Blonde Gator
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Posts posted by Blonde Gator
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38 minutes ago, LeighLeigh said:
Recently, on a podcast, Tyler mentioned that he gave Joe the idea to add the baking soda to the wings. Joe got all of the credit. Being the team player that he is, Tyler didn't say anything.
If I might ask, where do you find these podcasts?
That was a super interesting little factoid, thanks.
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@chiaros That is exactly what I described as Joe & Carrie eyerolling at each other this week....your first grab was clearer. Maybe Joe & Adrienne were eye-rolling in another part of the episode????
Having said that, EVERYONE was really super uncomfortable any and every time Claudette opened her mouth at JT! No more! Woo hoo everyone.
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3 hours ago, LeighLeigh said:
Someone on Reddit listed the following about the final four: the poster said that Carrie goes home after the family challenge and that the final three are Adrienne and the two Joes. This puts Adrienne's comment about being the first African American Top Chef in some context.
If so, I predict that the finale will be a "Joe-down throw-down" after all.
Only Adrienne wouldn't be....Kevin Sbarra (sp?) from the season they did the finale in Asia (Taiwan?)....it's been maybe 6 - 7 years.
I really would love to see an All Stars episode in a couple of years with Adrienne. I think she's a fantastic and technical chef, but she's kind of like Shirley right now....proficient at doing other people's food. She is on the verge of finding her own vision, and I believe she'll be a superstar in another year or three. The young lady's got talent.
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1 hour ago, carrps said:
I thought that was Joe and Adrienne. They showed Carrie, too, in a different shot. But I definitely remember the eye roll as between Joe and Adrienne. I even rewound to show it to my sister.
Joe (F) and Adrienne did the mutual eyeroll LAST week, LOL....in the Olympics episode, when Claudette was throwing Tonya under they bus, the editors dubbed in what Joe said to Adrienne (because he kind of whispered in her ear) "that's what she did to you with the fish". IIRC, episode 2, where they had to combine fish & cheese, & Claudette didn't know how to smoke the fish, then blamed Adrienne for her mistakes.
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Just rewatched the episode, confirmed everything I originally saw, and did a couple of back-ups to catch things that you all have pointed out that I missed the first time through, thanks!
The very interesting thing was the rewatch of Judges table. Once the judges started questioning Common Place, the squirming began!!! I thought Joe Sasto was going to come out of his stache, he was wriggling so much, particularly when we had the Chris / Claudette back and forth. And when Claudette started talking about being an expediter, but not responsible for the other dishes, and then NOT tasting everyone's food, the camera panned over to Team Conifer, and Joe Flamm & Carrie looked at each other and really did an eyeroll at each other. They should have had a drumroll edited in, then I would have LOL'd! The Guest Judges also noted how Claudette's demeanor changed from being all happy EC in the kitchen to being "oh Hell no, not me" when in front of the judges. Then in her exit TH, she got all nasty about the judges picking the wrong person. Sorry sister, you EARNED this PYKAG, all by your lonesome. Not one member of her team remotely tossed her under the bus, she did that by being her snotty self.
I'll probably jinx him, but I've decided Joe Flamm is my guy this year. He has a great sailfish tatt on his right arm, I'd be happy to take him sailfishing any time! He seems so supportive of all of his competitors, he seems to be a really good chef and an all around great guy.
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4 minutes ago, bravofan27 said:
I do love Chris, and I am biased toward him, and he does has his faults, but I don't think he really gets how much people hate Claudette and why. I also think Chris is the type of person that tries to look at the positive in everyone, not the negative, and he looked for the positive in Claudette. He also probably thought that she would be better "in charge" based on her propensity to be bossy and he didn't want his team getting pissed off and fighting. On that, Chris did a good job. No one fought and everyone was happy. Claudette wanted to keep the peace so she didn't pay any attention to what anyone was doing but herself. SHe was happy because she didn't have to help anyone, and no one had to help her. She basically used her position as EC to happily frolic alone and then blamed Chris because they other's food was bad. I'm seriously not sure how smart she is that she thought she could blame Chris and get away with it. Plus, she was pissed he appointed her EC and felt that he was escaping responsibility. Projection?
Both excellent points.
Winning the knife draw means YOU get to pick the teams. Does that make you the automatic Team Leader? I don't think so. To me, at least, it seems that it's up to the TEAM to make the decisions from there on out. And from the first moment both teams sat down at the bar, I was convinced the team that eventually became "Conifer" would win. They worked collaboratively, with no one member being overly pushy, although Bruce did kind of take the lead in the conversation, the way I saw it (I've not rewatched, so I could be wrong). They first decided on a cohesive theme, and Carrie came up with a name, and all agreed....and from there they all ran with the concept. The other team seemed to be unable to find a cohesive concept, IMO. And it was all downhill from there.
I was surprised when Joe Flamm stepped up to FOH....that's usually the least desirable of the RW roles, about a 50% proposition for PYKAG, particularly on a losing team...odds increase. But the whole negotiation of who was going to do what seemed to be based on rational thought, rather than feelings. GREAT decision making, again. That's what the whole RW boils down to, is decision making. The only flaw I saw with Conifer was that their pick-up area was on an oven or heating thing...and that Adrienne's fish was getting ruined because the runners were slow. Perhaps Bruce could have fixed that by slamming some cutting boards down for the plates to sit on.....don't know. But I was so happy that Joe F. praised Adrienne for her role as a sous chef on his duck. She IS a slammin' sous. This may not be her year, but she's a fantastic chef, perhaps a few years from winning it all...bring her back on an All Stars season. I hope someday we get to see that. Great chef, great person!
I'm always happy when we get to this point in the season. All of the weak sisters and nasty game-players are mostly gone by this point. I have no idea whom I want to win, I like every one of these chefs moving forward. Even Mustache Joe....he's quirky, he can cook, and he's really not a jerk. It will be really interesting to see who comes back from LCK, and when they come back. Now that the Wicked Witch of the South is gone, I think the LCK returnee will be spun up and focused enough to take it all. Who that is, I have no idea. But I'm totally agnostic this season about who should be Top Chef (probably for the best, my favorite chef NEVER wins!).
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15 minutes ago, fivestone said:
I read that she did Top Chef Mexico and Top Chef 15 back to back... I can understand how being out of her element socially and doing two reality shows back to back could be stressful and maybe bring the worst out in her... either way, it's a shame that some of her worst moments were caught on tape like that (after all , we all have bad moments), but she probably just bit off more than she could chew. I would be interested to see her a few years down the road after she has had some time to mellow out and grow a bit more mature in certain ways.
Maybe a Tiffany Faison transformation?
I've never been a Faison fan, but I do admire her for looking hard "in the mirror" at herself after her first season, and changing her mean girl ways.
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42 minutes ago, Wings said:
The original saying is-- "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." When did the new version come to be? It would make more sense to say I cried because I had no money until I met a man who had no class. Shoes and class is like comparing chalk and cheese.
No idea.....but it was in the early 80's, and it's FABULOUS. Sorry you felt the need to nitpick it. I love it just the way it is. It matters NOT what one is bemoaning, without class (i.e. kindness and consideration for others)...........well, you may fill in the blanks.
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18 minutes ago, Figster said:
Well I'd think Common Place would know that they'd lose with Claudette as the EC. Chris is a coward imo; he set his team up for failure. He had to know she'd be a bad EC with her poor people skills. Perhaps he made a gamble that she'd be the one to take the fall (when he had to know they'd lose), and apparently he was right. A real "top chef" wants to be the EC, not shove it off to the worst choice for the position.
LOL have to laugh at that! Such "integrity" setting his team up to lose.
I don't believe he did that. I think he really believed Claudette would be better at it than he would have been, and who'd have known dear Fati would be a deer in the headlights as FOH? I'd have thought she'd be bubbly and very customer oriented. Besides, Chris pretty much offered up to throw himself on his sword when things didn't go as planned. That IS integrity. I saw no game playing from him. Do you believe Joe Sasto would have been a better EC? He's the "out there" chef. I don't believe half of the chefs understand what he's doing half the time. Maybe Chris should have stepped up, but he didn't, and Claudette was perfectly happy to be EC when she thought she'd get the glory without having to take the responsibility.
10 minutes ago, Eulipian 5k said:There's a list of the known glitches in the "January Update" forum(?). I note also that there's no Heart on your own post; no auto-erotica allowed, lol.
LOL! I guess they know who we are!
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23 minutes ago, Eulipian 5k said:
You had me at Ding Dong. (I guess they know the Heart Button and # likes are missing)
It's like Karma (Kadma?) and soo interesting that Chris chose Claudette over Tanya but Jebus stepped in to smite the evil one.
Years ago (dark ages in my 20's), I found that saying, "I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no class" as a poster, it had a pack of Emperor Penguins on their long Antarctic march. I framed it, and had it for years and years. A dear work friend of mine almost killed himself in a car wreck, so I took it out of its frame, and all of us at work signed it (instead of a card), and put it back into his frame as a get-well card. He later told me that was one of the things that made him fight really hard to get better....that so many of his colleagues thought so well of him as a man with class.
It's a great motto to live by. That's a hard lesson, and one which Claudette actually has never learned. There's something wonderful about being self-confident, but combined with being tone-deaf to others just equals UGLY person. And Claudette is that in spades. That's why we were all rooting for Chris, and happy that he didn't get sent home. He is a man with personal integrity, and it oozes forth from his pores. It's in his core. And good for Fatima for standing up for him. Bottom line, any one of those chefs could have gone home, on "cooking technicalities", but I truly believe Claudette was chosen because of her personal flaws, she just doesn't have "it" to rise to the top in the world of professional chefs, and she never will....not with that attitude.
As for the little Hearts....they're way over there on the bottom right of each post.------>
It took me a while to figure that out. The big server upgrade last night has obviously caused some glitches, including no "Heart Count" per post, for now. But I'm grateful to TPTB for the server upgrade, maintaining a site like this is a gigantic nuisance....they'll get it worked out.
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1 hour ago, cooksdelight said:Fatima should not have been front of house. Joe would have been a better choice, as he seems much more charismatic than she. And I didn’t see her touching every table, I saw her standing around with a deer-in-the-headlights look most of the time. I love her to death, but she was out of her element.
Both Bruce and Claudette own/run restaurants. Bruce showed he knows HOW to run a restaurant.
Carrie did a great job picking her team. Going first meant she could stick Claudette with the other team.
When the judges were talking to the losing team, Claudette rolled her eyes more than once. And she said nothing to anyone when she left. No one will ever let her set foot on a TV sound stage again, nor want to do business with her.
You touched on another excellent point. Claudette wanted the glory of being EC, but without the responsibility. Remember when Bruce looked at a dish (I think Adrienne's fish) and gave it back to her, saying "the skin is separating...be careful how you're plating this, please do it again"? And The Wicked Witch commented about how she wasn't going to babysit her chefs as EC? Stupid cow. I knew she was toast at that moment. I remember that episode when Tom was the Expediter, he gave every dish the once over before it went out of HIS kitchen. Bruce did the same. That is the role. Claudette also made a fatal error when she said she didn't taste all of the dishes. Stupid!
I was kind of shocked to see Joe Flamm step up to FOH, which can be a death trap on this show. But he obviously knew what he was doing, and was as good as Fabio was, without being so handsomely flamboyent! And he picked two really delicious dishes to prepare, which he knew could be finished by any competent chef in his absence in the kitchen while working out front, which was great decision making, again. The fact that he gave Adrienne credit for cooking his duck to perfection just made me love him all the more. He's a really good guy.
BTW, just read on an article on the Bravo site that Joe Flamm & Bruce went to see Fatima, she's been released from the Hospital after her surgery last week. Da Bears taking care of the Baby Bear. These guys apparently walk the walk.
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Ding Dong, the witch is dead!
Had to laugh, as Claudette got the ultimate payback for her nasty behavior, and of course was left standing there looking wretched when she was picked last. What a losing loser she is. She once again tried to throw someone else under the bus for her failures. Thankfully, Tom was aware of exactly what was going on in the kitchen, and saw firsthand her play. I couldn't believe she was so ugly in her remarks once she got eliminated....and walking out without saying goodbye like that shows me she's got nothing. A favorite old saying..."I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no class". Claudette should have a t-shirt made with that on it. Que'lle bitch. She reminds me exactly of my adult step-daughter, thinks she's the queen of the world, is a miserable person, can't keep a job because "everybody hates me", and blames everyone for each and every one of the things about which she's unhappy. A totally miserable person to be around, I'm a happy person, but she depresses me. THAT is Claudette.
I knew Conifer was going to win, from the moment the team was picked, because they were such a happy bunch of warriors. They were supportive. They had a great concept, doing prep-heavy dishes that were (relatively) easy to get plated up. Joe Flamm was totally impressive as FOH. They got some superlative compliments from the judges on how well conceived and well run their concept was....because they worked collaboratively (and constructively) together in all of their decision making, and kept great lines of communication open the whole challenge. Well done, Conifer.
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24 minutes ago, zibnchy said:
I'm new to Top Chef, having only discovered it. I binged season 14 (Brooke season) and am now caught up on season 15. The only side effect of the binging so far is my new love of using the word plate as a verb. "I'm going to go plate dinner", I said as I paused the video.
So hello!
Also, Claudette blows chunks! She has to go. I would love to go to Tanya's restaurant but I don't anticipate a trip to Oakland ever. I am going to try to go to Chris' place next time I am in NYC. Also I'm shallow and Adrienne is very pretty and I want her to win.
Welcome!
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2 minutes ago, chiaros said:
So---if you are running a restaurant in the USA, and adhered to US FDA rules, you would be cooking your lamb to a minimum of 145ºF, yes?
Maybe at Chilis, where they won't serve you a medium rare burger.....but at upscale restaurants, the customer is the consumer and is always right.
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7 minutes ago, Yeah No said:
I don't know if she was making it into a race thing but even a frat boy thing doesn't bother me. I don't see these chefs as the typical frat boy stereotype anyway, and I think there have been others on these shows that deserve the label far more than they do. I envy them for being able to have a team spirit like that with a "may the best man win" mentality. I don't see this in a negative light. Often people in competitions pit themselves against each other and use alliances to bulldoze over other people. I don't see them as doing this at all.
Agree. There have always been little cliques of mutual admiration and support on TC. What's the big damned deal? Those guys were having fun and enjoying an across-the-board win. I didn't find that to be mean-spirited in any way at all. It was just people being happy. Kind of sad that others attempt to turn that into some sort of racist or misogynist BS. Sad state of affairs when being happy is seen as awful!
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31 minutes ago, Yeah No said:
I agree that she should have let the team know that she didn't want to do the knife cuts but I don't know if she's right that they're outdated. That would be news to me. If it's not in her repertoire that's one thing but why act like they're passe or irrelevant? I thought it was accepted that chefs should learn them at some point, just like chefs need to know the accepted temperatures of cooked meats. It seemed to me that she was making that as an excuse to save her reputation, but to me it just came off like someone that needs to get over themselves and suck it up that they aren't all that. It's probably hard to be lauded as a great chef in a specific type of cuisine and then be called out as being inadequate in certain techniques, but a Top Chef needs to know all these things and she probably deep down knew that. When she came out to say that she doesn't cook certain meats in her restaurant, I don't know if she realized that it might have looked bad on her from the perspective of the judges.
I suppose the battonet is just an interim step in doing a large and precise dice....but the term may be somewhat passe. I'd never heard of it, but I have a fairly large smattering of French. Having said that, Tonya went to culinary school in France, and how hard is it to say "tell me what that means? to one of her team mates?" NOT. Chiffonade and brunoise are used all the time, even by the so-called "amateur" cooks on FN (Pioneer Lady, Rachel Ray, etc.)....so those two techniques are well known to most home cooks as well. Adrienne, the former sous at La Bernadin, and a culinary instructor, took her time making perfect, precise cuts on her preparation. Tonya could have done the same....but let herself get all flustered with Claudette's demands without just saying "not now". Claudette is culpable for jumping on the Speed challenge without a GOOD plan.
As for the temperature thing.....the requirement was to "cook it perfectly and precisely". Most people KNOW how they like their steaks (or other meats cooked)....so in a restaurant, when I order medium rare, I expect a temp of 125 before resting...overcook while resting will make it a perfect warm, bright pink throughout and a nice sear on the outside. Rare, I'd expect still mooing....red and not warm in the middle....and so forth. The chefs were able to specify what THEY were shooting for....to me that was a decision that indicated they knew what the majority of diners at a restaurant would prefer to order. Mostly medium rare for red meat, and for the chicken, cooked all the way to the bone, but still juicy (which big Joe nailed perfectly, both in his target and his execution).
So, while Tonya executed her lamb to perfection.....she failed on both the knowledge of what "perfection" was....as well as not cooking her lamb to her own specification (temperature wise) of that perfection. Combined with her knife cuts....she was out, and rightly so. This EC was based on "skill drills" to mirror the skills required to win a competitive sport....rather than making a super flavorful dish with a plausible story. It was really more of an extended QuickFire than the usual EC challenge. So the judging was skills-based, rather than overall tasty results based (although a tasty, well executed dish that adhered to the "rules" of the challenge won).
I guess I'm in the minority here about the challenge, I enjoyed it. Team challenges are always unfair when there's both immunity, and the PYKAG chef to be selected from the losing team. But that is part of the business....a restaurant is only as good as its weakest link, as is any team Olympic sport. I thought this challenge was interesting because it actually represented the realities of competition.
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1 hour ago, spiderpig said:
Any update on Fatima? She's so sweet and funny. Did I read right that her cancer was in her shoulder and that she's only 28?
I'm old enough to have witnessed dozens of friends and family from ages two to 80 with that f***ing demon cancer affliction. I wish her nothing but the best. Miracles do happen though.
Yes, she had her surgery this past Tuesday, Padma was at the hospital before she went into surgery. It was on the Bravo TC page, "news". Imagine it will take a while before she posts on SM again, and of course, whether they finished her chemo pre-surgery or whether she's scheduled for more. Cancer is an evil disease.
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Oh, and a question for the Peanut Gallery. (Sorry about these random stray thoughts).
Each team was allowed to choose their own protein, in the "precision" heat (2nd round).
So someone explain to me how Tom would have measured temperature if a chef had chosen seafood? Do you think it was stated (off camera) that it had to be a protein that is usually cooked to certain exact temperature(s) for doneness? That's the only thing I can figure, but I wonder why (if it was a thing) it wasn't stated in the challenge.
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6 minutes ago, meep.meep said:
I guess we are all different. To me, this was one of the worst episodes of Top Chef ever. The temperature thing lost it for the White team.
Why not have them cook for the athletes at the Training Village, which is in Colorado? They have different training requirements - it would have been fun to see the chefs have to creatively make a meal for the skaters vs. the cross country skiers.
As you said, to each his/her own.
An excellent idea....remember the Alaska episode (poor Brooke in the helicopter melting down) where they flew out to the Iditarod mushers' camp, and had to make them a power-packed breakfast? That was a very cool challenge. Agree with MORE of these kinds of challenges, tho.
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35 minutes ago, Madding crowd said:
I'm not OK with Tom subtly suggesting they make sure their scores were not too high for Chris. I didn't want anyone from the red team to go home either, but you play by the rules or it's cheating. I was curious that we didn't see Chris helping Claudette but it's possible he offered and she denied him. Tanya went into this in a bad mood because she didn't get what she wanted. We didn't see the discussion so it's possible she was outvoted, it's also possible she didn't speak up. She could have told her team members she doesn't have those particular knife skills and wouldn't be able to win her round.
The lights in the olympic round were really unfortunate. They made everyone look sweaty, and made Tom look sickly.
I rewatched the scoring part. I'm not sure how the subtraction of Besh's scores affect what they showed, but being the bean-counter I am....let me recap so you all can decide for yourselves how that admonishing by Tom may (or MAY NOT) have played out.
After the 2nd round, the scores (not exact, I didn't put in the half points) were:
Blue Team 94
Red Team 89
White Team 69
So....Round 2 was KEY, because of the point deduction(s) for temperature accuracy. Tanya LOST the whole competition for her team with her "145 degree lamb". She lost a potential 6 points x 6 (or 7) judges, her maximum potential score was 4 x 6 (or 7) for 24 or 28 points. Jeff had the least point deduction, -2 points, so he could score 8 x 6 (or 7), for a Maximum of 48 or 54. Adrienne on the Red team had a -3 temperature deduction, so her score was a potential 7 x 6 (or 7), for a Maximum of 42 or 49.
In rounds 1 and 2, red team scored w/in 3 points of the Gold on each of their 2nd place scores. But at the end of Round 2, White Team was 20 points behind, a REALLY serious deficit. That was on both Claudette and Tanya, all alone, by themselves. (And where was Chris helping them, I'd have to add here)?
In Round 3, both Mustache Joe and Chris had very high scores. But the only way for White Team to come in 2nd was if Chris had won, or scored just a smidge under Mustache Joe, while Carrie totally bombed. Carrie bombed, all right, but just not enough to totally crater her team's 20 point lead over the White Team. THAT is the gist of the math. And the judges only put up HALF the scores for each chef's total.
A final observation. It seemed to me that even though the Olympian judges were sitting right below the TC judges....within earshot of the judges' opinions....it seemed to me that the Olympians really upscored their favorite dishes, sometimes a few points above the judge's scores on the same dish. IOW, they weren't swayed much by Tom's opinion, if at all.
Having said that, one final thing about this episode. I really loved seeing the teams all compete in front of a live audience. It was exciting, and as Tom noted, it helped drive some of the chefs' energy (mostly Bruce and M. Joe, per the edit). I like this kind of a live challenge, and hope to see more of it in future seasons. It ranks up there with the Mis-En-Place QF, and the fish filet episode at Le Bernadin (with Bourdain in the kitchen yapping) as a favorite style challenge for me, in all seasons of TC.
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1 hour ago, cooksdelight said:
Chopped, maybe? It would be whatever cooking competition show has been running the longest on FN or Bravo.
I'm thinking it was TC. Maybe Padma's first season (I thankfully missed Season 1 w/Katie Lee). I remember Padma always saying "Hands Up, Utensils Down" at the end of the QF's.
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One of the least interesting LCK's I can recall.
Meh.
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Oh, and Bruce's dish was perfection for this challenge. Well thought out, simple, fast and easy to make, but delicious looking and sounding as he AND the diners described it. Good for him for keeping his head in the game after an all nighter and the emotion of becoming a father. Double and triple congrats to Bruce the Papa.
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I'm 100% with Tanya on being anti-drama in the extreme. It's never helpful, always boring, tedious, so I understand why Tanya just chose to disengage in front of the judges. I don't understand why she got so snappish to Carrie in the Stew Room, though, it seemed that Carrie tried to encourage her to give her view on what had happened, and maybe Tanya just reached her breaking point?
Claudette is one of the least likeable chefs on this series, ever, IMO. As much as I like Mexican food, and watching a talented chef cook it, she's so off-putting and nasty....I'm truly sorry she didn't get sent home. As someone said above, Claudette just jumped into that bus driver's seat, and steered a straight path at Tanya....when she should have been looking into the mirror about WHY her own dish wasn't successful. Very ugly. And all of the other chefs noticed it too....the guys on sideline were visibly uncomfortable at Claudette's nastiness, squirming like children. I have no further interest in watching Claudette. And next week will be interesting, she'll be the last chef chosen for Restaurant Wars. It will be interesting to see EVERYONE jockey for position the farthest away from Claudette, who needs to learn that there's no "I" in team!
The challenge this week was new and interesting and fun to watch. I'm still undecided on the point deduction for temperature, and suspicious of those little instant read thermometers, which all seemed to me to have given rather low temperatures. A digital probe thermometer should have been used. I knew Tanya was toast when she said she was shooting for 145 on her lamb. She was gracious enough to acknowledge her error though....the lady is a class act, unlike her [so-called] team-mate.
One question....did all of the 3rd round chefs get the same thing....short ribs? That wasn't quite clear to me from the description of Carrie & Mustache Joe's dishes.
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Top Chef Kitchens: The Recipes Thread
in Top Chef
Does anyone have a good recipe for making (gimlet) cocktail onions? Mr. BG bought me some pearl onions, which I cleaned up and put in the freezer for future creamed pearl onions. They are so yummy, though, that I"m having a gimlet, but they need a bit of a pickle on them. I looked up some recipes, none appealed. I know they need salt & vinegar to start (they're sweet enough as is). But what else? Juniper berries, telecherry peppercorns? Garlic?