Top Chef New York - Episode 2 - Harsh! (plus Season 5 predictions)

Did you watch Top Chef last night? I am speaking of Episode 2: Show Your Craft.

Obviously you did, or you would have stopped reading this by now.

I can't believe they brought in chefs that auditioned and didn't get cast in the show to be judges. That shit was brutal.

BRUTAL! There is nothing like a bitter taste in ones mouth to skew their judging of food. Plus, some of the cooking was pretty lame.

Let me ask you a question:

**spoiler alert**

How did they not send Ariane home when Padma Lakshmi (my girl crush) SPIT HER FOOD OUT? She spit it out! Now, granted, Jill's food was weak. An ostrich egg does not make new American Cuisine.

Or hell, maybe it does. I don't know what New American Cuisine means either.

Now for the fun part. Top Chef Season 5 predictions.

Sarah's Top Chef Season 5 Predictions:

Alex: He won't be past the halfway point. He seems... befuddled.

Ariane: Being in the bottom 2 twice in the first two episodes does not bode well for Ariane. I say she is out of there in the next two weeks. For a seasoned chef she is making a lot of rookie mistakes.

Carla: I don't see her sticking around for long. She does seem crazy though, so she might be good for dramatic effect.

Danny: Which one is Danny? I get him confused with the other guy with the George Michael beard. This is the straight one, right? And why does he have those stripes in his beard? I don't get it.

Fabio: I say he makes top five, if not top three.

Gene: Gene is the wild card isn't he. It is almost like he doesn't know what he is doing but he keeps pulling amazing stuff out of his ass.

Hosea: He seems like a strong chef with good ideas. Hopefully he will stop buying canned seafood and stick around for a while.

Jamie: I say Jamie will go top three. She seems amazingly solid. She comes off like she knows her shit and her food looks good. Plus, she is the executive chef at Absinthe in San Francisco so we already know she can handle pressure.

Jeff: You know, when I first saw this guy talk I thought he was an idiot. Then he went sort of crazy in the first episode and didn't even get everything plated, and he still ended up in the top half! Maybe he has got secret skills. Maybe he is an idiot savant.

Leah: Leah is solid. Top five.

Melissa: I don't know. Every time they show her I just keep thinking about how weird her bangs are. I have no idea what she even cooked so far.

Radhika: When they interviewed her in the first episode I thought - she keeps talking about how she thinks she will be pigeonholed, she must be a one trick pony. Then (and this is sort of cheating) when I was looking for pictures for this post and I typed in "Top Chef, Season 5" there were a lot of pictures of her. There are even special pictures in the gallery of her and Stefan. Either those two hook up, she is friends with the Top Chef photographer,  or she will be around for a while.

Richard: Oh! Now I know which beard guy is which. This is the guy that tells us he is gay every 5 seconds. He must have come out last week. WE GET IT. YOU LIKE BOYS. It really isn't that novel in the food service industry.

Stefan: He is my pick to win the season. I know it isn't really a long shot since he has been in the top of everything so far but he is a badass.

There you have it.

What do you guys think? Stefan? Leah? Jamie?

PS - New York! I hope this means Harold and Sam will come guest judge.

PSS - Why can't I find a picture of the entire cast of Season 5 together? Is my Google broken? Did the Bravo advertising people forget to take one? Is it just too soon?

Comments

[Suzy Q]

I can't keep them straight yet, either.

Ariane is obviously on drugs. There is no other excuse for her.

Jill didn't seem to have many working brain cells, either. No big loss to have her gone.

I think Stephan and Fabio are in lurve. They can't seem to keep their hands off each other! Maybe it's just a European thing.

I think Jamie will go far. The rest? Give me a couple of more weeks to get them figured out.

PS: You can have Padma. I can't stand her. She's so fucking arrogant and condescending, plus show just loves to show off her scar at every opportunity. We get it, Padma, you were in an accident. Now shut up.

Radhika pigeonholes herself.

[Darcey]

I *love* Jamie - I love her attitude, I love her confidence (cold corn soup? who else would be that daring to bring that out - someone who can nail it), plus she's just adorable! I'm really pulling for her.

On the other side, I despise Stefan. He's so arrogant and flaunts his European superiority over everyone -- reminds me of the Germans I worked with when I was at Porsche -- they were always right and what did we stupid Americans know about selling cars (despite the fact that over 60% of the profits in the whole company came from the US)?!?

And by the way, Stefan... balsamic vinaigrette *is* an emulsification, whether or not it has an emulsifier containing lecithin. So shut your pie-hole.

[rebecca]

Cannot. Stand. Stephan.
I love Jamie and CRAZY EYES...her animal spirit was right this week...
Gene seems like he mightbe a dark horse...but everytime he comes on the screen, my hubs makes a shanking joke.
the vignette with hosea and girl i can't remember cooking anything is sickening...NO ROMANCE! FOOD ONLY!!!

[jacki]

Arianne is the new Lethah Stella, mayhap?
Lurve Jamie. Hate Stefan. May warm up to Fabio.

[BaltimoreGal]

When Arianne was saying "I don't deserve this" I was saying "Damn Right!" I knew Jill wouldn't be Top Chef after the first episode but I would have liked her to stay around a little longer. Poor Baltimore.

I love Hosea, Gene, Jamie. Fabio is good but annoying. HATE Stefan.

Also, as a girl with a big scar on her arm that's still HALF the size of Padma's, let me tell you, there is no way NOT to have it in every picture. Cut her a break on that one, she's earned it. We EARN our scars, we BUY our tattoos. (I have nothing against tattoos, but if you're gonna call foul on a wound...)

[Jason]

Hosea personifies everything that I hate about Top Chef; namely, that most of these "chefs" are marginally skilled (was it last season that at least two of the chefs couldn't make a simple mayonnaise?), very limited in their scope of dishes ("I've never done Italian!" "I can't make desserts!") and have absolutely no imagination or vision (props to Fabio; those olives looked amazing - on the other hand, carpaccio is now New American?). Any chef worth his salt would have served human flesh before serving canned crab meat to any restaurant guest, much less Tom Colicchio. I realize that the cooking takes a back seat to The Drama, but it would be nice to actually get some world-class chefs on the show, rather than the egomaniacal smalltimers that we see every season. Here's what I'd love to see: the winner of any Top Chef season take on the Iron Chef crew. It would not be pretty.

[Snarky Amber]

Oh man, when Hosea picked up the CANNED! CRAB! My husband and I nearly shit our pants. I wouldn't cook with canned crab for myself (granted, living in the Puget Sound area, there's absolutely no excuse for it), let alone that judge's panel, or a restaurant full of Craft customers, LET ALONE the people whom I beat out to be on the show. OMG. So much fail.

You can ALWAYS tell when something has been canned. Always always always. But especially fish and, in particular, shellfish, which is already so delicate in flavor and texture without packing it in oil or water inside a tin.

I thought Jamie deserved to win, since carpacchio is really not New American, but then again, he did incorporate the molecular gastronomy that New American chefs so adore. I just thought his dish was too "New Mediterranean" if such a thing exists. Jamie should have won the challenge. Oh well — she is clearly in for the long haul, and I agree that she seems remarkably self-possessed and competent.

[Darcey]

Jason - my only counterargument to your "I can't make desserts" thing is that when most chefs go through their culinary training, there is only a brief basic course on desserts (usually encompassed in the breads/pastries class - about 6 weeks). To be recognized as a Pastry Chef (the certification that most who focus on desserts has), there is an additional section of courses, anywhere from 3-9 months, to attain that.

So it actually isn't all that common for a lot of chefs to have a strong basis in desserts unless they've gone through the extra training -- though Pastry Chefs are usually fully versed in both. Then again, once you get out of school you generally focus predominantly on one or the other, so even if you did get full training through pastries, you likely haven't used your skills in properly cooking a geoduck.

(All this is based on a lot of research with culinary institutes - specifically the Art Institute and Le Cordon Bleu - so other programs may vary, but this seemed to be similar to a lot of programs.... I dreamed for a LONG time of being a chef.)

[Suzy Q]

@baltimoregal: Re: Padma's scar. She's on TV; can I assume you're not? I have scars, too, but I don't go out of my way to show them off. She could, at the very least, wear something with sleeves, even occasionally. Also, I believe there is makeup that would make it appear less shiny. I'm not dissing her for having a scar, just that she seems to like showing it off and talking about it (in every interview I've ever seen).

"...would have served human flesh before serving canned crab meat..." has got to be the snork of the day! Go Jason.

[laurie]

Suzy Q - no, sorry. She should not have to hide the scar on her arm. Suggesting she should wear makeup on it is just...horrible, sorry. Living your life as a regular perosn, wearing the clothes you want to wear, with a scar that you've acquired on frequently visible skin is not "showing it off," and yes I speak from experience here.

I am also a dedicated watcher of this show - who albeit does not seek out or frequently see interviews with Padma - and I have never seen or heard an interview where she discusses this. Perhaps it's because - a la Tina Fey - it is a media obsession?

A host without a visible scar on her arm would not be asked to refrain from wearing sleeveless dresses. Let's extend that courtesy to this occasionally annoying woman who happens to have a scar on her arm. Geez.

[jamiegp]

scar = her mole

Can they please eliminate like 5 chefs in the next episode to get this shit down to a reasonable number already?

[lumpyheadsmom]

Seriously. Did she cut those bangs herself? With her chef's knife? Because I've known some bad bangs in my life, but DAMN.

Was it just me, or did Jill come off as a mouth-breathing simpleton that entire episode? That said, we're still going to Red Maple in Baltimore sometime, right?

Also, there are too many at this point for me to keep track of their names (I had to scroll back up to the post to get Jill's name), but what's up with the Slutty One? Did she say she had a boyfriend or wants a boyfriend or just likes boyfriends? We rewound that shit like three times and still couldn't figure it out, but gathered all we needed to from the too-much-touchy-touchy scene that followed. Ew. I'm all for watching chefs get drunk in their off-time, but I don't want to watch them get laid.

[Parentopia Devra]

What is driving me crazy is I know I have met that woman from Alchemy catering. I just cannot remember where and this distracts me from the rest of the show.

Either she needs to get sent home or I have to remember where we've met before I can pay attention to any of the other chefs.

Sad. I know.