chiaros

See, for example, the middle-left and bottom-left panels in that 6-screenshot-montage in my post above, where Bruce and Chris were standing there just inside the room with two plates in their hands and facing towards Padma-who-was-reflected-in-the-mirror behind them (Bruce and Chris). Assuming it was Johnny Iuzzini who is the "missing person", I speculate he may be walking back towards the table on the LEFT side of both scenes and not within view of the camera (after all, his chair would be on the left side of the table) and before his reflection turned up in the mirror - and any subsequent shots where Bruce/Chris and the reflections of Johnny-plus-Padma were captured would then be cut out. Again, this is conjecture, of course.

Very good deduction. Quite likely he *was* the apparently missing figure. It's possible he opened the door for each of the cheftestants and so would have been either by the side or behind the door as each of the cheftestants came into the room. That would account for that shot of Padma sitting alone at the table with two chairs and two glasses when Joe Sasto entered. Then, the editors might have simply scrubbed all shots of him where he was still behind or besides the cheftestants and before he sat down at the table, including all those "mirror shots"; and of course all shots of him and Padma at the table went bye-bye. Ditto the dialog etc got picked over - hence the slight stiltedness of it.

It was, at the least, the "Olympic Dreams" episode. There have been many commentaries and screen shots taken by various people on other forums illustrating the "residues" of John Besh's presence in that episode. Was he also in this episode - Red Rum? Or was it another "disgraced chef"?

All the cheftestants brought up TWO plates to Room 217 in the Quickfire. They all made three plates in the kitchen, #3 being the (presumably) designated "Beauty Plate". Yes, there appeared to be a "missing judge", but in at least one shot Padma was shown sitting at the table in Room 217 with TWO glasses of water but an EMPTY chair next to her. If there were actually two judges why would he/she NOT be sitting in that second chair as the two dishes were presented? If there was indeed two judges then the editing in this case was very adroit. The mirror reflections as the cheftestants presented their plates (plural) were cropped/edited to eliminate judge#2, if he/she was there, but see my comment about the empty chair. Did they "re-stage" the scenes here, "after the fact"? A montage of selected shots of every cheftestant in the QF either bringing up two plates to Room 217, or creating three plates in the kitchen (one of which would be the "beauty plate"): An annotated shot of the view when the 1st cheftestant (Joe Sasta) walked into Room 217:

Heh. Yes, it does look like the returnee is Joe Flamm. Here's the shot of the returnee shown at the end of episode 10 (Red Rum) in the frame just before the vid cuts away: A crop of the top-center plus some brightness-contrast-resolution-sharpening massaging: Joe Flamm shopping in episode 8 (RestaurantWars):

I agree. I've poked fun at him before on this forum too, but indeed he can cook - and he "got the memo" this time for sure. His dish looked wonderful. I would have loved to taste it - and those beet greens lamb agnolotti of his looked great. I would have needed a dozen of them! As has also been mentioned upstream, Joe has won other challenges - specifically, episode 3 (Keep on Truckin') and episode 7 (Olympic Dreams). As an aside, Adrienne helped him plate, although I don't think they talked about it on the episode as aired. It was a very fast moment when they showed it – here's a screen shot of her assisting with the final plating of Joe's dish: I don't think he was especially pretentious. Perhaps he could have used another word, but "capriciousness" was not an unreasonable word to describe the unexpected changing flavors in Adrienne's dish and he explained what he meant. The judges seemed to accept that and also added to the characterization of the dish.

Free range chickens kept with roosters.

BALUT. Usually done with duck eggs, but chicken eggs are also used. See here for one (just one) useful "inclusive" description.

People who are "high" reportedly "see" colors differently...and lip colors, for example, have been stated by folks on drugs to look vividly different. Maybe this might be one way for that c-person's black lips to seem "normal", as a reversal of color perception.

In rewatching Season 6 it is again clear how much Robin was disliked by all the other chefs, with even the mellow Kevin Gillespie commenting at the least on how she irritated everyone else...and implying that she was not beyond his "irritation meter" either. She (Robin) simply WOULD. NOT. SHUT. UP. In this regard, to me she also called to mind Shirley Chung, in both of her seasons - she was entirely prone to Verbal Diarrhea...but in her case I thought she inserted a lot of simpering and blatant sucking-up to the judges especially to Tom Colicchio, which Robin Leventhal – in contrast – did NOT do.

Heh. Just like Tom Colicchio & Co. thinks YOU NEED MORE SALT, when others think it is salty enough already.** ** Including quite a number of current and former cheftestants themselves; let alone more ordinary folks who dine at restaurants or, heaven forbid, cook for themselves.

I was thinking the opposite the other day. Once Top Chef introduced non-cooking competitive elements, it completely jumped the shark. LCK is what the show used to be. Perhaps. But what I was thinking about when I made that comment was the gimmicks that LCK was bringing in at that point - the former cheftestants, the duking it out with the new cheftestant losers, the two-fers vs one-fers (somewhat capriciously), the piling-in of the surviving cheftestants of the current season to ogle (and I mean OGLE) LCK and the "shock value" squeezed out of it for all it's worth, the "suspense" for the **immediately returning cheftestant** ... then the suspension of and resumption of LCK in the season ("Will They? Won't They???") I would call these things "non-cooking competitive elements", for that matter, IMHO. The LCK sequences before this current season I agree would be much closer to the straight-up cook-offs that you say the show used to be.

Yes. They were pretty big and pretty distracting. I think I've seen bigger ones only on Nature Shows about Amazonian tribes. Anyway, I just finished episode 3 of season 6 (Thunderbirds). The judges were nitpicking and out of touch with the folks for whom the meal was served. But that has always been a FEATURE of this Reality Teevee Show. Even Gail Simmons, who is widely thought of as a level-headed "judge", showed some bad vibes as she persisted in her critiques to the folks on the bottom that it was a "competition" notwithstanding whatever their "mission" was, which in this case was to serve food to service members who might appreciate that food. The judges hated the pasta salad and Mike I.'s shrimp salad. Y'know, maybe ordinary folks might appreciate a cool, somewhat neutral "salad" amidst the other highly-seasoned dishes - but that mattered not to the "judges".

Well, I pulled out my CDs of Season 6 and just watched episode 1. Many of the dishes looked wonderful - and that was just the 1st episode. Yes, there were the clunkers, of course. The person who got sent home as PPYKAG#1? Jennifer "Jen" Zavala, for her clunky bad seitan-stuffed poblano as, supposedly, a chile relleno representing her "hot temper". I had forgotten about her entirely until I rewatched this episode. Hmm, she reminded me of a certain...someone...in the current season 15 --- Jen Zavala declared how she took risks, made great food, used seitan like she has had zillions of times before (yet declared in the "waiting room" that she did something that no-one else had done before") and she is mad as hell but this is so good for you, disputed everything the judges (including Wolfgang Puck) said, declared she wanted to "make a grand entrance" and make something the judges wouldn't forget and griped that instead the judges wanted to forget it and so on and so forth.

...and the Philly Eagles win Superbowl LII 41-33. Chef Chris Scott must be THRILLED. I am glad for him, and hope he celebrates both his Top Chef episode win (in this "Bronco Brouhaha episode") and that of his team.

They tend to be arrogant in their sense of entitlement. That's one reason. There are others.

Lovely pic of vanilla flowers. The info on the pic shows it is from a German site (http://www.virboga.de/pics/big/005193.jpg). Vanilla flowers do have variations, especially between cultivars - I have seen flowers in the greenhouses of various commercial orchid growers with differing morphology and coloration, although all are "similar". The ones in the pic are of good form and color. (I still grow orchids myself, although far less than what I used to do, and I'm more of a species grower) I assume you were hand-pollinating your vanilla flowers? (To this day, commercial cultivation of Vanilla planifolia is still largely labor-intensive in the various stages, including manual pollination, particularly when either the native pollinators were not present or when better efficiency of yield was desired)

As we proceed through Season 15 of Top Chef (Colorado) here's a list of restaurants in Colorado run by cheftestants past and present: http://www.foodandwine.com/news/top-chef-colorado-restaurants .

He made some recommendations for "a perfect day of eating" on Maui in this article from Nov 2017: https://www.jetsetter.com/magazine/1952/best-restaurants-on-maui-sheldon-simeon . The only overlap with the Feb 2018 F&W ad is L'AVA's Sportsbar & Karaoke. He also hosts "Cooking in America", a series put out by Eater, now in its third season – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUeEVLHfB5-QDnrM7U_DmP31k8L_2cB2k – and back in Season 1 episode 1 he talked about food in Hawaii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yppa6dc8uf0 . An article from 2014 also reported on his past restaurants and background, and dwelt on a meal (illustrating his food) at his past restaurant MIGRANT: https://mauitime.com/food-drink/maui-restaurants/migrant-maui-chef-sheldon-simeon-means-it-when-he-says-come-my-house-eat/ .

Perhaps all these people should consider acting like themselves, then. Rather than feeding the public perception of them from their actions and words as jerks or as people who are not what you say they "really are".

I myself (a personal view) don't care what Katsuji Tanabe has done or will ever do, whether on Top Chef or in any of his restaurants. His behavior on both of his TC runs marked him as a despicable person, to me. Notwithstanding whatever "saving graces" or "culinary expertise" he may have shown. I believe he has even stated that his behavior on TC was an "act"; but that actually reinforces my opinion of him as a jerk.

This current season – Season 15, Top Chef Colorado – does not particularly excite me, and specifically in terms of the cooking. I have said elsewhere that IMO Top Chef has "jumped the shark". In this regard I also find the cooking to be...underwhelming. I still think of TC Season 6 – with the Voltaggio brothers, Kevin Gillespie, Jennifer Carroll (at a time when she was cooking well) to be the season which interested me the most in terms of what the cheftestants cooked and presented. There was a lot of interesting good food then.

Oh, I forgot to include this shot...regarding the mac n cheese...;-)

https://www.eater.com/2012/3/1/6609327/top-chef-finale-the-end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end http://ew.com/recap/top-chef-texas-season-finale/2/ (this is page 2 of 5)

Regarding Joe Sasto's Mac n Cheese.. :-) Heh. Didn't he also talk about the performance of his team in RW last week in glowing terms? Perhaps he needs to stop and reassess.