S15.E07: Olympic Dreams

[biakbiak]

22 minutes ago, cooksdelight said:

Personally.... I doubt she spends too much time with her kids, what with a restaurant to run and personal appearances all the time. I think it’s guilt trip.

Brooke has one kid a boy and she IGs their breakfasts a lot (he is currently into toads in the hole) and he travels with her a lot when ahe goes to different events and is often in the background of her IGs at the restaurants. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by biakbiak

[cooksdelight]

Then who is the daughter she’s talking about?

[biakbiak]

20 minutes ago, cooksdelight said:

Then who is the daughter she’s talking about?

The poster you quoted misquoted her, she said her son not daughter. She told the same story about the crepes when she made them in Savannah. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by biakbiak

[Lovecat]

13 hours ago, sweetandsour said:

I wondered if that temperature question came out of nowhere for the chefs.

 

Crap, iPad won’t let me edit. All of the chefs seemed to raise an eyebrow at the question before answering, so I do think it was unexpected. My impression was that they were to cook the protein to some standard “perfect” temperature, with the implication that temp would be specified by the judges. If that were the case, Tanya would have scored much higher, because her failure wasn’t in cookery, but knowledge.  OTOH, even I know that 145 is too high for lamb—and I don’t even eat it!

[Bunnyette]

This what annoys me, they all seemed to like Tanya's dish more than Claudette.  Because Tanya would not fall for their baiting and play to their "angry old woman" stereotype...she got eliminated.  Claudette had a worse dish, acted like a brat but stayed as did the cowardly Chris- still don't buy the "afraid of the cat fighting" excuse for him not stepping in to help Claudette.  However, older chefs are often poorly treated on this show.

[Jesse]

4 minutes ago, Bunnyette said:

This what annoys me, they all seemed to like Tanya's dish more than Claudette.  Because Tanya would not fall for their baiting and play to their "angry old woman" stereotype...she got eliminated.  Claudette had a worse dish, acted like a brat but stayed as did the cowardly Chris- still don't buy the "afraid of the cat fighting" excuse for him not stepping in to help Claudette.  However, older chefs are often poorly treated on this show.

Two things about this: Tanya's challenge was precision, not tastiness, and she was not precise. Claudette's challenge was just speed, and she got the dish done.

And outside of the show, "old" is not the stereotype Tanya is battling -- it's the Angry Black Woman, and she has to fight it all the time, where ever she goes. Outside of her own kitchen, possibly. I just think you do her a disservice to leave that out. 

[Bunnyette]

1 hour ago, Jesse said:

Two things about this: Tanya's challenge was precision, not tastiness, and she was not precise. Claudette's challenge was just speed, and she got the dish done.

And outside of the show, "old" is not the stereotype Tanya is battling -- it's the Angry Black Woman, and she has to fight it all the time, where ever she goes. Outside of her own kitchen, possibly. I just think you do her a disservice to leave that out. 

Yes I left it out, good point, I just felt ageism was at play here too.  JMO...tastiness should always win.  

[backgroundnoise]

Quote

How can every stylistic choice she [Claudette] makes--from the color of her hair, to the shade of her lipstick and pattern of her eyeglass frames be so damn wrong??  

I fully agree about the lipstick, but I COVET those eyeglasses.

Quote

Tanya was just over it all and ready to go home rather than descend into a verbal sparring match

To me, Tanya seemed over it from the very first episode.  Actually, I thought she acted more above it all than over it, and very passive aggressive.  I didn't care which one of them went and was glad it was going to be down to those two.

[biakbiak]

Tanya lost me when she said no one uses these knife cuts anymore, even home cooks regularly do a chiffonade, brunoise is just another word for a fine dice and while a batonnet might not be used that much it isn't a difficult cut. 

[CatWarmer]

Have they usually let chefs pick their own teams at this stage?  I don’t mean like the gym class way of setting up Restaurant Wars, but non-random teams clearly give the edge to chefs who already feel comfortable with each other. Otherwise you end up, like in this case, with a team who haven’t bonded. That is ripe for difficulty.

 

Claudette’s restaurant will be close to where we live- she gets consistent praise for her flavors so I’m looking forward to trying it out. I already like Richard Blaise’s restaurants and he very kindly took a picture with me on my birthday once at Juniper and Ivy - he seemed perfectly nice in person.  

 

(I chiffonade basil all the time for caprese salad.)

Edited January 20, 2018 by CatWarmer

[chiaros]

21 hours ago, CatWarmer said:

(I chiffonade basil all the time for caprese salad.)

I NEVER chiffonade basil for Insalata Caprese. I always use whole leaves. With whole slices of ripe tomatoes and whole slices of mozzarella.

Like this...

ETA: Done with Cherokee Purple tomatoes, fresh large whole mozzarella, Alziari olive oil, Genovese basil, ground black pepper, Maldon salt. I don't remember which vinegar I used, but it would have been either a 10-year Modena balsamic or Delizia Estense AgroDolce Bianco.

Or this...

ETA: ETA: Done with Chocolate Amazon tomatoes. The rest of the components would have been as above.

Edited January 21, 2018 by chiaros

[MaggieG]

I had to laugh at Joe narrating the quickfire: "We're all in our pajamas and I'm wearing bear slippers." That was pretty funny to watch. 

I do like that everyone seems to get along and the baby shower was cute. They all seem to have Claudette's number though, so RW next week should be interesting

[dleighg]

29 minutes ago, MaggieG said:

They all seem to have Claudette's number though, so RW next week should be interesting

yes, while the "argument" was going on at judges table between Claudette and Tonya they showed one of the other teams (Mustache Joe I think?) saying "that's exactly what she did with Adrienne" or something to that effect. So they've started that narrative with the editing.

Edited January 20, 2018 by dleighg

[LeighLeigh]

Didn't see the baby shower up here in Canada. Our episodes are one hour, not 1h15m. What did I miss?

[dleighg]

17 minutes ago, LeighLeigh said:

What did I miss?

not too much. They decorated with balloons and signs, and had a diaper contest where the guys had to put little diapers on dolls. Then they drank (juice?) out of baby bottles. Looked like a party city run.

Edited January 20, 2018 by dleighg

[annewithaneee]

I wish they'd cut a lot of that from the US version, too. I don't like the extra-long episodes anyway -- I'm so tired by the time Thursday night rolls around! But the longer and more they focused on Bruce and his new baby, the more space it gave my grouchy side to be annoyed about it. It's a family decision, and none of my damn business, but the more time they spend on reminding us that Bruce is sacrificing being there for his child's birth in what seems to be a winner's (or an attempt at a fan favorite) edit, the more I question why he participated this season. It makes me like him less and less, even if that's completely harsh of me.

5 hours ago, Bunnyette said:

6 hours ago, Jesse said:

Two things about this: Tanya's challenge was precision, not tastiness, and she was not precise. Claudette's challenge was just speed, and she got the dish done.

And outside of the show, "old" is not the stereotype Tanya is battling -- it's the Angry Black Woman, and she has to fight it all the time, where ever she goes. Outside of her own kitchen, possibly. I just think you do her a disservice to leave that out. 

Yes I left it out, good point, I just felt ageism was at play here too.  JMO...tastiness should always win.  

You both hit on what I feel re: Tanya. She was the target of an age snipe in episode one, where I decided that between that and his facial hair choices I loathe Mustache Joe, and I got the distinct impression she was very intentionally reigning in her anger in the stew room and in judging to avoid the angry black woman label.

And it annoyed me too that it seemed like the challenge gimmick bore out until the end. It should've been that scoring and penalties and all that bullshit would land you in the bottom, and then it would be who made the tastier dish out of those two. The whole challenge setup was dumb, and an excuse to promote the winter games on NBC, and it always grinds my gears when my faves go home during these sorts of challenges. Tanya I think had shown us by now that she wasn't going to make it into late in the season anyway, since she was really only fantastic at her food, and her food was pretty limiting in the end, so I can only be so grouchy about it -- but it seemed like they actually preferred her dish to Claudette's, it just wasn't precise enough. Yeah, okay. Ugh.

[violet and green]

On 1/20/2018 at 5:26 AM, Eulipian 5k said:

I think the producers encourage the chefs to mention their personal struggles in their confessionals. Tonya's related to her struggles as a chef in the food/financing/restaurant industries. I'm sure they encouraged Le-Ann to "talk about how being preggers and camping/cooking on top of Mt Everest affects you.." or Chris's alcoholism, (note he didn't really have a problem joking about toasting Bruce's baby with champagne). (Wings, Elle: "Its all sauce for the goose")

Chris's drink when he was an alcoholic drinker was beer, and he was surrounded by beers and the smell of beer and in a pub, for that challenge, so it stirred up visceral and confronting memories for him. Drinking whatever out of baby bottles was less confronting, I would gather.

16 hours ago, pivot said:

I actually thought that Tanya was being an asshole. She had a chip on her shoulder from the beginning because she wanted the quick challenge but didn't say anything to the team. Then after they all agreed to help Claudette in the first round, she turns around and give massive attitude when asked to help. Claudette immediately offers to help her teammates after her round and gets attitude from Tanya. Claudette continues to try to help Tanya anyway including doing a lot of the plating for Tanya. Then, Claudette helps Chris with his dish as well. Tanya wasn't a team player and then was a total ass to just about everyone in the stew room. WTF with telling Carrie to get woke? Carrie didn't do anything wrong and the issue certainly wasn't about race. It was about Tanya being a jackass for no reason. 

And for all her talk about being a mentor to women chefs and WOC chefs, she has been shitty to Claudette - a Latina chef and Carrie in this episode alone. And the other women didn't seem too sad to see Tanya leave either. She just seems to have a sour attitude.

Considering her goodbyes, she seemed to have a lot of problems with people in house. I get that people here don't like Claudette for a variety of reasons, but Claudette was the biggest team player on that team and had Tanya said she didn't want precision ahead of time, a lot of the issues could have been avoided.

Exactly. I was all, "See ya sourface!" when she left.

Apart from her rank attitude, and endless sulkfest and angry talking heads in that ep - she had no idea re cooking temperatures, poor knife skills, and a lack of understanding of the mode of execution of the cuts, or even pronunciation of the basic cheffy terminolgy ( I could give them all of that!).

Claudette may be an aggressive self-marketer in those judges panels, but she works like a demon in the actual challenges. 

[catrice2]

Well, the one thing I hate is when people make excuses that don't make sense......"Well at my restaurant I only cook breakfast and lunch."  What?   You are a highly trained and according to you and others well regarded chef...regardless of what you serve at your restaurant at some point you have been taught the skill.  If you are competing for the title of Top Chef, surely you did not think that meant top breakfast and lunch only chef?  

[Kaiju Ballet]

Well, I finally get it about Claudette. And if the audio was able to pick up what one of the Bears (Joe?) said to Adriana, chances are that was relayed to the judges as well. That almost guarantees her going far. The team was sunk because Tonya was silent-- not only about wanting to do "speed", but with her not fessing up to her less-than-precise knife skills. Not to mention that she's a "by-feel" chef, the very opposite of precise. She seems very self-aware, so being designated the "precision challenge" person should have had her sounding the alarms. And not just under her breath.

I'm not sure that the team's lukewarm/cool sendoff to her was about her demeanor over the weeks ( I still want to believe in her! Or at least in her edit until this episode!) To me, it seemed it had to do with the tension in the stew room and the judges table. The heavy handed Editing wasn't just for erasing all traces of Besh!

So were all chefs guaranteed a burner for the quickfire? Otherwise it would be extremely unfair and unsafe. It was interesting that the unlikely combination of flavors that helped secure the win for Carrie in the quickfire led to her serving up something that people hated in the elimination challenge. I'm kinda reserving judgment on her being told to "get woke!" without sufficient context, but the way it's shown is not a good look for either of them.

I loved the cheftestants staying up to await good news--the sight of Fatima curling up in a couch, the surprise baby shower--it's a welcome camaraderie that's a huge contrast to Claudette's behavior at the challenge, and why it might have been difficult for Tonya to be direct. Once Tonya didn't speak up, there was almost no way for her to handle Claudette's behavior without it being detrimental to the team performance as a whole. Chris was wise to recognize this, and steer clear. 

[Totale]

7 hours ago, CatWarmer said:

Have they usually let chefs pick their own teams at this stage?  I don’t mean like the gym class way of setting up Restaurant Wars, but non-random teams clearly give the edge to chefs who already feel comfortable with each other. Otherwise you end up, like in this case, with a team who haven’t bonded. That is ripe for difficulty.

We were naming along as they revealed the teams:

Team one "da bears"

Team two "the women"

Team three "the losers"

[seltzer3]

These past two episodes have been really weird.  Its interesting that the past two eliminees (Tanya and Brother) got eliminated for not fulfilling challenge requirements.  Usually the judges would care more about the food than the challenge requirements.  For example Antonia and Lisa completely disregarded polish sausage (it was a required part of a dish), but they got saved, because their food was better than Stephanie and Jennifer (even though they embraced the requirements of the challenge).

The challenge this episode was confusing with the precision round.  Why does that round have two separate scoring rubrics (the whole -1 point per 3 degrees), while the other two rounds were just simply just the score.  Its weird, because Tanya's scores were actually pretty good (since the most she could get was a 4.)  But her temperature accuracy essentially doomed the entire team?

Claudette really should have edit her dish.  It really doesn't make sense that she is asking everyone to help her add all these additional ingredients, if her round is speed.  I mean she did screw up the last couple of quickfires, by not making it things on the plate.  Not sure why she thought she was the speed person.  

 

Quote

Have they usually let chefs pick their own teams at this stage?  I don’t mean like the gym class way of setting up Restaurant Wars, but non-random teams clearly give the edge to chefs who already feel comfortable with each other. Otherwise you end up, like in this case, with a team who haven’t bonded. That is ripe for difficulty.

Yeah the three guys, immediately made themselves a team.  So it forced the other 6 to fend for themselves.  I remember Adrienne has, this look like "Oh crap, I need to make a team that doesn't include Claudette", and immediately looked at Fatima and Carrie.

Edited January 21, 2018 by seltzer3

[Yeah No]

I don't find the bears offensive.  Like others upthread I think they're at least keeping a positive and congenial attitude even if it is a little immature.  They're their own pep squad.  I get it.   I don't think it's meant to be exclusive or make anyone feel left out, which for me makes all the difference.  I love it that the women called themselves "the foxes", though!  I think Tonya might have taken the bears as some kind of club meant to exclude her, but I don't think that was the case.  I also think she tended to single herself out from the rest of them anyway and  I didn't get the feeling she was too endeared by any of them as a result.  While I can relate to her being older and over the BS (and we don't know the half of it) she could have reacted with a ton more class.  Claudette is toxic but I don't think Tonya is far behind.  I think Tonya's passive aggressiveness and the chip on her shoulder were there all along but reached new heights when she felt outclassed by the competition, especially in this episode.  Having to have the world see her inadequacies next to other chefs brought out for all the world to see had to be difficult so it was no wonder to me that she would act like it was so unfair or whatever.  Her "get woke" comment seemed to me to be coming from paranoia.  Not everything comes down to social injustice with you at the losing end.  Some things are due to your own inadequacy, not society's inability to accept or appreciate you.  I'm not much of a cook but even I know that lamb should be around 125-135 tops.  She seemed to be insisting that being different isn't necessarily being worse, and it's not, but she had to know that she was going to be judged by similar standards as everyone else.  Unless she thought that the standards should be changed just for her.  Her inadequacies were no reflection on her value as a person but she took it that way and then acted like it was coming from some kind of group devaluation of her, which it was not.

[nitrofishblue]

I was so totally unimpressed with this elimination challenge. They have had some rather lame ones in the past but this was one of the worst. The cooking part was OK but the juding part sucked big time. 

[Norma Desmond]

17 hours ago, annewithaneee said:

the more time they spend on reminding us that Bruce is sacrificing being there for his child's birth in what seems to be a winner's (or an attempt at a fan favorite) edit, the more I question why he participated this season. It makes me like him less and less, even if that's completely harsh of m

He's totally getting the winner's edit. Blech.

[stacyasp]

16 hours ago, violet and green said:

Chris's drink when he was an alcoholic drinker was beer, and he was surrounded by beers and the smell of beer and in a pub, for that challenge, so it stirred up visceral and confronting memories for him. Drinking whatever out of baby bottles was less confronting, I would gather.

Exactly. I was all, "See ya sourface!" when she left.

Apart from her rank attitude, and endless sulkfest and angry talking heads in that ep - she had no idea re cooking temperatures, poor knife skills, and a lack of understanding of the mode of execution of the cuts, or even pronunciation of the basic cheffy terminolgy ( I could give them all of that!).

Claudette may be an aggressive self-marketer in those judges panels, but she works like a demon in the actual challenges. 

I don’t know how Tanya got through culinary school without knowing those knife cuts! Especially culinary school,in France. Also she owns a restaurant so she must have a serv safe certification and you must know cooking temperatures to pass their test even if you don’t serve that particular protein in your restaurant.

[snarktini]

On 1/18/2018 at 9:13 PM, catrice2 said:

Didn't Chris offer to help Claudette and she declined?   It just seems odd to me that her discussion about lack of help did not include him.  If you need help, it shouldn't matter which one of your team mates it came from and if he offered to help and she felt Tanya was not willing, just take his offer?  Something else must have happened that we did not see, but Chris wisely stayed out of it.  

 

On 1/19/2018 at 9:25 AM, Ellee said:

Where was Chris when all of this was going on?  Did he assist either woman?

Maybe Chris was smart to stay out. Maybe he was legit busy with his short ribs. Maybe the production monkeys simply didn't show footage of him.

But except for the one time he cruised by and offered Claudette help (which she declined), where *was* Chris the whole time? Tanya and Claudette were working on their dishes side by side (unhappily sniping but at least within range of each other if needed) and Chris was...somewhere else? If I were a judge, I wouldn't have accepted his "didn't know anything about it" answer. If you didn't know what was happening with your team, then you were part of the team problem. 

And if Claudette needed help, she should have taken it from Chris. Why was Tanya the only one she expected to help? 

[CatWarmer]

In terms of Bruce being on the show while his baby was being born, they’re adopting from the birth mom.  So his wife was by the mother’s side. It felt a bit surreal for him to be getting all these congratulations and celebration.  He did leave his wife to deal with everything - but would he have gone on the show if she had been the one having the baby?  Probably not but who knows!

 

I don’t have the hate for Claudette; I think a lot of it is the edit. There are plenty of friendly interactions in background shots in various episodes.  I’m thinking the show is setting us up to believe she’s the troublemaker in Restaurant Wars but it will be someone else entirely.

[cooksdelight]

14 hours ago, seltzer3 said:

Its interesting that the past two eliminees (Tanya and Brother) got eliminated for not fulfilling challenge requirements

If that had been important criteria last season, Brooke would have never made it to the finals.

[BabyVegas]

On ‎1‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 11:01 PM, dewelar said:

Whether or not snapping was justified has no bearing on whether or not the comment constituted "getting personal". On that note, what do you think Tanya was saying Carrie should "get woke" to?

I don't want to delve too deeply into this because, not having been there and only having seen an edited version, I can't speak to what might have honestly happened. But I don't necessarily consider it personal because I think Tonya would have snapped at anyone who got in front of her at that moment. "Getting personal" to me would have been taking digs at something about Carrie's person, not just snapping at her. 

I can't account for the "get woke" comment, whether that was Tonya insinuating some kind of race element or whether that was just Tonya snapping back with a common phrase that pretty much means "open your eyes." Parsing it any further without real knowledge of what happened outside of the edited version seems irresponsible to me. 

I will say that I find Carrie's insistence that Tonya listen to or otherwise make Claudette feel better when Claudette had just finished throwing Tonya under the bus, at absolute best, a total dick move. Carrie should have stayed the Hell out of that one. 

[dewelar]

20 minutes ago, BabyVegas said:

I can't account for the "get woke" comment, whether that was Tonya insinuating some kind of race element or whether that was just Tonya snapping back with a common phrase that pretty much means "open your eyes." Parsing it any further without real knowledge of what happened outside of the edited version seems irresponsible to me. 

This is interesting to me, as I have only heard it in the context of being aware of racial/social injustice. How common is the broader meaning?

22 minutes ago, BabyVegas said:

I will say that I find Carrie's insistence that Tonya listen to or otherwise make Claudette feel better when Claudette had just finished throwing Tonya under the bus, at absolute best, a total dick move. Carrie should have stayed the Hell out of that one.

I read that as an awkward attempt to defuse an escalating situation. Carrie may be one of those people whose first instinct in such situations is to play peacemaker, but obviously Tanya wasn't having it. That would tie into Tanya using "get woke" in the broader fashion, and I think it took Carrie by surprise, which would explain her dumsquizzled facial expression in response. Either that, or she'd never heard the phrase before at all (which, TBH, I hadn't either until relatively recently). Carrie does not strike me as the malicious type like Claudette does.

[raven]

2 hours ago, snarktini said:

Maybe Chris was smart to stay out. Maybe he was legit busy with his short ribs. Maybe the production monkeys simply didn't show footage of him.

There is a shot of Chris asking Claudette if she needed help; she said something to him like "no, just go cook".

[BabyVegas]

1 hour ago, dewelar said:

This is interesting to me, as I have only heard it in the context of being aware of racial/social injustice. How common is the broader meaning?

Sorry - I've always understood "get woke" to be a phrase within the context of racial/social injustice as a shorthand way of saying "see all of this injustice around you, stop closing your eyes and sleeping through it." If I had to take a blind guess as to why Tonya picked that particular phrase, I would wonder if Carrie had maybe said something about racial/social justice earlier in the competition (not necessarily filmed) and Tonya was referencing that? That would make it personal, but it would also explain why Tonya said "get woke" and why she said it the way she did. 

[ratgirlagogo]

3 hours ago, dewelar said:

4 hours ago, BabyVegas said:

I will say that I find Carrie's insistence that Tonya listen to or otherwise make Claudette feel better when Claudette had just finished throwing Tonya under the bus, at absolute best, a total dick move. Carrie should have stayed the Hell out of that one.

I read that as an awkward attempt to defuse an escalating situation. Carrie may be one of those people whose first instinct in such situations is to play peacemaker, but obviously Tanya wasn't having it. That would tie into Tanya using "get woke" in the broader fashion, and I think it took Carrie by surprise, which would explain her dumsquizzled facial expression in response. Either that, or she'd never heard the phrase before at all (which, TBH, I hadn't either until relatively recently). Carrie does not strike me as the malicious type like Claudette does.

I rewound the DVR several times trying to figure out what Carrie had actually said that elicited Tanya's comment, so thank you.  I don't think Carrie made a dick move (at least not from what was shown) and agree that she probably does try to play peacemaker, but when you have a legitimate reason to be angry with someone and some third person keeps chiming in with the whole Birds In Their Little Nests Agree approach it's fucking annoying.  So I get that Tanya snapped at Carrie but also get that Carrie was annoyed at being told  not just that "different people experience the world differently, we're not all the same, wake up,"  - but the much more accusatory "get woke" in that context.   I'm not reading too much into it in any case.   I do wonder why Chris didn't make more of an effort to play peacemaker with HIS OWN TEAMMATES while the initial squabbles were happening - maybe he did and we weren't shown it.   But in the show all we see is him saying he was "trying to stay out of the catfight."

Edited January 21, 2018 by ratgirlagogo

[zibnchy]

On 1/19/2018 at 0:25 AM, All That Jazz said:

Two alpha females cannot exist for long in the same time and space. Especially two alpha females who have set themselves up to carry a torch for their own ethnicity, gender, and cuisine. Tanya's constant eye rolls revealed her preexisting disdain for Claudette. Claudette had previously expressed regret that the last remaining female she could bond with (Lee Anne) was gone. This was full claws out bitchitude from the get go. No sympathy for either one.

Oh please. Claudette is no alpha female. By any stretch. Except in her head.

I'm feeling Bake Off levels of affection for this group with the obvious exception.

Edited January 22, 2018 by zibnchy

[rho]

5 hours ago, dewelar said:

I read that as an awkward attempt to defuse an escalating situation. Carrie may be one of those people whose first instinct in such situations is to play peacemaker, but obviously Tanya wasn't having it. That would tie into Tanya using "get woke" in the broader fashion, and I think it took Carrie by surprise, which would explain her dumsquizzled facial expression in response. Either that, or she'd never heard the phrase before at all (which, TBH, I hadn't either until relatively recently). Carrie does not strike me as the malicious type like Claudette does.

I'm pretty sure Carrie just got the backlash from Tonya's anger at Claudette. The way it comes across on screen, Carrie was encouraging Tonya to explain what's bothering her and instead of doing so she snaps at Carrie. It was weird.

Despite the snippiness between her and Claudette, Tonya losing is no one's fault but her own. She didn't know her knife cuts and was wildly off with the temp of her protein. By taking one for the team and handling the precision challenge, she sabotaged herself which is unfortunate but also not what the judges are looking for when they hand someone $125K for a restaurant.

But in that moment in think she just wanted to stew in silence and would have snapped at everyone who even looked at her funny.

[Bastet]

Tanya isn't even the one who first reacted negatively to Carrie's tone-deaf at best, stupid at worst (but I believe well-intentioned) interjection; it was one of the bears, I think, and than Tanya agreed and furthered it.

On 1/20/2018 at 2:07 PM, dleighg said:

yes, while the "argument" was going on at judges table between Claudette and Tonya they showed one of the other teams (Mustache Joe I think?) saying "that's exactly what she did with Adrienne" or something to that effect.

I believe it was the other Joe, but whomever it was, it was directly to Adrienne, saying this is the same thing Claudette did when the two of them were on the bottom, standing before the judges.

 

9 hours ago, snarktini said:

But except for the one time he cruised by and offered Claudette help (which she declined), where *was* Chris the whole time? Tanya and Claudette were working on their dishes side by side (unhappily sniping but at least within range of each other if needed) and Chris was...somewhere else? If I were a judge, I wouldn't have accepted his "didn't know anything about it" answer. If you didn't know what was happening with your team, then you were part of the team problem. 

That has been the very line of questioning/criticism from the judges in similar situations over the years, so I was immediately curious whether it truly didn't come up, or simply wasn't shown. 

[snowblossom2]

Claudette set the team up for failure by doing a complicated dish that she needed a lot of help with, on a speed challenge. The other teams’ speed dishes were fewer ingredients and much simpler, and thus much more appropriate for a speed challenge

[Yeah No]

9 hours ago, dewelar said:

This is interesting to me, as I have only heard it in the context of being aware of racial/social injustice. How common is the broader meaning?

I read that as an awkward attempt to defuse an escalating situation. Carrie may be one of those people whose first instinct in such situations is to play peacemaker, but obviously Tanya wasn't having it. That would tie into Tanya using "get woke" in the broader fashion, and I think it took Carrie by surprise, which would explain her dumsquizzled facial expression in response. Either that, or she'd never heard the phrase before at all (which, TBH, I hadn't either until relatively recently). Carrie does not strike me as the malicious type like Claudette does.

I think Carrie just happened to step on a land mine with Tonya, who was at that point holding a hammer and looking to use it on anything that remotely resembled a nail.

After re-watching portions of this episode I've decided that Tonya got so pissed off at Claudette that she took it out on everyone whether they deserved it or not.  She escalated everyone's faults in her mind in the way a spouse might escalate their partner's neglect to fill the ice cube tray into a symptom of a much greater problem stemming from misogyny or other abusiveness.  Maybe when she cooled off she realized that there was no grander meaning to read into it.

Re: the "get woke" comment - upon re-watching it was clear to me that Tonya made the comment in the context of scolding Carrie for supposedly not realizing that they're all not "the same" and that all of them react differently to things because of their differences.  That seems clear to me that it was made in the context of social background.

But I've kind of softened a little on Tonya realizing that she's a lot older than most of the contestants and has been the queen of her little restaurant kingdom for a long time, which automatically makes her the "different" one for more reasons than being black and female.  Her outlook on life may be very different due to her age, and understandably so.  I have to wonder if Claudette is that toxic or if it was partially a miscommunication due to very different expectations primarily based on the difference in their ages.  In Claudette's talking heads she seemed genuinely perplexed at Tonya's change in attitude towards her.  That may be unintentional cluelessness more than anything nefarious on Claudette's part, although that wouldn't excuse her for being toxic in other situations, though.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Yeah No

[holly4755]

I am not going to hate or love anyone here, but I do feel that Tonya thought she was being a team player by accepting what the others wanted to give her, but as a team player she should have spoken up about not being sure about her knife cuts She obviously is a different type of chef who feels she is more modern and does not need outdated knife cuts and you need to be honest when you are on a team, that was not what she wanted to do and what she would be good at. 

[Ellee]

Re:  Tanya’s knife cuts. 

It seemed to me that every time Tanya went to do something on her own assignment Claudette asked her for help  on her’s.  The constant interruptions had to affect the quality of Tanya’s work.  It would have mine.  

It has already been proven that I’m not as impartial as I should be.  Am I making excuses or a valid point?

[holly4755]

but, Tonya said in a talking head she didn't do knife cuts, that is not how she cooks in her restaurant, that it is an old fashioned way of doing things and no one uses those cuts anymore. 

[Ellee]

Yes, she did say that. 

Tanya also displayed the fact that she was not going to get involved in a tit for tat fight with Claudette during the judging.  (Still get a bit of giggle with Tanya saying ‘no’ to Gail at judges’ table). 

Personally I would have gotten ticked with Claudette from the onset. ‘Do this ... I need that ... whatever’. I work with two people that believe one should ignore what others have to do because it’s them first and foremost.  Others are only breathing to assist them in what they want and then it’s eff them when it’s time to reciprocate.  Especially if the others’ work suffers because of it. A unique view of t-I-eamwork.  Thus ... my pro-stance for Tanya. 

[Lamb18]

On ‎1‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 5:27 PM, dleighg said:

not too much. They decorated with balloons and signs, and had a diaper contest where the guys had to put little diapers on dolls. Then they drank (juice?) out of baby bottles. Looked like a party city run.

The diapers were actually Kleenexes from those small packets you put in your purse. That party was fun and I'm glad they showed it. Nice to see "teamwork" that's not competitive.

[chiaros]

Regarding that temperature for lamb...145ºF is actually what the US FDA recommends as the safe MINIMUM internal temperature.  :-)  ;-)  }:-)  I wonder if Tanya - who cooks by touch rather than by thermometer - simply reached for what she probably knew of the "Official Figures" and gave Tom that "145ºF" ? 

https://www.fda.gov/downloads/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm572281.pdf

 

Regarding Tanya's snapping at Carrie and stuff - it seems to me she may have been registering (and being irritated by) the way the white dudes were behaving (like Da Bears); it may be that Carrie (a white woman) simply didn't see the issue and/or kept pushing her. Remember also Tanya saying to Da Bears, "You dominate the conversation when you win. You dominate when you lose."  See here and here too. And here for a long thread on the "get woke" stuff plus other shit including at the Judges' Table..

 

It was mentioned upthread that one of the chefs said "It was the same thing (etc)" to one of the other chefs when Claudette was throwing Tanya under the bus at Judges' Table. That would have been Joe Flamm saying that to Adrienne as they stood on the side. (The subtitle on the episode as aired was: "It was the same thing when you were on the bottom.") That and the eye-rolling and raised eyebrows from many of the other suggested they knew what Claudette was doing – again.

(I also note what others have said - Claudette seemed to keep asking (demanding?) help from Tanya again and again while she was making an overly complicated dish - for a SPEED challenge - then seemed to be snippy when Tanya asked for help during her round. Claudette's comments in her "talking heads" seemed to me not to bear much correspondence with what was shown (as edited, of course) on the episode as aired. As for Chris offering help to Claudette and being declined - as someone here remarked on - that was when Claudette was well along in plating, i.e. her dish was already cooked; and well AFTER all the multiple demands she made on Tanya.  Tanya did also comment in a TH that she kept getting pulled from her own prep as also commented on here, and the episode indeed shows Tanya constantly interrupting what she was doing and running around to get stuff for Claudette and doing prep/stuff for Claudette. Yes, her inability to properly execute those cuts mattered; but her being dragged around to help Claudette instead of trying to focus on her cutting must have had an effect – especially as the episode also showed Joe Flamm and Adrienne making THEIR cuts with deliberateness and slowly to maintain shape. Which Tanya did not seem to have been able to even try to do in her running around for Claudette.)

[PamelaMaeSnap]

On January 18, 2018 at 11:58 PM, Cotypubby said:

So apparently this episode had to be re-edited to remove the 8th judge, John Besh. Hence all the split screens. I never would have known if I hadn’t seen a reference online, I only noticed that there was a disclaimer at the end that the points shown weren’t their actual totals but that the outcome was still the same. If you look closely in a couple shots, you can see there is someone sitting next to Padma. 

I actually DID notice the disclaimer but assumed that maybe it was something that was always there and I'd just never seen it before ... thank you for sharing this!

[PamelaMaeSnap]

On January 19, 2018 at 6:07 PM, jackjill89 said:

What bothered me is it was clear they loved Chris' dish during judging, but at judges' table had much more lukewarm praise. I think they wanted to justify Mustache Joe's win. 

Yes ... or, possibly (and I may already be confused) they already knew they wanted the PYKAG to be between Claudette and Tanya and the only way to get that result was to have the team in the bottom, so they downvoted Chris as a result to be safe.

Oh, also ... re: Bruce's baby ... soooo cute and with the name Jude Paul, I wonder if he's a Beatles fan much?

ETA: Ugh ... I CANNOT figure out how to attach this to my previous posts. Please don't hate me, mods!

Edited January 22, 2018 by PamelaMaeSnap

[chiaros]

2 hours ago, chiaros said:

Regarding that temperature for lamb...145ºF is actually what the US FDA recommends as the safe MINIMUM internal temperature.  :-)  ;-)  }:-)  I wonder if Tanya - who cooks by touch rather than by thermometer - simply reached for what she probably knew of the "Official Figures" and gave Tom that "145ºF" ? 

https://www.fda.gov/downloads/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/buystoreservesafefood/ucm572281.pdf

And to add to this point, I would imagine that theoretically if a Govt/FDA Health Inspector walked into your restaurant and measured the temp of your just-cooked lamb chop and it was 125ºF --- you would FAIL the Health Inspection and be CITED for it.  I wonder what Tom C has to say about this.  :-)  }:-)

https://www.google.com/search?q=FDA+required+temp+for+lamb+chops

[Yeah No]

9 hours ago, holly4755 said:

I am not going to hate or love anyone here, but I do feel that Tonya thought she was being a team player by accepting what the others wanted to give her, but as a team player she should have spoken up about not being sure about her knife cuts She obviously is a different type of chef who feels she is more modern and does not need outdated knife cuts and you need to be honest when you are on a team, that was not what she wanted to do and what she would be good at. 

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.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Yeah No

[Eulipian 5k]

I seem to remember there was a Quickfire where Tom wanted to see his stupid eight sided batonet cuts for the mise-en-place.

What it really comes down to is: If you're going to put your adult life on hold for how many ever weeks to earn ~$100k, you need to BINGE, BINGE, BINGE the previous seasons of TC as your mise-en-place. Nothing that's happened this season is all that new.

[Special K]

I took a knife skills class which was absolutely intended for (beginning) recreational cooks, and we definitely learned the cuts mentioned on the show. 

They're also often in the mise en place challenge.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Special K