Snarklepuss

Yes, and you're welcome! I am always struck by how devoted to him they are. Several of them have been with the restaurant since it opened 5 or so years ago and the people I know who work there glow about him which does say a lot. If I get the chance I will do that!

I'm so glad you liked it! I was shocked that Tyler was there because my friend thought he was in Spain but I guess he got back in time. They had a few private parties going on upstairs and our friend the special events manager was running around tending to them all evening. We went early because Mr. Snarkle had a meeting (would you believe) that had to happen today of all days, so he had to get up early. Later on they had a 6 course menu with oysters on it that was even more exciting. Here's a couple of photos. I took one of the "pass" (which they don't use as a pass, it's just a big window into the kitchen) where you can see Tyler but it came out all washed out because I didn't use flash (oh well). Anyway, this is the beef tenderloin with foie gras on top. It looks small because the plate is large but it was so rich it might as well have fit the whole plate. The second photo is of the waterfall right outside our table. The entire wall on that side of the restaurant is windows overlooking the fall. This was once a real working mill. Our friend the waitress was commenting on how she'd never seen it so frozen over!

I hear you, I started with Iron Chef Japan when it first aired on FN and in some ways ICA never really measured up for me for many reasons like you mention above. For some reason even though I knew it was campy fiction I still half believed in chairman Kaga. And where else would I ever have learned the pleasure of shark fin soup or raw trout ice cream? I'll never forget the episode maybe 20 years ago when Morimoto had just sawed up some huge sea creature and put its spine on a tray and my husband looked at me with big eyes and said, "He just put a spine in the oven. A SPINE!!" And it was HUGE! We never stopped laughing about that one!

OK, I admit it, I feel the same way. He's one of those brilliant eccentric New Yorky people going back to a time I miss in my old hometown so for that I appreciate him. And I knew of him long before he ever appeared on Food Network, too!

So anyway, Mr. Snarkle and I ate at Tyler's restaurant tonight and as we pulled into the parking lot, who do we see walking right in front of us on his way back to the kitchen from the dumpster but Tyler himself, LOL! Now mind you we're in the single digits here in CT today and he was out there in his usual chef garb with the short sleeves and tats showing. Mr. Snarkle opened the window and we waved as he ran in front of our car to get out of the cold! Maybe it was me, but I especially enjoyed the dinner tonight, even though Mr. Snarkle recounted other memorable dinners that we've had there in the past. For the first course we chose a parsnip soup with crispy fried onions (yum). For the second course we had quail which was boned and as good or better than I've had in any fine French restaurant. Our third course was a beef tenderloin with foie gras that was seriously like butter and to die for, and for dessert we had a passionfruit mousse cake with a neon orange icing that was a-ma-zing. My seat faced the kitchen and yes, Tyler is a very hands on kind of chef and I saw him very involved and hands on with the food. While we saw our friends that work there I didn't want to get too in depth about Tyler tonight except to say how disappointed I was that he was eliminated from Top Chef, which they of course agreed with most emphatically. His staff is very devoted to him and they are all very nice people and very professional. It is always a pleasure to dine there as they are fun to watch and always roll out the red carpet for us as their friends. It's mostly a local crowd of regulars there but they have seen an increase in business as a result of the press that Tyler has gotten from the show.

Yeah, I don't agree with that about Tyler. I have known him to create dishes that are down home like chicken and dumplings, fish or brisket tacos, chicken wings, burgers, etc., etc., which are all on his tavern menu right now, and many of which I have had. I actually think he took the heritage challenge TOO seriously. The mistake he made was to look at what others were doing and think he had to copy them to compete with them instead of finding his own strategy. He saw others doing food that was very tied to their own ethnicity and thought that in order to compete with them he had to do the same thing. I think he was probably pissed that he let the show pressure him to do something that he didn't love doing, but in the end that was his mistake, and the same one that has tripped up other great chefs on this show in the past. I think there is a big difference between the talent it takes to be a great chef and the talent it takes to win a competition. Tyler has a lot of the former, but probably not enough of the latter to win a show like this. I think Tyler may have hoped that Top Chef would be about him being able to showcase his "chef-y" talent because that's where he probably feels he has the edge over others. But I've had his non-chefy food, which I think is marvelous and just as good as anything else he creates, so perhaps that's in his own mind. He has not even shied away from embracing the "down home" trend himself so I don't agree that he is not one to embrace that kind of cooking. In fact, this past fall he opened a BBQ restaurant in my area. I haven't tried it yet but it's on my culinary "bucket list" for the near future. So the fact that he didn't showcase that side of himself on this show is regrettable.

Mr. Snarkle and I thought the same thing about Vincent Pastore (the actor's name). And we complained in the other thread about the "food authority" of the judges on "IC Showdown", but this reminded me that even from the beginning the show had issues with that! I remember even when I first watched this episode thinking that he was not the best choice for a judge. I think FN has actually learned a lot about who to choose since then. Jeffrey Steingarten may be a food authority and all that, but as a person I think he's a boor and full of himself and that's probably one of his effete "affectations" done specifically to make the rest of us feel inferior somehow.

I don't think it matters why the comment was made. I don't think race, gender, age or sexual orientation should have any part in wins or goes home on this show. I think it should be about the best talent winning. If I think the deck is stacked for or against anyone on the basis of any of those things, I will speak out against it, but to say one is happy about someone going home based on any of those personal characteristics is just prejudiced and insulting to the contestants, IMO.

I know a little about Tyler because I eat at his restaurant often and know people that work with him. I've had brief conversations here and there with him and hear about what he's up to from my connections to him. I do know that he spends enough time cooking and in the kitchen in both his restaurants so I don't really think he's rusty. He just opened a BBQ restaurant with a partner in W. Hartford (called "The Cook and the Bear") and I've known him to do a lot of special dinners and events so he's always creating and innovating. In fact, he and the other "bears" from Top Chef are doing a James Beard dinner in NYC in January called "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" (he's done several other James Beard dinners in the past too). His 4 James Beard nominations are all within the past few years and he was nominated even this year. Right now I hear he's in Spain, a place I don't doubt he went to in part for culinary inspiration. But as far as him personally, I've heard he's got his good and bad points like anyone else, no better or worse. I agree that he's come off a bit on the egotistical side on this show and I wonder what's causing that. I might have to check with my sources to see if they can shed some light on it. I know that he and the other "bears" from Top Chef (Joe Flamm and Bruce Kallman) hit it off and have kept in touch enough to do the James Beard dinner, so that's pretty cool. I'll be dining at Millwright's tomorrow night so that should be interesting! Speaking of him possibly having taken the So Cal route in this challenge, he does a mean fish taco that I love and have had several times. If he did that he would definitely have survived to cook another day. Too bad!

I know, I thought the same thing! This was back when they often pulled out the "power tools" and the show was more of a spectacle like the original Japanese version. It really made me nostalgic as back in those days I caught every single episode including this one. I'm actually enjoying this show more than "Showdown". I haven't seen some of these old episodes in eons and it's fun to see them again with Alton's commentary.

I agree with you but ay, there's the rub! I think the show gets into their heads as much as they get into their own heads and semi-deliberately confounds them in challenges like this and then often anyone with any insecurity about the challenge ends up trying too hard and missing the mark. But as someone so aptly reminded us with the Kwame example, on this show it can happen to anyone for any reason. I remember when Kwame got too into his head about his father and bombed. I was rooting for him and very disappointed when he went home. This stuff happens so often I have to think that the show is responsible for some of the pressure and winning becomes more about how well you can weather the way they fuck with your head than with how good a chef you are.

I don't even know what to say about this comment either. I was responding to someone that was snarking on how happy they were that 3 fat white guys were up for elimination and that one of them would go home. Why make it about them being white or fat for that matter? I find it highly offensively prejudiced to make such a comment and I would never make one like it had the tables been reversed. The fact that a comment like that could be made and slip through without the post being removed or reprimanded is reason enough for a complex, IMO.

An interview with Tyler in Parade after his elimination.

See my edit which crossed in the mail with your post. I agree with you that he could have done that but under the circumstances and given the amount of chefs that had a strong culinary background from childhood, I think it's understandable that he got in his head over the stiff competition in that challenge.

For sure he did get into his head too much, but my point is that the reason he got into his head that much is that he knew he had no real emotional connection to the food of either his place of birth or his background, and that he was competing with a lot of people that did, which put him at a disadvantage Coming from a Sicilian family full of wonderful home cooks I feel first hand the love and emotional connection with the food I grew up with and that others would have if they came from that kind of culinary tradition. Tyler did not have that emotional connection at all through no fault of his own and he anticipated being outclassed because of that no matter what he did. Of course it turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. P.S. On thinking it over, I think he should have done French cooking since Julia Child was his idol as a kid. He certainly has plenty of emotional connection with her cooking going back to childhood.

I hear what you're saying but I also heard Tyler mention that he had no historical connection with food because it wasn't a thing in his family. I know people that grew up eating nothing but overcooked tasteless meat or Chef Boyardee and Kraft macaroni and cheese and it was thrown on the table just to fill the void so they didn't love the food and would not want to make something wonderful to pay homage to it. Mr. Snarkle is a case in point. He is a foodie but the rest of his family growing up had horrible taste in food and didn't really care for food at all on top of being WASPs with no real culinary heritage to speak of whatsoever. He always complained that his family could turn a piece of meat to rubber and overcook bland vegetables to death and that he never really learned to love food until he met me and my Sicilian family. Aside from Mrs. Paul's fish sticks, he had never even eaten any seafood until he met me! I agree with you there, but I can only imagine that something left a bad taste in his mouth about the competition and the fairness of the challenges, and it had to be pretty bad for him to say something like that. Given that I had a similar feeling all along I'm giving him some slack for that.

Sorry I meant to say after Tyler's elimination. One or two gimmicky challenges a season is one thing but it looks to me like they're putting every single one in one season this time. It's starting to feel more like "Food Network Star" than "Top Chef". YMMV.

I heard Tyler say that food was not a "thing" in his family so he drew a big blank with that challenge. I am realizing that this is yet another reason why he identifies so much with Julia Child because she too was from California from a very "white bread" family that was not into food. Julia actually engaged in foodie "cultural appropriation" when she adopted French cuisine as her specialty. I think Julia would have struggled with that challenge too. Interestingly, I read an interview with Bruce Kallman after his elimination in which he said he did not agree with the judges' criticism of his dish. He said the meat was definitely done enough and he could hardly believe they were talking about the same dish! So I really wonder about this season. I'm not prone to buying into conspiracy theories but this is not looking fair to me.

I think Tyler felt that the cards were deliberately being stacked against him, and from what I saw even before this episode I thought that myself so I can't fault him for having that perception even if it wasn't true. I doubt that this would have been the outcome if he had been on Top Chef several years ago.

You and me both, which has left a bad taste in my mouth about this season as a result. I've been biting my tongue not to say some unpopular things about this because I don't want to get myself in trouble, but last week I said that I thought the advantages this season was being given to young, non-classically trained chefs cooking ethnic food and that the challenges so far seemed to be slanted in their favor. So it was absolutely no surprise to me that chefs as accomplished as Tyler and Bruce were in the bottom after having been tripped up by this. And I think Tyler's obviously pissed off attitude upon departing is because he felt that way about it too. I'm sure if I even noticed it before this week, it's no wonder he had a complex about it. I think he might have been feeling that way going into this challenge which made him overthink his dish and try too hard. He knew what they were looking for and that he wasn't it. That's why he tried to stick to his own ethnicity, because he knew they were looking for food that came from family traditions. Obviously everyone else was able to do that in some way, being closer to their family's ethnic culinary traditions than he was. Tom said Tyler could have done California cuisine. I don't agree with that. That would not have been close to Tyler any more than Swedish meatballs were close to Tyler. Most of the other chefs had the advantage of being close to their ethnic culinary traditions. Tyler was definitely at a disadvantage there. And I say that as a 3rd generation Sicilian American who learned my family's ethnic culinary traditions at my grandmother's knee. I KNOW I would have even had the advantage over Tyler in that competition. You can't reproduce the love that goes into that kind of cooking when you just don't have that kind of background. So IMHO he was just screwed there. And I still don't get why Tyler went home over Bruce. None of the complaints about his food were specific as to the taste or quality, just on the composition. Meanwhile the comments about Bruce's dish were negative in just about every way. I used to think this show was above favoring some chefs over others but I am rethinking that now. Tyler is a 4 time James Beard Award nominee. Many of the chefs this season are at least 10-15 years his junior with a lot less experience and training and can't even cook an omelet. I'm sure it wasn't lost on Tyler that some of the challenges seemed juvenile, like making them cook with kiddie tools for kids and college kids in challenges more reminiscent of the trivial side of Food Network than this show. In fact, I'm a bit surprised that there aren't more people on the board complaining about that stuff. This show should be above "Cutthroat Kitchen" or "Guy's Grocery Games" gimmicks, IMHO. In fact I think that TPTB knew just what kind of challenges would be more uncomfortable for the better chefs on the show than for some of the lesser talented competition. To me it's obvious that the show engaged in strategy to put the more accomplished and experienced chefs at a disadvantage. Bruce and Tyler are some of the "old men" this season. Older and perhaps a little too "white bread", how "uncool" from a millennial perspective can you get? And somehow the show has managed to make them look like much less than they really are. I blame the show for that, not the chefs or their "egos". They're entitled to their freaking egos at their level! They've earned their accomplishments, it wasn't just handed to them because they were "cool" and trendy. Why should they be cut down in any way or be talked down about for having an ego about their work? They don't need some show making them look like they're "less than" chefs younger and/or obviously less talented than they are. Seriously. IMHO this show used to show respect to chefs who were on their level. Obviously, not anymore. And I think it's because the show now wants to appeal to an audience that doesn't care to see them being respected or even actively would like to see other younger more ethnic chefs do better than them. That's my opinion on it, as unpopular as it may be, I don't care. Yeah and this is exactly what I am talking about! I would never say I would rather see one of the younger more ethnic chefs go. And then they say white people have a complex - maybe there's a good reason for that. Just sayin'.

Amazon Prime Instant Video puts episodes online a day after they air for $2.99 each. So that would be about $30.00 or more for the whole season. It might be actually be cheaper to upgrade your cable package temporarily to see it. Sometimes Comcast can be talked into offering you a special deal for doing so.

Ugh, I know. Upon seeing the junk in her trunk rolling around like that Mr. Snarkle remarked at what a strange body type she has. He says her legs are proportionately short and with that big rump the dress just looked bad. I confess I never cared enough to notice, but he's right. Somehow I have a nagging memory of someone posting to this board months ago that there was some reason given for Sheila's absence somewhere online but I forget now what it was. Not that I'd believe an excuse anyway knowing how she was prone to hissy fits. Oh I think if the show approached them for a "baby special" show or something like Doug and Jamie did when Ashley gets pregnant they'd bite. I think the money would be too hard for them to refuse plus having a baby is so important to Ashley she would want to document it on TV for posterity.

Tim's back and the preview showed him out on a few lakes, LOL. I wonder why this is the "final" season. They mentioned the skull the Russians had that turned out to be the skull of a woman, but what about the jaw fragment with teeth that was supposedly matched to Hitler's dental records? Is that how they're going to end this? The only reason I'm still watching is that the series is still interesting even if you don't buy that they'll ever find evidence of Hitler. Even if it's just Nazi's it's still interesting. And then there's Tim, of course!

Thanks so much! I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to open the box yet but this is a fantastic start!

When my 90 year old Dad was little he had a nurse that years before went out west in a covered wagon and told him stories about it all the time when he was growing up. She ended up coming back east after a while hence why she was in Brooklyn in the 1930s. He always told me she looked like "Mrs. Doubtfire" LOL. Now when he recalls stuff like this he says he can't believe he knew people that were alive so long ago. (I tell him I can't believe he's still alive either, LOL.) He says he remembers before there was electricity in his neighborhood in Brooklyn. He says he used to watch the lamp lighter from his window every evening. No lie. Blew my mind. I guess it took a while for electricity to get out to some neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. And speaking of Woodstock, I knew all about it beforehand - Even remember the huge billboards announcing it on the NY State Thruway. All the counselors in my day camp went and came back with epic stories which they told us kids round the campfire as we made s'mores. I was soooooo jealous!