The Chefs/Cheftestants of Top Chef

[caitmcg]

37 minutes ago, buttersister said:

Happy for you and your Mom, caitmeg. The chef referred to in the article is Grant Achatz, who was very open about his experience. Wishing Shirley the same recovery.

I'm sure Shirley is aware of Achatz's journey, as she chooses goes through chemo and radiation and a potential higher chance of recurrence over having her entire tongue removed, as she describes her choices in her Instagram post.

[Rai]

Oh no, poor Shirley. She's always been one of my favorites. I'm rooting for her!

[ZettaK]

On 5/16/2024 at 8:55 AM, tv echo said:

Harold Dieterle is opening Il Totano in May in the West Village...

A Top Chef Winner Finds a New Italian Perch
By Florence Fabricant   May 14, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/dining/nyc-restaurant-news.html 

The First Winner of ‘Top Chef’ to Open a New Manhattan Restaurant
by Melissa McCart  May 15, 2024, 
https://ny.eater.com/2024/5/15/24153822/il-totano-opening-harold-dieterle-flex-mussels 

I always liked Harold. Nice, no drama, creative, competent.

[Souris]

Oh my gosh, what TERRIBLE news about Shirley. I pray she will beat this like your mom, @caitmcg.

[DEL901]

9 hours ago, Souris said:

Oh my gosh, what TERRIBLE news about Shirley. I pray she will beat this like your mom, @caitmcg.

It is terrible.   She was told that to have the best chance of survival, they need to remove her tongue.  She has decided against that route. 
https://people.com/top-chef-alum-shirley-chung-diagnosed-with-stage-4-tongue-cancer-8686273

[caitmcg]

I recently read Kwame Onwuachi's 2019 memoir Notes from a Young Black Chef (actually, listened to him read the audiobook). It was interesting. At times he does come off as having a bit of a chip on his shoulder, though not without reason given the subtle and unsubtle racism he was subjected to as one of the few Black people in fine dining kitchens.

On 5/12/2024 at 2:29 PM, mlp said:

Not long after the show, he opened a high end, high cost restaurant with some novel concept I've forgotten and it failed in very short order, a couple weeks as I recall, losing a lot of money for his investors. 

That's not quite how things happened. The investors, who had no experience with restaurants, basically recruited Kwame and his best friend and fellow restaurant guy (they met while at CIA), gave him carte blanche on concept, and proceeded to spend money hand over foot on outfitting the place, sparing no expense on anything. They then insisted on charging much more than Kwame wanted for his tasting menu to try to make some of it back, but they were relying on pre-selling tickets and when Tom Sietsema of WaPo gave a not-great review after they'd barely opened those dried up. The two investors weren't even speaking to each other and in the hole, and they pulled the plug. Kwame admits he and his partner were naive not to have done some due diligence regarding the investors before embarking on the project, instead of assuming they were good for all that expense ((they were only in their mid twenties)..

[dleighg]

Edward Lee shows up in a cooking competition show in S. Korea, called Culinary Class Wars (on Netflix). It's set up rather differently than your typical competition show (Lee is one of the "white spoons" who are established, famous, chefs, going up against the "black spoons.") Won't go into more details, but it's entertaining if you can handle not being able to scroll your phone while watching it, unless of course you speak Korean. And no, Lee doesn't speak more than a few words of Korean, so they subtitle him in the original :).

[meep.meep]

Several Top Chef alums were on Food Network's Last Bite Restaurant that had its finale last night:  Byron Gomez, Brittany Anderson, and Nini Nguyen.  The gimmick was that each chef could bring a set number of ingredients and there weren't any others available.  They were down to fractions of a clove of garlic at the end.  Great to see Brittany especially, since she left early in her Top Chef season.

[ALittleShelfish]

I really enjoyed Last Bite Hotel!  I liked that the camp and the gimmicks were limited to the host (who was perfectly cast in that role) and they let the chefs cook what they know.  Nini and Byron were really fun to watch play the game.  

[Rai]

I also enjoyed Last Bite Hotel! It had actual fun twists and gimmicks, and the Will and Testament part was particularly clever. Everyone played it up pretty well, very little drama, and the conflict that did occur was pretty organic to the stressful conditions.

Brittany really proved herself in this format after struggling in Top Chef, and that was great to see, but I admit I was enough of a jerk to laugh when one guy was like, "I've seen Brittany on Top Chef, so I know she's competitive!" Bro, you saw her when she left on episode three of her season after being in the bottom two in the previous episode? Aw, I kid, Brittany. You did great.

[Trey]

I'm glad to see a few comments about Last Bite Hotel.  I really enjoyed it.

[dleighg]

it's a fun show! I just started it! And it has enough differences from the standard cooking competition to make it interesting.

[dleighg]

and following on, since I'm near the end now; I really enjoy the "reuse/save/repurpose" mentality that the show setup requires. It's how I personally cook, so it's fun to see how creative they are.