush on Jamie (who doesn't?). Despite my wishy-washy feelings toward his personality, I will admit that if anyone but Stefan wins, this season will officially qualify as not only boring but completely unfair. He's just an all around superior chef to everyone else (with the possible exception of Jamie).
Chance of Winning: 70%

Jamie - Should have won. Should not have been voted off. By far my favorite cheftestant aside from my culinary boyfriend Jeff. She is included here for honorary purposes only.

Farewell, My Lovely

This is old news to any Top Chef fan worth their weight in black truffle oil but necessary nonetheless. This past Wednesday was a sad day because cheftestant Jeff – that cute little apple of my eye, that Dr. Chase resembling little Romeo, that culinary boyfriend of mine – was asked to pack his knives and go. In tribute to Chef Jeff, a limerick:

There once was a chef from Miami
who cooked with strange things like haloumi,
despite his sweet blond tresses
he never wore no dresses,
Oh Jeff, how we miss you already!

Jeff, that was a poor excuse for poetry, but it will have to suffice. Anyways, know that your memory lives on in we dedicated Top Chef fans, and that - amidst a sea of bald men (Colicchio, Young, Stefan), your pretty, blond mop top will be missed.

Battle of the Twits: Young vs. Bourdain

I apologize in advance for the following distasteful imagery. After doing a Google image search, both these photos popped up and they were just too apropo to say no to. Behold! Tony Young and Anthony Bourdain, respectively:

Today I am a sad Top Chef fan. Not because my favorite cheftestant was voted off last night as is often the source of my misery, but because I find this season to be the worst one yet. I don’t have a cheftestant that I love nor one that I despise therefore its hard for me to feel much more than ambivalent when someone has to “pack [their] knives and go.” I scorn Padma’s recent turn of sleep-inducing ensembles and am bitterly defeated by the loss of Gail Simmons. Even more upsetting is the news that came before the season even premiered - that swashbucking, quick-tongued badass and oft-featured guest judge Anthony Bourdain would not be returning. Whether intentionally or not, he dismissed himself from ever appearing on the show again by insulting Padma’s intelligence when “…he said she wouldn’t be his first choice for Barack Obama’s cabinet…or to host a show.” With the “tough critic” shoes vacant in lieu of Bourdain, the show has sunken to new depths with last night’s introduction of that pathetic little munchkin Toby Young.

One of the most irritating things about his debut was the way that the network execs at Bravo clearly wanted us to adore him. All month long in promos they’ve been stuffing down our throats Young’s comment that “I have found the weapons of mass destruction, and they are in this bowl” as though priming us to think: “this guy is badass and cool.” I hate this sort of viewer manipulation and feel that - rather than having a producer tell me what to think - the filmed material should speak for itself. In this case, if Toby Young is a decent substitute to fill Bourdain’s massive shoes, I want that conclusion to come from him, not from over-hyped sound bytes taken out of context.

And my conclusion is that Toby Young is a half-assed replacement for Bourdain. Sure, Young can dish out a shocking quip, but to what end? The only point of his comments seems to be to hurt and insult. His remarks offer no constructive points as to what – in culinary terms – went awry with the dish, and instead are just malicious for the sake of being malicious and getting a laugh. What does comparing food to weapons of mass destruction say about the dish other than that you didn’t like it? Even his compliments make no sense and weren’t really all that witty either (“It was like Tom Cruise’s cameo in Tropic Thunder,” he says in regards to Jeff’s avocado sorbet). It seems to me that he is trying way too hard just to get a laugh – playing to the cameras rather than taking his role as judge seriously.

By contrast, Bourdain can deliver shocking sermons about the food he is eating too, but his comments actually contain vestiges of helpful critique amidst the humor. When eating a sloppily prepared “cutting edge Thanksgiving” feast he remarked: “It’s like Betty Crocker and Charles Manson had a love child, and he’s cooking for me.” Witty and constructive. I hope Bravo is ashamed of itself for hiring a guy who uses cruelty for the sake of getting laughs and seems to know – or care – next to nothing about food.

Where does this uninvited mean streak and complete lack of respect for all things culinary come from? I have proposed three possible reasons for why Young’s wit sours while Bourdain’s goes down so delectably:

1. This one is obvious. Bourdain has spent years and I mean years working his way up from dishwasher to executive chef of the highly successful (and highly recommended my me) Les Halles restaurants in Manhattan and thus knows the industry inside and out. He knows why a dish tastes good or why something doesn’t work and thus is extremely qualified to dispense critiques. By contrast Young (from my research) has little to no culinary background. The closest thing I could find was that he competed and won in a celebrity episode of a British TV show called Come Dine With Me in which “five amateur chefs [compete] against each other hosting a dinner party for the other contestants.” Pish tosh.
2. His humor is British and doesn’t necessary fly for all Americans. I think this is a total cop out answer, but my dad thinks that this might be true.
3. You people aren’t going to like me much for saying this, but Toby Young’s vindictive, malicious unpleasantness could partly be due to a Napolean complex due to the fact that he is a bald, overweight and short. Not to mention ugly, but technically that’s a matter of opinion. Thus – and I know this sounds clichéd – he seeks to drag others down in order to make himself feel better. Bourdain on the other hand – tall, lanky, godlike in his sex appeal – has no such insecurity and need not stoop to such a level.
   

I’m partial to explantion number three, in case you hadn’t guessed, though I think all three play a part in why Young is such a poor contribution to Top Chef.

Picking a Bone with Padma

Happy New Year’s Eve all! As today is a Wednesday, one thought weighs heaviest on my mind: Top Chef. Alas, it is not to be. It won’t be back until next week, but I figured I would satiate some of your craving for the show by discussing something that has been irking me ever since the new season premiered. Yes, that’s right my qualm is with Padma’s wardrobe. Quite simply, what is she thinking?

Whether classy, gaudy, or just plain ridiculous,

her clothes from the seasons of yore were always provocative. And as she so proudly proclaimed ages ago, she has no stylist, which - through hit and miss - I admired her for. Yet this season she has done nothing but disappoint and suddenly I am thinking she should have someone doing her wardobe, perhaps Rachel Zoe (sorry, bad Bravo joke). Her sudden turn of blandness is especially vexing considering that the locale of season 5 is New York City which is by far the most fashion conscious of any of the cities yet to be frequented by Top Chef. Take a look at the drab ensemble below:

What is that? What are all those weird stringy things? This fashion-faux-pas was made worse by the fact that this was the first outfit she wore of the entire season; it was as if she wanted us to renounce her status as fashion icon of the food community! Also, just before she was shown, we were treated to an irony-filled speech by Cheftestant Richard in which he proclaimed: “The inner queen inside me was screaming to know: where's Padma and what is she wearing?” Poor, poor Richard and poor, poor us.

Tasty Look-Alikes!

Is it just me or does dreamy cheftestant Jeff from this season's Top Chef look uncannily similar to my favorite doc-on-the-block, sexy Australian House actor Jesse Spencer? Either way, both are way yummy. And just look at the stellar job of photo cropping that I did with each of the above photos!