HappyDancex2

This episode should have been renamed the Ick Factor. First Lana test her meat thermometer by running it under her nose, which she swipes with the back of her hand a lot anyway like she has allergies. I’ve seen chefs touch a skewer or knife blade to their lip to test but never a nose swipe with the probe. Then Massimo swipes the fruit leather from the floor, even if it landed up. I’m not sure what the point is if we aren’t going to address these grey areas. We’ve had episodes where finger tasting is called out by Tom and let’s face it, that’s old school and rampant. And multiple episodes where Tom reminds people to use the tasting spoons. sheesh, if not for the look on being on film…I guess it’s just Bravo showing the viewer what they want to reveal and it’s up to us to draw our own lines?

I thought they would keep Bailey because they wanted to keep a female if possible plus she represents quirk and cats and vocal frys. canada the beautiful was delightful this episode!

I just found this show! It’s fantastic. I’m watching episodes from 2016 on the 24 hour history channel on Samsung TV. It’s mezmerizing lol. How different for better or worse does this show morph as I slowly catch up? Do I ruin the whole thing if I skip to current 2025 episodes? It took a few episodes to get the feel of what the format was but my initial reaction was “they have enough people who forge to make this a series????” And then I found out they’ve done 10 seasons. Crazy. i think the production company also did Chopped on the food network and the feel of the show is very similar. I’m impressed at how much time they spend on the testing and the cool setups.

I’ve figured out what is bugging me about this season, besides the lackluster casting. It’s like they felt like they had only one shot of filming in Canada so they are trying to jam all of Canada into one season. The local restaurateurs are shown in groups, any high end judge just isn’t given the time and edit for the gravity of who they supposedly are and every episode has some historical component or forced story to ram down my throat and I still don’t feel like I have a good sense of the regions themselves. This feels like a completely different show runner to me. They didn’t do justice to Canada IMO.

I loved the outfit Nina was wearing. It was very flattering on her yet comfortable enough for shooting a day of restaurant wars while looking dressed up. I’m with everyone else here who cannot understand how chefs can mess up so badly as FOH when they don’t follow AT LEAST the basic script of what to do set forth by the oodles of cheftestants who have come before them?!?! There is a Top Chef Vault channel y’all. This is one of the weaker casting seasons IMO.

Anyone else yell at the TV when Vinny was presenting his dish he mentioned, yet again, the Nomad? Yikes dude.

Well I had both Joe and Nini and they both lost so my brackets are done unless Antonia wins. I was hoping for Joe….he had a better chance than nini. I said next year I need a “current cooking bio” before I pick my brackets! I thought Sara was going to be like Fabio and just drag him out for the name but hasn’t cooked competitively in awhile. Who knew Sara was cleaning it up on every iteration of Chopped!!! /soreloserinmybracketsLOL. But I won a fancy dinner out and a ninja multicooker slow cooker looking thing so I’m happy. I snickered when I realized there was going to be another female champion. I think Guy is trying to balance out finding big name culinary people to be judges to increase the cache but the real experts are people who compete and judge cooking competitions. I’d like to see Eric Greenspan as a cheftestant or judge. Did Aaron may do the first season? Hoping to see Rocco back as a judge next year. Maybe Brooke and Bobby can come back together BWAHAHAHA.

I was also surprised that they decided to create a dish around bacalau and were shocked when Whole Foods didn’t have it LOL. I mean it’s extremely seasonal in most areas, even for restaurants. They didn’t even entertain a plan B before they got in the store?? Baffling. update: I did have my Indian food today to cleanse my palate of watching Vinny yuckifying the karrrrma sutra chicken hollandaise. I had the lamb saag and aloo gobi with some crispy papadams and mango lassi. Bread basket was assorted naans and parathas etc. the only bread I don’t like is the onion kulcha. Food was dynamite! My vibration is restored and Vinny can be gone!!!!

All of the food places looked quite excellent! I would like to visit Canada again soon….yum! The Thai food always looks great to me but thats a different version of Filipino food that I’ve had and would love to try that place. Or maybe it was the way they separated out the condiments made it more interesting? I’m definitely going out for Indian tomorrow though….get some cashew butter chicken! And Vinny pronouncing it karma instead of Kama was hilarious…. Excited for susar next week. I hope they have to rework the ingredients of his famous salad and make it peasant comfort food. Or a casserole. Dude was really worked up over the hollandaise. I actually got his concept but got confused during judging that the hollandaise was on top of an already sauced chicken so it read super heavy. I missed the other sauce. What didn’t help was his partner didn’t even seem to eat Indian food, let alone cook it. And the butter chicken sauce can be quite creamy and not in your face spicy depending on who is cooking it. Too bad they didn’t make a chutney or pickles to cut through the fat.

The editors hate us LOL. Why the 2 vocal fry’s have the voiceover commentary for 90 percent of the episode had my nerves ratttttttttled!!!!! loved seeing Sara back…she looks fantastic and coupled with the fact that she’s competing on TOC as well makes her a great edition to a comeback on the circuit of food TV. Not sure why she was relevant in this episode and she was barely introduced! Top chef definitely feeling like a lot of choppy new show runners or something.

Coming in late but enjoyed catching up with the thread! Y’all cracking me up. I did yell out LFG when Joe won over Jet just for my bracket points. I needed that because I picked Izard way too far and she busted my quadrant long ago. I loved her on top chef but she hasn’t been winning lately so why I picked her 2 years in row now is baffling. i picked against Brit resigno and she has both technique and competition cooking chops. I really like her too yet I had an upset feeling that didn’t come true for her that came true for Jet. happy to see Cosentino and the not so angry Italian back on TV. Chris did such a good job dealing with Art Smith in his season of Top Chef masters. Weird to see him wearing the same aprom and glasses almost 20 years later!!! Not feeling Kaleena. Her showing on Top Chef was rough. im enjoying the comeback of Jonathan Sawyer. May he continue to be blessed on his journey. I do wish he would make amends to the city of Cleveland at least locally though. Even his intro is misleading….his beard award was Great Lakes for Cleveland even though he is represented as a Chicago chef now. He had a bad road out and I’m glad he’s found sobriety. Probably explains a lot but he left a lot of people high and dry. kudos to rocco for stepping back in. He not really a competition chef either but he has the guts to play in the sandbox…if not just for fun. Antonia and Jet don’t seem like they are having fun! I got worried when I saw Charlie Palmer. He’s not even normally on the circuit on Top Chef which would be more he judging group. He hasn’t a clue on how difficult these games are in the time constraint. But nice to see his big name out there. Can’t get too excited about Cat Cora. I love me some J Waxman and his side kick Katsu LOL

I was disappointed with the final challenge. It was just another version of the same old. I would have preferred something more skills related like the rolling balls being added to the cage or even an endurance challenge. You can use sheer will to stand on an object or hold something up. If you aren’t good at puzzles you won’t be good no matter what.

I’m not sure it ever mattered in this season. It was clear they viewed her as the older woman momma type and that’s generally anyone older than 40. She looks like a a type more to me…big fake boobs, lotta face work done etc. She’s pretty common IMO. Had she been exceptionally athletic with results to prove it then maybe lying about your age is something but my guess is that 23 year old teeny doesn’t give a hoot whether Sue is 45, 55 or 65. if her real age ever comes up people are just going to blow smoke up her ass about how great she looks for her age. What else can you say? If she’s happy then more power to her. She’s seems like a smart lady that maybe had to endure some stuff. It’s just weird that she herself used it from the beginning like it was some “thing.” A misdirection that yielded her something and for that point I think she overestimated the importance of it.

I find it interesting that people tell themselves a story that they believe and it gets so strong it’s just forming its own tsunami against oneself. Apparently Rachel has been deemed an unbeatable fire maker. And Teeny has determined that she would already lose to not only Rachel but pretty much anybody in fire making because she sucks. call me old school but it’s making fire. You have nothing but time on your hand out there. Instead of doing whatever comfortable routine you’ve established on the beach and taking the easy way out every day, why not practice making fire? Heck you should be doing it every day once you get out there anyway. Learn on the job when you don’t have a job because it might save you at the end. Fire making is unpredictable Teeny….you don’t need some speshul majicks to do it nor learn how to do it. She sure gives up easily for someone in their early 20s…..

I was mesmerized by the way those sand granules clung around Andy’s eyes. They had a beautiful “I’m going to Burning Man or a festival” quality to them in a way I wanted to enjoy them and both tell him to knock them off his face before he got a cornea scratch.