Rambler

Bryan Voltaggio did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on reddit earlier today: I am TOP CHEF alum and author Bryan Voltaggio, AMA!

Keep in mind that Mei is not bringing this up over and over. There are probably many hours of footage of her talking about a wide range of different subjects, but it is the editors that are choosing to hit us over the head with the fact that there are few women winners. They think that it makes for a better story and it kind of makes me suspicious that Mei has this won.

I know next to nothing about art, but I must say that the painting from the Texas lady looked like a piece of crap that a 12 year old could do. When Doug said he was going to send it to his mom, I couldn’t help thinking "OMG Doug must hate his mom!"

The problem with your theory is that the shows are taped months before they are aired so there would be no way for Mike I. to know that George had been eliminated before this episode was filmed.

Adam asked Mei if he could have some of the littlenecks and Mei gave him some. At that point Melissa could have asked for some and maybe they could have split it three ways, but nooo she just has to steal almost all of Mei’s… and after they were such good buddies in restaurant wars. Nice way to stab a friend in the back. I’m surprised there isn’t a rule against removing stuff from somebody elses station after the whole pea pureegate incident a few seasons ago.

The only time I can think of that happening is during the Texas season, Ty-Lor was eliminated while Paul was EC and Edward was FOH.

Keriann volunteered to be front of the house so I definitely think she had her dish planned out well in advance. She was so overconfident in her dish that she never bothered checking it before the judges came in. If only she cared about what the other diners thought of her dish, she might have noticed there was a problem earlier. It was weird that the other chefs didn’t tell her there was a problem with her mousse, but it seems they had zero confidence in her ability to fix it so they decided to do it themselves. From past episodes I thought it was SOP to prepare a tasting for the servers so they know what they are serving. Stupid of them not to do it this time as they could have discovered the problem with the dessert beforehand and it didn’t seem like they were pressed for time. It was nice to see Stephanie again as she was my favorite contestant last year. She would say the funniest things, but in a low key, deadpan sort of way so I was kind of surprised that Chase decided to use her in their commercials, but good for her.

So they suspected the race car driver because he was in a fight with the guy who survived the crash, but the race car driver wasn’t the one that caused the accident. So what was the motive for the real killer to run the car off the road? For that matter, why did he feel the need to kill the race car driver?

I find it sort of interesting that when Mei attempted to "guide" Katsuji and Katie when they were teamed up a few weeks ago there were plenty of of people on this forum saying that she should STFU, but when Gregory does the same thing this week people seem OK with it. I have been on the road the past week so I didn't have time to comment before, but I thought that the reason Gregory might have had trouble finding teammates last week was his performance in the first challenge where he insisted on fileting the fish and then did the job slowly, which contributed to the elimination of his teammate.

Well since the chef himself said that he only had fatty pieces left to serve her and that he didn't want to serve it, but he had no choice, then I would say it probably wasn't a figment of her imagination.

I can kind of see where it would make sense to make that choice though. Since he had no idea that there would be a head to head competition afterwards, he was probably mainly watching his own team and not paying much attention to the screw-ups on the other teams. So on his own team, he sees a guy who insisted on doing the mackerel and then turned out to be as slow as molasses. He probably thought the guy was an idiot. It was his bad luck that the guy looks like he is going to be one of the stronger chefs this season. He thought his team screwed him over because he was "forced" to do the clams instead of the mackerel. I can see where he might be a little bitter about being eliminated in such a fashion before he got a chance to really show what he could do, but thems the breaks.

I think the fake wife must have been a psychic. How else would she know where the two surfer girls were hiding?

Sterling is most likely a camera whore who is putting on a goofball act to get more air time. It’s a pity because it looks like he could have been a solid contender if he took this more seriously. As it is, I don’t see Ramsey hiring a clown for one of his kitchens anytime soon. Katie nominated herself because she is probably one of those types that wants everyone to like her. She knew she could say Kalen because she was everyone else’s choice and safety in numbers. If she has seen past seasons, she knew the next name she said was going to be spewing hatred about her in the talking heads, so she did the cowardly thing and said her own name. She seems a solid cook, but is probably too young to win this.

So how were those Silverpool thugs able to find Claire every time?

C.J. beat Stefan 3-0 and Takashi also swept David Burke.

But first he has to solve the murder of the lady cop's husband because you just know there is no way he died of a simple heart attack.

Good ole NCIS writers. As soon as the dock guy said that he was a civilian contractor, I knew exactly who the killer was. Nice to know there are some things you can still count on in this world.

Wow the women’s team went downhill fast. It almost makes me believe all the conspiracy theories of the producers fiddling with the oven temperatures once they saw the lack of screaming that went on during that first dinner service. I was surprised that Denine got the boot because she seemed the type that they would want to keep around to stir up drama, but possibly when she started a fire in the kitchen and then did nothing to put it out, it was something Ramsey was not going to put up with. My early front runners for this season are Katie and Santos, based on the theory that the top contenders will do well on the signature dish challenge and then are basically invisible during the early dinner services. I don’t know if this theory actually works in practice, but it sounds good so that’s what I go with.

In the Marcel vs Blais burger battle, both Gail and Wolfgang first announced that they were voting for Marcel giving him the win. Curtis then said that for the record he would have voted for Richard, so they don’t always do the tie breaker thing. A couple of other times they have announced the first two votes for one chef and then don’t say how the third judge voted, which I take it to mean that it was a clean sweep, but they don’t want to overly embarrass the losing chef.

I believe it’s a matter of fairness. It would hardly be fair for Brooke to have to cook her way through eight rounds in order to reach the finals while whoever lost the last episode in the main show would only have to win one in order to get back in the competition.

Any chef who wins their Knockout is automatically in the final. If Mike beats all the other chefs that come into the Knockout round, then only Brooke and Mike will be in the final. If another chef beats Mike then that chef will join Brooke and Mike in the final, so there will be any number of chefs in the Knockout final. The winner of the Knockout final will then rejoin the main competition.

I didn’t think the chair was wired. She said the shocks really hurt, so if you are sitting in a chair and you receive a shock from the chair wouldn’t your first instinct be to leap out of the chair immediately? But that didn’t happen - instead she just yelled “Owww” while she continued to sit in the chair. She didn’t get out of the chair until he used the taser a second time. So to me that says she was in on the trick, but is a horrible actress and should stick to singing.

I didn’t like Lenny’s pilot at all. I got zero cooking information from it, unless tossing spice mix onto the grill from behind your back is supposed to be some sort of elevated cooking technique. Too much trying to be funny and not enough cooking for my tastes. I thought I was watching a failed pilot for Comedy Central rather than something for Food Network. Nicole’s pilot was a little better since you got more cooking tips, but it was kinda dull. I also find that when I listen to her over an extended period of time, her voice sort of takes on a nails on chalkboard quality for me. Of the three, I preferred Luca’s pilot the most, but only because of the presence of chef Kristen from the Italian restaurant. When he was by himself I thought Luca was so boring and hard to understand that I couldn’t remember what he was talking about. Some sort of fish with garlic on it I think. Maybe they could hire chef Kristen to be his sidekick or something. She could talk and he could smile and cook something. Or since she is an executive chef, she could talk and cook and he could sit off to the side and smile. Yeah that might be the show right there,

This is the first season I am watching this show. Can someone tell me what would have happened if Howard had preferred the jump ropers? If the judges are tied 2 to 2, how is it decided which act goes through?

Gee I thought it was obvious. Maura’s dad identified that Donald guy they caught as an errand boy for the killer. Donald got released on bail and they followed him to the killers house.