Top Chef - Las Vegas

new season, yall. started last night. looks like a talented crop overall.
kinda gimmicky throwing in a bunch of vegas chance style influenced challenges but whatevers.

SPOILERS

two ladies in the bottom really really deserved it. "i'm usually so complicated so tonight I'm going to make a really simple dish" and "I'm gonna use seitan because it's different".

oh man. Maybe if she was a proud vegan chef, if she really had a point that she could make kick-ass food w/ seitan I would kinda respect that, but just because?

this season is gonna be awesome!!

i was shocked that they didn't send the blonde girl home. i would've thought that tom would've said something about her palette if she put out something so bland even tho she is supposedly known for BOLD FLAVORS or w/e. but looking back, they did show the seitan woman talking about how she needs to win for her son so i guess that was some foreshadowing there.

i want the haitian guy to win btw

haitian guy is awesome.

I thought the blond would be out too. Her food was bland, her personality was bland. At least the seitan lady had entertainment value.

i'm just glad i don't have to see those plugs anymore, it's bad enough to see all the fat pasty white tattooed folks.

Some promising chefs, but I thought the challenge was pretty lousy. Half the people just incorporated alcohol into their dish and the other half proved that they don't understand the meaning of the word "vice."

haitian guy's vice was like "it was hard on that boat."

fat pasty white tattooed folks.

i like baltimore-girl! her dry chicken aside, i think she'll be pretty good this season.

lolz yeah so many tats! too many people too

wait who got sent home I tuned out before the very end - it wasn't vegan girl? That shit looked disgusting

I really like Jennifer C. (know her from Cafe Kati in SF and then Le Bern in NYC), I really want to see Mike I. (the cocky shit-talker with the over-plucked eyebrows) fall on his face.

I have eaten at Mattin's restaurant and thought it was blah... For comparison, I have also eaten at Hubert Keller's restaurant and also thought it was mediocre. The two other bay area chefs are like caterers for software companies, they should be packing up soon... the cancer survivor lady with immunity and then the boyish Indian gal.

Very excited to see Joel Robuchon as a guest chef on Top Chef, he has one of the best restaurants in the USA imho.

Maybe if she was a proud vegan chef, if she really had a point that she could make kick-ass food w/ seitan I would kinda respect that, but just because?

Plus she seemed to think that all of the criticism of her dish was because it was seitan and the judges were too conservative to handle her vegan dish, when really it was because the dish was poorly prepared and seasoned. Most of the rest of the chefs at least acknowledged their screw up.

isn't there at least one bitchy self-righteous vegan chef per season

(oops left out "tattooed")

i think Mattin will be great for some lol french guys laughs.

yeah, not really sweating her dismissal, less weeks of seeing those horrible "SCARRED" tats (i counted 2 in different fonts) and those horrible, horrible plugs that came out of like makeoutclub for the midlife crisis crowd.

i'm rooting for tough philly chick. you figure if eric ripert hired her to cook at his philly place she must know what's up. puck really dug her fish.

^^Jennifer C., I'm also pulling for her.

kinda smashy too

puck was bring the zings in that ep.

yeah Puck was good. throwing the donuts was funny

really unattractive cast this season. perfect fit for vegas. can't wait for the challenge involving plastic footballs filled with cocktails.

We were soooo upset that Michael? (eyebrow-waxed guy) seemed to actually cook well since he spent the entire episode being a total bastard and making strangely misogynistic comments. I said "this guy is like everyone on Chopped" and now I wish I also said "this guy is like every long island italian chef Ramsay visits", but seems like maybe he can actually cook.

i was totally hoping he was fronting too and on his way to a quick flame out.

The preview scenes at the end of the episode made it seem like he gets schooled next week. He definitely looked like he was sulking.

okay, philly girl was ripert's sous chef at le bernardin before taking over his new restaurant in philly. she definitely knows her way around a kitchen.

her menu looks yummy, by the way. too bad i'm not a philly guy anymore:

http://www.10arts.com/

haitian guy's vice was like "it was hard on that boat."

― 69, Thursday, August 20, 2009 3:31 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha he looked SO SHOCKED when tom was like "it wasn't really a vice, bro"

puck was bring the zings in that ep.

― carne asada, Thursday, August 20, 2009 4:04 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ptm^^ they should hire him as a perma judge if gayle gets pregnant again

We were soooo upset that Michael? (eyebrow-waxed guy) seemed to actually cook well since he spent the entire episode being a total bastard and making strangely misogynistic comments/

yeah it was hilarious how he was like "okay NO OFFENSE GUYS but a girl SHOULD NOT be beating me" like we were all just going to wash our hands of that. i wonder if he would've thought it appropriate to say "okay NO OFFENSE GUYS but this BLACK IMMIGRANT should not be beating me"

is toby young out? if so, that's a disappointment.

serious? He made me want to poke out my eyes and stick them in my ears so I would never have to listen to his epic-poem length forced and utterly unfunny metaphors.

I thought he was pretty funny, but i think it was more laughing at him than with him. i think the other judges hated him, and that was entertaining too.

Yeah I admit that I liked how much Tom seemed to like to dislike him.

it was great, even padma hissed at him a couple of times.

haha i guess that was almost a redeeming feature of having him. i dont think it was enough tho

Fuck Toby Young.

Wolfgang Puck is so awesome.

Totally concur with Shasta on not wanting to see those horrible plugs anymore.

Fuck Toby Young.

Wolfgang Puck is so awesome.

Yes, I wish Wolfgang could be on every episode as a judge. Toby Young is like a bad Cowell wannabe.

nah, Toby Young was hilarious. I'm glad they sent that woman home, i'm pretty well-inked, but she looks ridiculous. Plus if she wants to get more tats, she may want to consider a new artist.

I don't think he said even one thing I thought was funny.

I thought Puck's dismissal of Hector's steak was obnoxious though: this is America, we don't deep fry steaks. If he blew the preparation it's one thing, but they all seemed to object to the nature of the dish. I like him and the Haitian guy so far.

bill magill has the worst opinions on everything, even top chef!!

They also said that Hector was in a very strong group. I don't think they thought his was the fourth-worst dish of the night.

The problem with Hector's dish was conceptually: his vice was smoking, yet any remnants of the cedar smoke in the marinade was hasta la vista by the time he chicharrone-fied that prime rib.

Like i said above, i found it entertaining how much everybody else hated him. I got a kick out of having the little fucker on the show.

xxpost

you're a fucking twat Jordan S. you're not exactly burning up the board's with any deep critical observations yourself, cocksucker.

you are the worst

xp Woah was that really necessary?

nice.

This season, things are heating up in the ILX kitchen.

I fully expect to see Bill and Jordan hugging it out and sharing a beer by episode 7.

I've got hopes for Hector. He slipped up the way a lot of people do in the beginning, not really thinking through the challenge and jumping to show something that they think makes them different/special. Not totally unlike seitan girl, he was just dying to show off that latin flavor with his chicarron style steak without really thinking it through about if that was the best way to get "smokey" across. Still, it looked good and I'd eat it! When I heard him mention "cigars" as his vice I was hoping he'd do a moroccan style cigar dish.

The dark horse is Ash, the NYC dude who seems to make a huge issue of his sexual orientation oddly.

"Haitian dude" (as tokenistic ILX is fond of calling him wtf!!!) has a name and it's Ron Duprat. I think he will be in trouble early as he'll be shopping in Whole Foods all season long and they already showed him asking a WF emp "Do you have an Island section?" and then complaining that he doesn't have access to all the things he needs. I think the judges threw him a bone here but when the challenges get harder, he will suffer more than the others.

go get you some pulled pork girl

keving gillespe is not nn-approved.
it would be such a tumultuous relationship!

-g

he looks so sad like he wants to down that whole bottle of wine :(
http://blogs.ajc.com/food-and-more/files/2009/12/recp.1009fd+AS099-199x300.jpg

poor dude

now it makes so much more sense, when he said that thing about how seeing his mother was a lot better than other people they might have brought in O_o

spent most of the season thinking he was gay tbh

but he did win alot of cool things from the quickfire and elimination challenges

and he is one of the best known and most popular chefs in america at the moment, so there's that

dude also looks like he lost a lotta weight

The Voltaggio bros website has a forum:

http://www.voltaggiobrothers.com/forum

okay, finally had to google what you guys were talking about.

dude was obv messed up in the head in the episode ("i came on this show as an underdog.." uh, ok, if you say so!).

i'm just happy that it wasn't as horrible as last year when Hosea won. it was cool to see Ashley (who Colicchio mentioned in his blog selflessly took the fall for Eli and she should have been there at the end) again.

looking fwd to next week's (?) reunion show.

shasta u didnt need to google i commented on it upthread!

Hosea where are you now

Picking sous chefs randomly from the knife block was cruel as hell.

oh hey look there's a douchebag finder

where's haley

MORE HOSEA:
Hosea's Blog
Find Hosea
Meet Hosea
Hosea's Top Ten
Hosea's Friends
About whereishosea.com
Follow Hosea on Twitter
Follow Hosea on Facebook
Hosea's Blog

Bah was so behind on shows this week I only just finished the finale tonight.

This will sound cheesy but I completely did a 360 on Mike Voltaggio when he won. When he was standing there crying & holding onto Bryan it was like he was a little kid..and then when his Mom came in? Finally! Dude IS human. I mean, I never wanted him to cry on camera but it was nice to see him let his guard down.

Bummed at Kevin's luck though. And O_O at Preeti's pumpkin 'skillz'. Fuck, even my knife skills are an improvement on that, and I once put myself in the emergency room cutting a zucchini with a steak knife, so that's saying something.

just got an email:

Laurine Wickett presents 'A Rustic Romantic Feast'

There will be two seatings each night:

Saturday 6:30pm & 8:30pm
Sunday 6pm & 8pm

Here is the Menu:

1st Course...

Cauliflower soup with smoked
potatoes and truffle oil

2nd Course...

Braised short ribs with parsnip mash,
broccoli di ciccio and pickled
cipollini onions

OR

Mushroom torta with fontina,
squash puree, chicory salad

Dessert...
Panna Cotta with citrus compote

$35/per person or $55 with wine pairings

pass

yarite?

ehhhhhhhhhhhh

Soup looks great. Since I don't eat meat, though, I'd be stuck with the mushroom torta, which doesn't sound particularly exciting. Sub with a seafood dish and then maybe I'd be interested.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina's president recommended pork as an alternative to Viagra Wednesday, saying she spent a satisfying weekend with her husband after eating barbecued pork.

"I've just been told something I didn't know; that eating pork improves your sex life ... I'd say it's a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra," President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.

She said she recently ate pork and "things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true."

Argentines are the world's biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.

"Trying it doesn't cost anything, so let's give it a go," Fernandez said in the televised speech.

re: that menu, im surprised that one dish everybody did this year isnt on it. i forget the name, some sort of raw fish central/south american thing? somebody made it every week and inevitably bombed, I cant remember the name for the life of me.

Are you just talking about ceviche?

ceviche, yeah, that's right. thanks.

did the judges ever like anybody's ceviche?

ceviche is a warm weather dish and it's only high 50s/low 60s this weekend.

which is why you saw it so much in Vegas because it was like 125F every day and those chefs probably didn't want to stand in front of an oven in that heat.

Half of the chefs pronounced it "seh-veesh," like it was French.

jen pronounced it the right way, with the v as a b.

"ceviche is a warm weather dish and it's only high 50s/low 60s this weekend"

where? that menu doesnt have a location. and wherever it is, 60s sounds tropical. where i live its in the teens right now.

oh sorry, this is for a restaurant in my hood.

laurine is a caterer by day but she does special event dinners around town (SF) apparently.

preeti (the boyish asian gal who couldn't open a clam or cut anything to save her life) is also local, she's the executive chef for google's inhouse catering company... which is LOL imo.

gotcha, i didnt realize it was san fran. 60s isnt bad for january there though, right?

Jen friended me back btw!

xp it's about average. i'm craving more pozole than ceviche (cibiche in peruvian where the dish originates) right now... gonna go get lunch now.

xp will you poke her from steve shasta? thx.

i am no ones lucky pierre

i believe ceviche pronunciation depends on where you are. people in peru say it with a v and a b, depending on class/location/etc but i have never heard it the way jen said it (without accenting the e on the end). however, i have not been to that many spanish speaking countries.

she also worked at one of the finest seafood restaurants in the world and pairs that with a first rate culinary education...

that still doesn't mean that people who pronounce it otherwise are necessarily wrong. she also has a really weird accent when she speaks english so...

Kristen Henri: Ok, I have to ask this on behalf of our readers because they constantly commented on it. Your pronunciation of 'ceviche'. Why do you pronounce it 'se-veech?'

Jen Caroll: Well, listen, the master of fish, Eric Ripert, says 'se-veech' all the time. If people want to comment that I’m saying it wrong, they can complain to him. At Le Bernadin, we have a lot of saying for things that are maybe not the right pronunciation or word because there are a lot of different cultures working in the kitchen. You just end up saying things that are funny. Like we don't say "julienne those carrots," it's "Giuliani those carrots!" So I say 'seveech.' If it tastes good, who cares what the hell I call it?

http://www.neoows.com/story/9921881

Like we don't say "julienne those carrots," it's "Giuliani those carrots!"

lol

Well, listen, the master of fish, Eric Ripert, says 'se-veech' all the time.

Yeah, because he's French. You don't have that excuse.

ding ding ding! and if giuliani those carrots is blatantly wrong, then perhaps 'se-veech' is, too ;-)

actually it reminds me of how italian americans sometimes drop vowels from the end of words like ricotta and call it 'ricott'

I add m's to words without m's