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Top Chef Masters Episode 1: It's a start
Top Chef Masters Episode 1: It's a start
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From my perch in the alley behind atop the precipice of Food TV Mount Olympus, I can see some marked ambivalence toward Top Chef Masters, the Top Chef spin-off that debuted on Bravo last night. "Shit is boring!" I hear y'all say. Two thoughts on this. First: We're one episode in, relax. Second: I think Top Chef fans might've overestimated how compelling 24 all-stars competing for a $100K charity prize would be. Sure, these polished women and men will all bust their asses to earn cash for a cause (and save face too, of course), but since they're already so established, the hungry, competitive scramble that makes the original TC such an addictive watch is simply a non-factor. (There's also no Tom C. or Padma! There is Gael Greene, thankfully.) We're probably going to have to toe-tap till the six-chef championship round to witness the real craziness.
(Real quick, logistical crap: Each ep features four chefs competing in a Quickfire and an Elimination. All the QF challenges you see will be borrowed from previous Top Chef seasons. There's a star system: QFs are worth 5 and Eliminations are worth 20. At the end, the one chef with the highest star total earns a finalist slot, and the other three are sent home.)
Episode 1's four gladiators � Christopher Lee (NY's Aureole and formerly of Striped Bass; check out Adam Erace's great Q&A), Hubert Keller (SF's Fleur de Lys; seems like a real nice guy, looks like Euro Gandalf), Michael Schlow (Boston's Radius) and Tim Love (Fort Worth's Lonesome Dove).
Quickfire: The cheftestants are told by host Kelly Choi (I think they posted a Craigslist like "Seeking Hot Ethnic Woman Who Claims to Be a 'Foodie' But is Clearly Too Skinny For That Shit") that they'll be whipping up a dessert for some Girl Scouts. First impressions: Lee and Keller seem happy to be there, Schlow does not, and the producers really enjoy playing up that Love is "just a punk from Texas" with no formal culinary training. Look at that guy, juggling eggs! How non-traditional!
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The Scouts, as expected, are far tougher critics than little girls should be, and Lee expresses his desire to cap the redhead who keeps saying everything sucks. (Always the redheads.) Keller ends up winning the QF because he uses mousse and whipped cream to form adorable edible animals (right). He earns a perfect five stars for his efforts. "Cool, you can't higher than that," he exclaims.
Elimination: The four chefs are given $150 to cook three courses in a Pomona College dorm room using only a hot plate, a microwave and a toaster oven. "I don't even own a microwave oven," says Schlow with the same ennui-soaked inflection of someone who thinks they're cool because they don't have TV. You don't care about what they cooked (though Keller did rock pasta in a dorm shower ... mmm) so I'll gloss over that this time to share what I found most interesting about this round � there was a huge gap in scoring between Love and Schlow and Keller and Lee. While neither the cowpokin' toque nor the Beantown Italian chef managed to break 15 stars, Keller and Lee earned scores of 20.5 and 19, respectively.
Could it be that two those simply outcooked their opponents on that day? Absolutely. But it's also worth pointing out that both Keller and Lee have a discernible leg up on the other two guys in terms of national presence. While it's too early to truly tell, I won't be all that surprised if the Masters season progresses in this manner, with lil' Epicurean Manchurian Candidates gently ushered through to the finals to ensure airtight ratings. So if wd-50's Wylie Dufresne takes next week's LOST-themed episode ...
Last thing: I need someone to figure out a way to superimpose this picture of Hubert Keller DJing onto tabs of acid so I can drop 90 of them.
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I actually think that the Craigslist ad said: "Seeking Asian version of Giada de Laurentiis."
I found it barely watchable. Ok, I get it, these guys don't NEED to win this. They don't really take it all that seriously, ok. But sticking Hubert Keller in a dorm room with a hot plate? Its a tad patronizing.
But sticking Hubert Keller in a dorm room with a hot plate? Its a tad patronizing. And it's only going to get more patronizing from here on out! I believe they'll be doing the vending machine challenge on the next ep.
not only was it patronizing, but it was also stupid. I'll watch young up-and-comers do gimmicks like that because I don't have any expectations of their food, but i want to watch Hubert Keller and Chris Lee COOK. I want to see what goes on in their brains when you say "caviar. 30 minutes. go" also, having the guest judges know who was cooking each dish? weak. would have been much better to have been blind judging. I also would have loved for them to group the chefs by style/city/something. So group one could have been classic french chefs, group 2 the gastronomists, group 3 fusion, etc. Though anything that gets these recaps back on the blog I'm for. favorite recurring post of mine.
[...] - Hubert Keller [...]
[...] For this “high stakes” challenge ($15k prize), Texas chef Tim Love (a Top Chef Masters contestant) has the remaining cheftestants create a dish based around a tough ingredient selected by the Top [...]
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