Dignan

It's generally the chef who makes something bad but doesn't know it -- can't tell -- insists it is good when it isn't -- who goes home when there is more than one bad dish. It's not so much the arguing with the judges as it is the underlying question: "Can you really not taste that this is crap?"

The pic of the gun was certainly not out of order. Thanks for the pictorial.

The peculier thing to me is that, if you look at the bios of the chefs on the Bravo website, and they are still there so you can if you'd like, they seem like an accomplished bunch of profesionals that would give you a good season. For example, the goofy dreadlocks guy who went out first, has a restaurant and a couple of Beard nominations. Steven, who never won a single solitary thing, and probably got the middle seat on the hump in the car everytime they went anywhere, and yet who lasted quite a ways in, is an exec chef for Michael Mina, and has worked for T. Keller and Trotter. When you look at these folks, at least on paper, it seems like a bunch who would give us a season that should have been be a pretty good battle royale.

If we had a one and done system, that would be one thing, but we don't have a "win stay-lose goodbye" verdict each week, we have a "win stay-didn't win but didn't lose so you stay too-lose goodbye" verdict. Which leads to all kinds of people in the middle group staying on a long time, and having a shot at the final four. The play-in-team in the tourney doesn't get to hang around even though they didn't win, because there's no way for them to not lose. No one would be satisfied with a March Madness that had top chef rules.

Judging from some of the comments, I think the producers are developing a format problem if it requires people to be aware of the fact, and endure the fact, that the show is going to kinda suck until somewhere in the middle of the season, at which point those who persevere will get the payoff.

So long as we aren't eating them raw, wouldn't the same logic applied to cooking the dirty chicken apply to potatos (apart from point about the contamination of other surfaces prior to cooking)? Of course the grit wouldn't be appetizing....

The phrase was created by Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam to refer to lesbians. I suspect Tony would be less oblique if he were calling out such an easy target as those who are better off financially that the reader is.

Actually, the more precise description to me was not that it tasted like I was eating a MacDonald's cheeseburger, but more like it had that taste you have in your mouth a while after you've eaten a MacDonald's cheeseburger.

This show seems to have a Star Trek movie cycle thing going, you know? Where they said for awhile that every other movie was good but the inbetween ones sucked. Neither these people nor the food they make is appealing to me. The chefs look pretty good on paper, but the season so far has not been my favorite.

McDonald's was my immediate reference point upon tasting these too.

I'm with you, excepting the guilt. And of course all the challenges aren't based on gluttony, as there are the "heat" challenges in there to leaven the thing.

It was very fine bits of cauliflower, like if you just chopped through the ends of each head. It wasn't just minced heads of cauliflower. You'll see what he does with the broccolli substitute if you watch -- he just very finely slices of bits of the florets and uses that as the broccoli essence. I think it was featured fairly well. Angelo tried to help him damage control by suggesting that it might still be usuable. Instead he realized that he didn't know that they weren't cooking in the cow pasture and he wasn't going to try to salvage the cauliflower and take the risk that something nasty would end up on somebody's plate. It was the right decision, we've seen enough foriegn and semi-foriegn items throw the judges all the way off their gaits.

Clairvoyant, huh? Didn't see that coming!

Well, he had immunity and didn't seem to try too hard when only two members of his team, including Kenny, were available to take the fall. Last week he said he wanted to win every challenge, but with immunity he made peanut butter on celery. Tom asked him if he would have made the "dish" if he didn't have immunity, and he wouldn't answer the question. I agree that he probably wouldn't have made that dish without immunity. But since chefs were judged independently on their own dishes, I can't see how his failure set up Kenny to fail. If anything, by serving such a simplistic dish, he was arguably doing his teammates a favor, since I doubt he used up his share of the budget. Because they picked a worst team, then a member of the worst team went home. If Angelo doesn't try to elevate the team with a worthy dish, he increases the chances they will be the worst. If they are the worst, he has immunity and can't get sent home, and Kenny has a 50% chance under those circumstances because only he and the other one can get booted. Tom asked him (Kenny) straight out during production whether he was worried because he had a 50% chance of going home on his team while everyone on the other teams only had a 25% chance. So not only did he not care if they, as a team, had a lackluster meal, he potentially benefited. So he sandbagged. He took a club out of their bag, he made them play a man short, etc... Of course, he could have taken a dump on the tray and it wouldn't have cost them any of the budget.

Well, he had immunity and didn't seem to try too hard when only two members of his team, including Kenny, were available to take the fall. Last week he said he wanted to win every challenge, but with immunity he made peanut butter on celery. Tom asked him if he would have made the "dish" if he didn't have immunity, and he wouldn't answer the question.

Jon looks like something Robert Crumb drew.

I agree. It's hollow at its core. I only get blustery posturing and affected attitude, followed by a random outcome.

Glucose is a simple sugar that can come from corn, but all glucose isn't corn syrup. Corn can come on the cob, and be stripped from the husk for kernels. Some corn is sweet corn, but there are other varieties with different concentrations of sugars that aren't sweet. So it kind of depends on the context.

I've been reading egullet for a while, and I generally enjoy reading Fat Guy's posts and his opinions. But that segment did not leave me wanting to have dinner with any of the folks involved.

This happened to me about a month ago in Rapid City, SD. I ordered it, and denied!

I'd tell her to go pound sand too. The "unrelated and non-specific" is a perfect way to describe the list and is what bothered me about it. Someone with that many food issues out to have a better strategy for getting their needs met than this woman has........

If she doesn't eat fish, why did she include cod and tuna in her list of things she was allergic to? She didn't list lamb shanks or pot roast......

For a show that has been around for six years, I think there would be concrete examples, and not mere speculation, if the issue really existed. Word gets around; people talk. I cannot imagine Top Chef standing in the way of her getting a position for which she was otherwise qualified — which she probably isn't. Presumably she's employed already, and as she develops her career, what happened on the show will recede in importance. Can you imagine someone three years from now saying, "Well...her resume and her references are perfect for this job, but we just can't get past her performance on Top Chef in 2009"? It seems to me silly that anyone would consider that a serious possibility. I on the other hand wouldn't expect a lot of concrete evidence to be available to gawkers on websites. The cameras quit following them around once they get kicked off the show, and employment decisions in this country are generally kept confidential. Will Preeti never work again? Of course I'm not saying that. I hope she didn't have an investor meeting planned for her new restaurant concept scheduled this month, though. She'll have to wait until her skill set meter DINGS and then she'll know its the time. In a world where we don't carry obvious competency meters around above our heads, and skill sets are ranges rather than specifics that can be underlined, is your take a metaphysical sort of thing where water finds its own level and where you find yourself after Top Chef is where your supposed to be so your participation could not possibly damage your future what-ifs. At the same time then there must be no benefit to be had other than the $100k?

ya, seriously, any press is good press. And I've been watching since the first season, and a lot of those chefs eliminated early could have gone all the way in previous seasons. The brothers and Kevin could have competed on top chef masters and I think skewed people's viewpoints this season. Has it hurt anyone? I don't think we know the answer to that. Could it? I think so. Ashley interviewed several times about her trepidation about the record the show would create for her. Jessie's parting interview words were (paraphrase) "I just want everyone to know I don't suck this bad." And Preeti? Would you hire her as your head chef if she submitted her resume to you today? I don't think many would. She demonstrated so many flaws while she swung in the wind prior to dismissal. A failure to open clams and not admit she didnt know how, a failure of creativity and execution, a failure to recognize, admit, or most damning, understand when something was bad or even just not right. She got quite a few episodes to demonstrate what she was lacking. And, if you hadn't seen it or she hadn't been on the show, you might hire her to run your restaurant if she interviewed well with a good resume and references. But if you had seen it all? Would you hire her to do anything beyond the basic and not worry about even that? It's plain each season that many of the cheftestants don't know that they aren't very good. Finding out how not good they are, that's got to hurt, doesn't it?

The whole Padma thing is silly. If she did something she wasn't supposed to do, it never would have made it into the final edit of the show! We would not know it ever happened! She was told to do it, and it was included in the broadcast on purpose because some idjit thought it was a good idea to do it that way this time.