Top Chef - Washington D.C.

Ah man. I've got like 5 unwatched episodes of Masters recorded and forgot to set my DVR for Top Chef. Good thing Bravo like to run replays of Top Chef almost every single day.

Is it just me, or are all these chefs really kinda bland this year? Last year there were five or six strong people I liked from the get go. This year, not so much. I really hope Kenny beats Angelo soon though. I hate that smug kinda confidence. Yeah, he's good, but Mike V wasn't a dick to other people unless they were getting in the way of him making good food. Angelo just seems like an asshole.

They might be a bit bland, but at least I don't know who will win from the first episode like last year.
The one chick really served sherry chicken to kids? Looks like it might be a little more watchable this year.

They actually come off as far-less talented and far-more pompous/argumentative than any season in recent memory.

Then again, they're in D.C. Maybe it was a production choice.

There's only one girl I'd bang that's not on the judges table and she looks like she has a herpetic lip. Also, she's gone soon because who seriously cooks with sherry for kids; even if it mostly cooks out during braising. Strange thought process there.

All-in-all, good first two episodes.

completely agree with you there. The first two episodes have been pretty good, but its hard to find anyone to really cheer for. Kenny seems alright. I want to like Ed 'cause he's from Boston and worked for Todd English. but my dad used to work with English so I love to root against his chefs because it drives my pops nuts. plus, Ed seems slightly dickish maybe

I hope Angelo gets gang raped by gorillas, and Kenny wins. I'm with Parker 100%, this cast feels completely bland to me so far. Granted we're only two deep but I usually get a foothold in the season at this point and I feel like I just can't get traction enough to give a fuck about these people beyond Kenny, who I like, and Angelo, who is an uber legit asshole.

We'll see if I can warm up to this round of chefs in the next couple of episodes, if not then fuck.

I think this is a Jake-free thread so... Bonobos or orangutans are far more apt to get all rapey.

I just stuck a fucking sprig of rosemary in my sandwich because it's better than a little plastic sword! That was sad.

In the Angelo-Kenny wars, I side with Kenny. He's just more likeable and is totally the underdog.

Kenny is not an underdog, but yeah he's more likable than Angelo. I guess having to eat humble pie can do that to a person because throughout the first episode, Kenny came off like an entitled douche as well.

How is he not? This season is totally being set up as a Kenny versus Angelo showdown. And yeah, they are probably final two.

We're two eps in and Kenny has made the top group in each challenge. It's rare to see someone dominant every challenge from the get go. Kenny will win a few and Angelo will win a few more and they'll go back and forth all season. It's way to early to call anyone an underdog, particularly one who who consistently has one of the two best dishes in each challenge.

He wasn't in the top last week. Neither was Angelo. They were on the bottom.

Also, aren't we three episodes in?

Yeah they tanked the school lunch challenge which says nothing about their ability as chefs, and was possibly thrown by Angelo in a bid to get rid of his competition. That alone makes me think Kenny is not an underdog and Angelo is scared he used all his best bits and won't have enough to sustain him an entire season.

If there is a third ep I haven't seen it.

Did you see the first week? The one before last week? The one with that weird looking guy with the buck teeth, bad glasses and long patchy gray hair went home? Or maybe you didn't see this weeks yet?

I agree with you about Kenny by the way. He's a front runner right up their with Angleo. It will surprise me at this point if they're not in the top 3.

Yeah, I saw weird teeth guy and the dessert lady go home.

Oh, so you just haven't watched the newest one yet. Kenny once again does well and I'm pretty sure the only reason he wasn't on top at the end is because he had immunity.

I tape other shows during its initial run and DVR the 11 p.m. showing. Catching up now.

ETA: So the chick who puts alcohol in all her dishes used to be addicted to cocaine and pills? Makes so much sense now.

Ha, no kidding. This chick has some issues. She is crazy with the liquor in her dishes. And I don't think being a big fan of booze is a positive way to stave off your drug addictions.

This show is always good but the cast isn't grabbing me this year. Too much infighting and pettyness and not enough great chefs. I loved the bitch slapping the judges put on the bottom chefs during both the QF and the elimination.

And I'll admit that prior to being pregnant I thought Padma was good looking. Post being pregnant...mother of God she looks amazing.

Ugh, these people are so boring. Weren't previous seasons made up of really esteemed people, like James Beard winners and sous chefs to the greatest chefs in the world? I feel like these are just people who happen to work in restaurants.

In any case, glad Kenny got his mojo back. Ed seems to be a contender. I'm also kinda digging the two ladies in the top this week and last although the one who made dessert is kinda annoying. I guess its kinda a double standard. She just really wants to win and is aggressive, but she comes off as a crazy person.

The bottom three will remain the bottom three until they are each picked off. They are utterly unremarkable. The crazy bald guy will join them soon.

I'm curious what Angelo's game plan is. I think he's helping the weaker players so that the mediocre chefs get weeded out, and that in the end he'll get to go up against weaker chefs. Or its just his ego and he likes having people look up to him and tell him how great he is. Or he's gonna ask a favor down the line and expect them to help him out when he's stuck. He's a wild card. I just don't get it.

The wrong person went home this week. Steven should have went home. He has been utterly unremarkable by unremarkable's standards. I am glad Amanda got to stay. She's no great shakes but I feel the others kind of bully her and that pisses me off. So far this season is a dud.

They bully her because she's clearly the worst, no mean feat this season.

Enough with the damn group challenges. The Quickfires are more engaging this season. Just give everyone one thing ('blue crab') and set them loose.

Michelle Bernstein came off as a raging bitch. Even if Kenny's dish was the worst, you can't deny that there was some power play involved here. And even if it was THAT BAD, the way she put him down went past criticism and was just mean spirited.

Angelo continues to suck. My problem with him is that he's clearly a good cook. So why does he insist on paying the game like he is? Just be confident in your fucking food already!

Ed came off as the hero of the night if you ask me, talking about fucking Angelo's ex! Loved it.

Yeah, that clip did it for me and my fiancee. I felt a little bad for laughing at first, but I couldn't help myself. Angelo is such a shithead that, honestly, I wasn't all that surprised to hear that that happened-- the only surprise was that it was Ed. I'd love it if he won the whole thing.

Not shockingly at all I agree with Parker 100% about Michelle's attitude last night, and the way that she presented herself endeared me even more to Andrea-- who I'm quickly growing to like with each episode. Her comment was inexcusably rude and obnoxious. I'm sure that Kenny's dish wasn't great given the judges' reaction to it, but she has no context in this competition. The judges know of Angelo's strategy, and have since the beginning of the season.

But she assumed that Kenny, in making his own comment about his suspicions regarding why he made the bottom two, was simply trying to puff his chest out or something. Which is wrong. Frankly, between his dish and Amanda's-- well, I think the judges would have raked Amanda over the coals for her mistake before even thinking about castigating Kenny. Michelle really had no clue what she was talking about. It was kind of embarrassing.

Kenny's invincible. Angelo can try, try, try as hard as he likes but he's not going to knock Kenny out just by scheming him into the bottom. Kenny has to seriously stumble on his own to get canned. Given normal judging, I don't think he would have wound up on the bottom in light of how bad the majority of the dishes were last night.

From Tom's blog:

I trust that his dish was bad, but no, Tom, as much as I love you I do not trust that a dish filled with cartilage that wasn't properly cooked before being chilled was worse than a dish about which you chiefly criticized the overload of ingredients. I am sure that his dish wasn't good. I am not sure that I necessarily believe that you would have sent him home over Amanda if the choice had been in your hands.

But what I believe least of all is that Kenny would have not wound up in the bottom had his dish been better. And Tom, neither should you. You know how badly Angelo wants Kenny out. You know that people tend to listen to Angelo about everything, including how they should approach their own food. Kenny was going to the bottom no matter what, plain and simple.

I like Andrea too, and I agree I hated the way Michelle dealt with her. Not sure if she liked her food or not, but the way she treated her was terribly condescending.

Tonight: See Creepy Bald Chef steal some pea-based dish from Ed! Or something!

This season is... zzzzzz. I can't even muster enough energy to write anything. So boring.

Yeah, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot by wringing out the drama rather than focusing on the food.

They peaked with Bro vs. Bro vs. Beardo last season. That shit was classic. Never gonna recapture that magic. I do tend to think that the show works best every other season, though. It's got a weird Star Trek movie series thing going.

I'll always watch for Tommy C's facial expressions alone, however.

That's why I've enjoyed Top Chef Masters so much more. It's not about back stabbing fellow competitors. It's about watching amazing chefs inspire each other and put out amazing food.

Yeah, a lot of people bitch that it's a lot more boring, but I like it a little better too (at least, better than this season). The one complaint is that I don't really love the judges...and they seem to go a bit easy on the Chef's, since they're, you know, established and what not.

Guilty Pleasure alert: Totally fell for Master Chef last night. It's a ridiculous rip off of both Top Chef AND American Idol (!) of all things, but it worked for me. Cooking shows just reel me in every time.

I actually would disagree that the Masters judges go easy on the contestants; James Oseland in particular nitpicks to a degree I find pretty extreme. If it seems like the regular TC judges-- Tommy C.!-- are harsher it's probably because the criticisms they make pertain to errors far, far more offensive than the ones made by people like Sue Feniger or Johnathan Waxman.

But I do agree that Top Chef wanes in quality every other season. For the most part. Season 5 was pretty awesome if only for the presence of one Fabio Viviani, though he may have been the only thing about that season that didn't suck. Considering the depths of suckitude that S7 has plumbed I expect S8 to be so good that it makes my balls tingle or something.

Yeah, Oseland is tough on them. But I also hate Oseland. Totally rubs me the wrong way. I'd rather have Toby then that douche.

I find Top Chef Masters dull beyond belief, mainly because I don't really care about the judges. I'll take Padma and Collichio over those guys anytime.

This season has been so dull. In fact, I haven't remembered enough from each episode to even comment on it. I know that Amanda has a really irritating personality, and the first guy that was kicked off looked really goofy. And . . . that's it.

EDIT:

I saw that as well. I was intrigued at first, but inevitably, I simply stop caring about the cooks if they can't cook.

When people I know complain about some random critic giving a (deservedly) bad review to a bad movie that they happen to like, I generally just roll my eyes. "What do critics know?" Well, they know a lot-- they're trained and (ideally) knowledgeable and they kinda know more than you as far as what constitutes good filmmaking. That's the point. But Oseland's the kind of guy who makes me completely understand and empathize with that "fucking critics!" mentality. His perspective on Johnathan Waxman-- my favorite!-- is completely incongruous and wishy-washy to the point of frustration. He's one of the best chefs in the country! But his food is boring! Fucking figure it out.

Is Oseland the bald guy with the glasses or the guy with the wavy hair?

I'm in love with Rick Bayless due to Top Chef Masters. He truly encapsulated everything I think a chef should be. He is humble and gracious and truly wants to give justice to the food he is creating. He is big on sustainability and uses the freshest ingredients possible. He also stayed out of the fray and never felt the need to put another chef down to make himself look good. Just truly an amazing person, let alone chef.

I've been wanting to comment on what happened a few weeks ago to Arnold. He gets paired up with the teacher and they get booted because she undercooked her pasta. Then she goes on to say how she let him take the lead and that was a mistake. WTF?!

As for tonight, what was up with the peas? Did Alex steal from Ed? The way they cut this episode I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. Did they show Alex making the peas?

No. They definitely edited it to make it look like he stole them. And there has got to be footage of whether or not Alex made the puree. But Kenny is right; Ed made is puree the night before. If Alex had made a puree, he had to do it in the time allotted during the actual challenge which would be hard in light of everything else he'd have to do. I hope Tom brings it up in his blog.

But to defend Alex a little, when you are stressed sometimes you hear something and it doesn't initially register (like when Andrea told him Ed was making peas). Then some time later, the thought comes up and you think its your own. Alex may have really thought he made the puree, when in reality he didn't.

That's reaching quite a bit I'd say. There's no way that as a professional chef you could see something that you didn't cook and conclude that you somehow cooked it even though you didn't, no matter how stressed you are. I mean, it's not like Ed performed an inception on him or something; Alex took the peas that he knew he didn't make. Obviously it worked out for him but he's going to pay for it somewhere down the line.

You've never heard a story so many times you thought it happened to you? Or forgot where or from whom you heard it? I've totally had conversations with my mom about something (e.g., eating at a delicious Korean BBQ) and the next day she'd call me up and say, "I heard about this Korean BBQ place. It's supposed to be great." I replied, "Yeah, I told you about that yesterday." Tons of research show that when people are under a lot of pressure they have reduced cognitive capacity, and memory is particularly susceptible as you have to work hard to just focus on the task at hand. Pressure is a bitch. We constantly hear confessionals where chefs say they've made a dish an thousand times but in the pressure of the Top Chef kitchen they forget to do the most mundane task. It's not only possible, but probably likely, he thought he had made the dish. I don't seem him as someone who would purposefully steal someone's food.

Now I'm confused. I thought that Alex made a pea puree, but the issue was that he didn't come up with it until after he heard the other guy was making it? I thought the problem was that he was more of a hack than an outright thief.

Forgetting to salt something-- or using, say, sugar instead of salt or vice versa-- when you're cooking a dish under the pressure of competition is understandable because it's the kind of minute action that can easily fall off of someone's radar and be lost to the aether in the midst of preparation. Somehow believing you made an entire element of a complete dish even though you didn't, though, is a lot harder to swallow. A chef bungling a dish they've made before isn't at all comparable to a chef using an element that they didn't make because they thought that they made it.

I haven't read any of the research you're referencing, but the mental gymnastics it would take for Alex to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that he'd made the peas have to be pretty impressive. Does the pressure of a cooking competition sometimes create false memories in your brain that confirm you did something you didn't really do? Or does the pressure of competition-- according to the research-- just lead you to trip up and forget to season your food or, hell, cook it properly? I made chicken salad for my wife once and completely forgot to cook the asparagus that goes into it, and while the outcome was fine since I'd prepared them properly it was obvious I'd blanked on an important step. So yes, that kind of mistake I can buy.

But I cannot at all buy that Alex believed beyond any reasonable doubt that those peas were his creation. Forgetting to salt your food makes sense. Forgetting that you didn't cook the item you're applying to your plates sounds sketchy. Why would he think that? Because competitive cooking is hard? How does the difficulty of the challenge lead him to conclude that the peas were his creation? I'm asking these questions honestly because you know the research and I don't, but pardon my ignorance when I say that it sounds like a lot of bullshit.

One of the best reasons to ever watch Top Chef weighs in:

There's a lot of research on false memories, particularly how they pertain to the witness stand. I don't have time to look it up as I'm at work, but just Google "false memories". You'll probably get a bunch of hits.

ETA: Here's a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-monitoring_error

Here's a journal article in Nature magazine about how false memories can feel absolutely real in the brain: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/0711....2007.220.html

Check out any of Elizabeth Loftus' articles and books: http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/

Skimming over that, I guess at this point I'm just curious what Alex has to say for himself. I agree that he doesn't seem like the thieving type but it's hard to argue that the evidence for his guilt is still pretty compelling. Maybe he's made English pea puree before and believed that Ed's creation was his own in light of past experience. Maybe in the heat of the moment he saw the peas and assumed that they were his and used them.

Tom makes an excellent point that Ed didn't confront Alex. And he should have. So whether or not Alex did wrong, Ed kind of screwed himself here by not being more direct.