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Top Chef in the Media

Bella

By Bella
in Top Chef

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leela46

leela46

I just saw an ad for Season 13.  So Grayson is back?  Anyone got the scoop on that?

I noticed that too. Is that the first time other than all-stars that someone has come back to compete again?

 

It looks like a good group of chef. Looking forward to the new season.

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susannot
susannot

Re Mike Isabella: anyone who invested in his restaurant empire should have watched Top Chef.  It is 100% obvious that he is a gross sexist pig and probable sexual harasser.  I can't count the number o

akr
akr

Re podcasts vs synopses:  I'm always going to prefer a 3-minute read to a 45-minute listen, but I've pretty much given up on anybody putting such things in writing anymore.  Podcasts are easier for th

Rambler
Rambler

There was a reddit thread the other day titled “People that have been on a cooking show, what does the viewer not see? Are the time limits legit? Does the food go straight to the judges? Any behind th

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AriAu

AriAu

Was that little 12 minute snippit that showed up on my dvr going to be repeated as part of episode 1 or is will we pick up where that left off? If not repeated can we talk about what we saw? and yes, I do still love Grayson's personality/on-camera appeal!

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Wings

Wings

Was that little 12 minute snippit that showed up on my dvr going to be repeated as part of episode 1 or is will we pick up where that left off? If not repeated can we talk about what we saw? and yes, I do still love Grayson's personality/on-camera appeal!

 

 

That didn't show up for me.  Odd because the show is on my list. 

 

I watched the preview and met the chefs in their own videos on the site.  This is going to be a good season!  There are a lot with impressive credentials.   Sassy chef, Rene, is the only one I see as an identified problem already.  The gay Philipino chef who can cook everything except vegetables is going to run into a wall early on if she was serious!  

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LizDC

LizDC

Top Chef Alum Harold Dieterle to Shutter NYC Restaurants

 

Top Chef Season 1 winner Harold Dieterle just announced that he will shutter his remaining two New York City eateries, Kin Shop and Perilla, by year's end. According to Eater, Kin Shop will close its doors by Thanksgiving, while Perilla is expected to close by early December. "The cost of doing business in New York is going up and up and up, and our sales haven't continued to go up to keep that in line. It's been very frustrating," he said about the decision....

 

 

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cooksdelight

cooksdelight

Here's an interesting concept Manbun Phillip is opening a restaurant in Encino, CA.... with no servers. 6 cooks who will take orders and deliver the meals to tables. It's going to take an incredible amount of coordination to pull this off. He has closed his Beverly Hills restaurant, this one will replace it.

http://snip.ly/NXlT?utm_content=bufferd0ded&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer#http://bit.ly/1lk2pUQ

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Julia

Julia

(edited)

I don't have a problem with that on principle. I just think that a) I'd really hate to be at the table whose food is being fired when the cook has to take an order or cosset a difficult table, b) Gadarene Swine is open 10-12 hours a day, so he must have a small army of waitstaff if they work four hour shifts, and c) if his waitstaff are working 4 hours a day, his back of house is working 16 (at "more than the minimum wage"), and the waitstaff is getting the lion's share of the service charge, he's not a very good manager.

Edited by Julia
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RCharter

RCharter

Here's an interesting concept Manbun Phillip is opening a restaurant in Encino, CA.... with no servers. 6 cooks who will take orders and deliver the meals to tables. It's going to take an incredible amount of coordination to pull this off. He has closed his Beverly Hills restaurant, this one will replace it.

http://snip.ly/NXlT?utm_content=bufferd0ded&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer#http://bit.ly/1lk2pUQ

It sounds a little gimmicky to me.  There are some wonderful, wonderful chefs that I wouldn't want to be servers or have anything to do front of house.  Mei, for example, seems like an awesome chef, but I think she would be an awful front of house person.  So then do you find people that may not be AS great as cook, but can be a good cook and have reasonable personality skills?

 

And I also have to say that I hate that people are doing away with tipping, but instead are implementing a "service charge."  The point of the tip, for me, was to either show my appreciation or lack of appreciation based on the service/food I received.  If the food or service was awful, I knew I still had to pay the base bill because I still got food and so I had to pay for it......but in theory I didn't have to pay a tip because the job wasn't well done.  Now, I'll just have to pay whatever "service charge" there is no matter how crappy the service is.  If you need to raise the price of menu items so you can pay a living wage....do that.  But don't make me pay a "service charge" for service that may have been crappy.  

 

I know I'll ALWAYS leave a tip, generally, no matter how awful the service is.  But I like being able to determine if I'll leave a small tip, or if I'll reward good service/food with a large tip.  Now, beyond personal satisfaction, why should a server really push themselves to do a great job?  They are already going to get 60% of a predetermined service fee no matter what.

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cooksdelight

cooksdelight

What struck me was the thought of having a cook come out with grease splatters, food stains from whatever they have just cooked...serving me my food. This article first appeared on Facebook, and reading some of the comments from other chefs, they say it can work if you have the right team.

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Julia

Julia

^^it could work, but I just don't see how you would get the best of both worlds.  I could see you getting maybe the "good" of both worlds.  Although, maybe if Eric Ripert was serving me I would be all in.

 

I think that was the disconnect of Kristen Kish. Because (as I understand it) her job was to produce tasting menus for individual diners, so she really had no idea how to run a brigade (although in fairness, her biggest issue was not being able to fire Josie, who never would have been hired by a fine dining restaurant). I suspect, though, there were more people supporting her than she may have recognized.

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ProudMary

ProudMary

Season 13 contestant Isaac Toups is doing a post-episode commentary for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  Here's the link for his most recent installment for Episode 5.  Good stuff!
http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2016/01/top_chef_competitor_isaac_toup_1.html

I like his description of Judges' Table:
 

 

 

How long do you spend at the judges table?

Normally, the entirety of the judges table is two to three hours of standing there. They go through everybody's dish. They'll punch a hole in some of the best dishes and they'll praise some of the worst. What you do learn is what the judges like in particular and how they're judging the competition.

 

Additionally, here's a link to the Times-Picayune's Top Chef topic page which has links for their episode recaps, as well as Isaac's individual ones:

http://topics.nola.com/tag/top%20chef/

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Maysie

Maysie

(edited)

More Isaac media: the local NPR station (WWNO) has a food show once a week for an hour and Poppy Tooker had a little conversation with Isaac. It was an interesting chat and I think I like Isaac more than I expected I would. He's quite frank (said leaving the wife and the babies behind was hard but he knew it going in and decided he needed to focus on the job at hand. He said his greatest intimidation was Emeril as a judge and that he had no idea who a number of the guest judges were (and I guess he got a bit of business over it, to which he said, "what do you want? I've been cooking in South Louisiana for the last 19 years . . ."). He said he got pretty drunk watching the first episode because it's awful watching himself on television. As he put it, when you hear your recorded voice, your first instinct is to say "that doesn't sound like me!" Television, according to him, is 100 times worse.

 

ETA: I did not include the station link because in the course of the interview, there was some discussion of timing, which I considered to be mildly spoilerish.

Edited by Maysie
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JenMcSnark

JenMcSnark

Interesting review of Phillip Frankland Lee's Scratch Bar from LA Weekly.  

 

http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/restaurant-review-the-revamped-scratch-bar-is-a-head-scratcher-6684407

 

And an even more interesting article about Phillip's reaction to the critique. He did not appreciate being diagnosed with special snowflake syndrome. 

 

http://la.eater.com/2016/3/9/11184314/phillip-frankland-lee-la-weekly-review-besha-rodell

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RCharter

RCharter

Interesting review of Phillip Frankland Lee's Scratch Bar from LA Weekly.  

 

http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/restaurant-review-the-revamped-scratch-bar-is-a-head-scratcher-6684407

 

And an even more interesting article about Phillip's reaction to the critique. He did not appreciate being diagnosed with special snowflake syndrome. 

 

http://la.eater.com/2016/3/9/11184314/phillip-frankland-lee-la-weekly-review-besha-rodell

LMAO....oh ManBun....never change!  That has to be one of the longest facebook posts ever.  He just can't help himself.  I gotta get to his restaurant before it closes.

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Christina

Christina

I liked how at the very end, he tries to "out" (for lack of a better word) the reviewer for having been there earlier in the week with another man. 

 

 

FOR THE RECORD, I DID NOT KNOW THAT WAS YOU UNTIL AFTER YOU BOTH HAD LEFT *spoiler alert* The credit card you used matched the credit card used to split a check with a certain individual exactly 1 week prior, I reconcile our nightly paperwork so I remembered the name and recognized his, cross referenced it and BOOM. But don't worry though, your secret is safe with me. 

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NewDigs

NewDigs

Again does he not understand that critics often visit the restaurant more than once?

I don't think they "often" visit more than once. I think they always visit more than once.

I also loved that he expected the critic to report his snowflake-speshilness of opening 2 (TWO) restaurants by the time he turned 26. If the food sucks, who cares?

I mean, puffed smelt with bone marrow mustard? Brioche w/ bone marrow? And a brioche that he seems to have shaved the crusty brown goodness from?

Trying too hard, comes to mind.

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Julia

Julia

The funny thing is that his story has changed a few times, and he was so very successful famewhoring that there is a journalistic record of every new story. So, first he said he graduated culinary school, and he's gone back and forth on whether he was a managing chef or a stage at his various past restaurants, and his folks gave him the money right up until they didn't. He's been bragging for years about leaving the line behind so he can be more valuable as the floor manager who doesn't floor manage, right until he got in a cooking competition. I think the reporter was fairly forbearing.

 

I'm also a little confused about what his complaint is - was he not mentioned enough or mentioned too much? And disgusted by his implicit threat. I really hope Mrs. Phillip is just a woman with unusual tastes, because there are things money doesn't cover.

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RCharter

RCharter

^^I think the implicit threat bothers me the most as well.  His attempts to humblebrag are unintentionally hilarious and fit in with who he is, but until I just read your post I thought I might have just imagined that implied threat.  

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Julia

Julia

(edited)

Well, I'm blissfully ignorant of the politics of the Los Angeles restaurant world, but implying publicly that you have information that someone would rather you not have and promising not to tell after they pissed you off is at least a shabby attempt to suggest that there's something wrong and more likely, JMO, a threat.

Edited by Julia
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mlp

mlp

I have to say that I didn't read his "threat" as one at all.  I thought he was saying that she had used a "secret identity" the first time she was in his restaurant (something critics have been known to do) and that he figured out her alias after her second visit but he wouldn't tell.

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Special K

Special K

I happened to find a Top Chef Mexico marathon on NBC Universo this weekend, and watched a few episodes -- to practice my Spanish, y'all.  What fun!  Katsuji is a contestant and seems so much more relaxed than he did on Top Chef.

 

Oh, the self-seriousness of it all -- perhaps it seemed more pronounced when seen in another language. Hearing the translation of some of the tag lines was fun.  For "pack your knives and go" it was "recoge sus cuchillos y abandona las cocinas..."

Lots of huitlacoche, some escamoles (the downfall of Doug), and what seemed like an inordinate representation of "flores de calabaza" -- squash blossoms.

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pennben

pennben

(edited)

Yes, you are right! I completely forgot about that. Ha!  I keep landing back on season 2 chefs recently here on the boards!  I feel like I've summoned them up after thinking about them.  Be gone, Season 2, be gone....

Edited by pennben
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Julia

Julia

(edited)

Me too. I think he's a real dick. I find it all plausible.

I don't know Michael Chiarello, and I have nothing to say about what he may or may not have done, but he reminds me uncannily of my italian mom's boy relatives and how they deal with the world. I'm not saying that makes it any better, but he's not an outlier, he's a type. Edited by Julia
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NewDigs

NewDigs

(edited)

Not sure where to put this but I just saw Michael Voltaggio(?) in a Carl's Junior commercial. It seems below his level of cooking.

I forgot about that ad!

It was a Super Bowl ad.

And Latimes feels it necessary to mention he has his clothes on.

I like the Volts.

et fix formatting and to change colts to volts.

Edited by NewDigs
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