Msample

Kaleena.

Is it just me, or does just about every season see Restaurant Wars boot either the FoH or head chef ? It seems the best strategy is to keep your head down and just fe a sous chef.

In your list of lame wannabe supervillains, you forgot Elijah, who I feared for a moment might be mentioned by the perp who attacked Monica before she snuffed him out. This show really stumbles when it tries to create season arc long villains .

Restaurant Wars is always done when they get down to 8 chefs, so we’ll find out in a few weeks. I’d be surprised if RW doesn’t happen, it’s so iconic. Based on this episode, it would indicate RW could be a more of a shit show than usual.

This seemed like one of the more contrived challenges, and a double elimination to boot. It shouldn’t be surprising so many teams struggled. FFS just let them cook. oh, and mushroom cheesecake?? GTFO.

Man, I can’t imagine having to eat all those heavy cheese laden ( or mostly cheese laden, given the bottom 3 were called out for not featuring the cheese ) in that sweltering heat.

How this 16th chef missed the initial casting cut but asshole hat dude made it eludes me. And why didn’t asshole hat guy even show up for LCK ?

Like others when it ended I was like, “wait, that’s it ? “

I was going to guess the same thing - convection ovens. https://www.askteamclean.com/us/en/organizing/what-is-convection-oven.html#:~:text=Professional chefs swear by the,it cooks food slightly differently. I am guessing the reason they used them is because they probably assigned each chef a dedicated oven - we’ve seen in past seasons chefs fighting over ovens, changing temps, etc. You wouldn’t want larger ones being opened/closed as chefs jam more shit in them. I do agree that cramming two birds in side by side on those roasting trays looked pretty tight . I’d be concerned that the sides of the two birds butted up against each other wouldn’t cook as fast unless they rotate them partway thru cooking .

Buddha had some interesting thoughts : https://people.com/top-chef-wisconsin-recap-buddha-lo-episode-1-8611775

I had David picked as the first boot before I even saw his food. Dude, just shut…the…..fuck….up. His hot mess personality doesn’t do well in this environment . PPYSHAG - Please Pack Your Stupid Hat And Go. Is it just me or is the most heavily tattooed TC ?cast ( not including Kristen, who seems allergic to sleeves ) ?

I've seen some train wrecks of a show, but this one is pretty far up ( or down ) the list. So much of the story seems undoubtedly compromised with the various cast availability issues that seemed to crop up and probably budget cuts due to the strike - Eve, Josh, whats her name( daughter of doctor dude ) , Levi. Parra " she's visiting another village". Um, yeah, sure. Whatever. Throw in civilians with pistols dropping trained soldiers with single shots and whatever other plot armor they felt like piling on; the writers room must be like WDGAF, we're getting paid for one more ep, what are they gonna do, fire us ? I don't think the finale - aka lets wrap this train wreck up - is longer than the usual 42 minutes of actual air time. So they're gonnna shoe horn in all these missing characters and resolve the entire plot in one ep ? LOL. My early predictions - some will stay behind. Izzy will stay with ner new Xena GF, so will ex drug dealer and his new wife/baby. Eve and Gavin can now reunite back in the present without poor Levi getting in the way. Scott I can see going either way. Ty will probably stay with Parra in dino-land. Isn't he terminally ill ? I forgot; the writers probably did too.

I think Mark and Lori are in it for the buyout down the road. I don’t know if it costs more than $1K to call an electrician, but I guarantee it costs more than $95. That said, I thought the battery life was very poor. You’ll either need to charge it daily, or more likely ruin the nice clean look by running a power cord from it to an outlet .

Pterodactyls must be the only birds that don’t sit on their eggs but instead leave them alone for long periods of time.

I just read that not only is Natalie Zea a limited part this season, but two actors who jumped thru the portal ( her son and his gf ) are also not regulars anymore. In a nutshell, the network hemming and hawing forced actors to look for other work in case the series got cancelled; by the time they renewed some cast members had gotten other roles and ran into scheduling issues.

I knew Natalie Zea was going to have a lot less screen time, but not even listed in the opening credits ? Wow .The body double with the wig cooking breakfast, WTF. And the tribal woman that married Ty was mentioned but not shown . Wonder if the cast has been trimmed to pay for the dinosaurs, LOL. I had to look up when the show last aired, its been almost a year . I can barely remember anything other than its always been a dumpster fire of a plot.

Russo will always be Herc from THE WIRE to me.

I gave up on this series about halfway thru the first season, then watched this after football. It still lacks the sarcasm, snark, and dry wit of the original . Was the court clerk new/replace someone ? I don’t remember him from before .

Robert Patrick not knowing who the hell Sadah Connor was; hilarious Easter egg.

Interesting article on the campaign - and financial incentives- that brought the show to Wisconsin: https://captimes.com/food-drink/how-top-chef-came-to-dairyland/article_b7c5993c-7d8f-11ee-8b5a-3731c6c30cfc.html

I fast forwarded thru all the tear jerking sob story shit. Between that, commercials, and the first 30 seconds after each commercial being the same footage as the last 30 seconds before the commercial( same for any GR show ) , you can watch the entire ep in like 20 mins. Quidditch dork won’t last long. Nor should he. That plate he served was easily the most disgusting looking one.

Anthony Bourdain mentioned cooking times in his book, with a line something like " I'd yell for the dish to get to the pass, but the line cook would look at me, snarl, and keep stirring til it was ready " . He then got called out on it on TOP CHEF, it was hilarious. Goto 2:50

Another peeve of mine is the somewhat archaic brigade system with shouted commands - most kitchens these days orders are entered into a POS system and they get spit out of printers at various stations in the kitchen.

Individual challenge, Gordon would be yelling at 10 minutes to go “ get your steaks in the pan NOW so they can rest!” Team challenge, he wants them to go from raw to the pass in 5 minutes. He’ll stop some food from going out to diners because it’s raw, but other undercooked stuff “gets by” him. Then it gets sent back and goes ballistic.